DIE HARD III / Herman Tiu Laurel / April 2, 2014
The Philippine government staged a “patintero,” a child’s game of “tag,” complete with reporters invited on planes to film the childish event and mainstream media ready to trumpet the “victory” and “outwitting” of the large Coast Guard of China. The passage of the crew of the Philippine toy boat, admitted to be military men dressed up as civilians, may actually confirm Chinese claims that it does not stop non-military navigation in the area. Whether the motley crew of the disguised boat was really being stopped is another matter of interpretation.
Pictures later come out in mainstream newspapers of the disheveled Philippine Marine detachment on the BRP Sierra Madre being presented medals, which they no doubt deserve for obedience and tenacity, but what do all these benefit the people of the Philippines?
As stressed in our previous articles, the belligerent rhetoric from the Philippine government, backed up by the US State Department, raises a lot of sound and fury but in the end signifies nothing — much like a tempest in a teapot. The other Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) South China Sea claimants know this and, as with Vietnam and Malaysia, prefer to maintain high level dialog with China based on mutual respect and principles of the Declaration of Conduct — not the Code of Conduct the Philippines insists on that has found no consensus.
For Vietnam and Malaysia, the result of their dialogs with China has been rewarding: Resulting in subdued tension and increasing foreign direct investments (FDI) from and trade with China in multiples of four or five compared to China’s FDI and threatened collapse of trade with the Philippines.
Vietnam and Malaysia do not see the China Sea territorial issues as a simple matter of their country versus China; they also see it in the context of the bigger historical and geostrategic setting of prior US domination of the region and the China Sea, which China is pushing back against to avert the US and its Western hegemonic alliance’s interloping in the area.
The US is the real bully in the region and, as colleague Rod Kapunan keeps reminding us, it has since the end of World War II considered the seas of Asia — from the Yellow to the South China Sea — as its lake.
The US sent its warships into the Yellow Sea (Korean War), the Gulf of Tonkin (Vietnam War), the Taiwan Straits, and violated Philippine territorial waters several times with impunity. As columnist Ricardo Saludo wrote last Monday, “The Chinese are not the top intruders in the Philippines. China has kept far, far away from the archipelago itself. The American military has openly and deliberately violated Philippine internal waters… sailing between our islands nearly 20 times last year. UNCLoS provides that the archipelagic sea within our recognized territorial baselines is part of our republic’s internal waters. But this is disputed by the US. As the US Defense Department told Congress in its Freedom of Navigation Report for Fiscal Year 2013, the American Navy entered those internal waters within our archipelago, showing Washington’s opposition to that claim. (One wonders how the US would have reacted if the Chinese Navy sailed into our archipelagic sea alongside its Seventh Fleet to join it in challenging our claim of internal waters under UNCLoS.)”
As our readers peruse this column, the China Sea dispute will be discussed in a forum at the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) entitled, “Understanding 21st Century China: All Under Heaven?” implying perhaps that China “claims all under heaven.” The AIM is, of course, the US-Philippine corporate class’ managerial diploma mill. As such, it frames the issue according to its bias: That China still needs to be understood. But isn’t China transparent and crystal clear enough in stating that it wants “peaceful development”?
What any forum that promises intelligent debates must discuss is the US “pivot” to Asia and its real intentions, such as maintaining its domination of the region and its seas and interloping all over it with impunity.
I thought I would attend the AIM discussion since speakers such as Chito Sta. Romana (former ABC Beijing bureau chief), Liping Zheng of the Asian Development Bank, and Marwyn Samuels of Beijing University will be there. But I learned from an article of pro-American China-basher and disinformation disseminator Rafael Alunan III (scion of a Japanese-era Makapili minister who served alongside Benigno Simeon Aquino Sr.) that forum participation is “by invitation only.” Although I got an indirect invitation, I believe that doesn’t count. Instead, I will start organizing an international forum of speakers from anti-war, anti-imperialism leading lights, such as GlobalResearch’s Michel Chossudovsky, Anti-War.com’s Brian Becker, LaRouche’s Mike Billington, et al.
Chito Sta. Romana pointed out on our GNN TV show that the Philippines, in signing agreements that open itself to US nuclear submarines, has made itself a target of Chinese medium-range missiles. Yet those are still a few hundred less missiles aimed at US bases across the region as against tons of radiation for our people.
(Tune in to “Sulo ng Pilipino” on 1098 AM, dwAD, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m.; catch GNN’s 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., this week on “Fascism on the rise?” with Satur Ocampo and “From truck ban to market clean-up” with Councilors Letlet Zarcal and Dennis Alcoreza; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 0917-8658664)
The Philippine government staged a “patintero,” a child’s game of “tag,” complete with reporters invited on planes to film the childish event and mainstream media ready to trumpet the “victory” and “outwitting” of the large Coast Guard of China. The passage of the crew of the Philippine toy boat, admitted to be military men dressed up as civilians, may actually confirm Chinese claims that it does not stop non-military navigation in the area. Whether the motley crew of the disguised boat was really being stopped is another matter of interpretation.
Pictures later come out in mainstream newspapers of the disheveled Philippine Marine detachment on the BRP Sierra Madre being presented medals, which they no doubt deserve for obedience and tenacity, but what do all these benefit the people of the Philippines?
As stressed in our previous articles, the belligerent rhetoric from the Philippine government, backed up by the US State Department, raises a lot of sound and fury but in the end signifies nothing — much like a tempest in a teapot. The other Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) South China Sea claimants know this and, as with Vietnam and Malaysia, prefer to maintain high level dialog with China based on mutual respect and principles of the Declaration of Conduct — not the Code of Conduct the Philippines insists on that has found no consensus.
For Vietnam and Malaysia, the result of their dialogs with China has been rewarding: Resulting in subdued tension and increasing foreign direct investments (FDI) from and trade with China in multiples of four or five compared to China’s FDI and threatened collapse of trade with the Philippines.
Vietnam and Malaysia do not see the China Sea territorial issues as a simple matter of their country versus China; they also see it in the context of the bigger historical and geostrategic setting of prior US domination of the region and the China Sea, which China is pushing back against to avert the US and its Western hegemonic alliance’s interloping in the area.
The US is the real bully in the region and, as colleague Rod Kapunan keeps reminding us, it has since the end of World War II considered the seas of Asia — from the Yellow to the South China Sea — as its lake.
The US sent its warships into the Yellow Sea (Korean War), the Gulf of Tonkin (Vietnam War), the Taiwan Straits, and violated Philippine territorial waters several times with impunity. As columnist Ricardo Saludo wrote last Monday, “The Chinese are not the top intruders in the Philippines. China has kept far, far away from the archipelago itself. The American military has openly and deliberately violated Philippine internal waters… sailing between our islands nearly 20 times last year. UNCLoS provides that the archipelagic sea within our recognized territorial baselines is part of our republic’s internal waters. But this is disputed by the US. As the US Defense Department told Congress in its Freedom of Navigation Report for Fiscal Year 2013, the American Navy entered those internal waters within our archipelago, showing Washington’s opposition to that claim. (One wonders how the US would have reacted if the Chinese Navy sailed into our archipelagic sea alongside its Seventh Fleet to join it in challenging our claim of internal waters under UNCLoS.)”
As our readers peruse this column, the China Sea dispute will be discussed in a forum at the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) entitled, “Understanding 21st Century China: All Under Heaven?” implying perhaps that China “claims all under heaven.” The AIM is, of course, the US-Philippine corporate class’ managerial diploma mill. As such, it frames the issue according to its bias: That China still needs to be understood. But isn’t China transparent and crystal clear enough in stating that it wants “peaceful development”?
What any forum that promises intelligent debates must discuss is the US “pivot” to Asia and its real intentions, such as maintaining its domination of the region and its seas and interloping all over it with impunity.
I thought I would attend the AIM discussion since speakers such as Chito Sta. Romana (former ABC Beijing bureau chief), Liping Zheng of the Asian Development Bank, and Marwyn Samuels of Beijing University will be there. But I learned from an article of pro-American China-basher and disinformation disseminator Rafael Alunan III (scion of a Japanese-era Makapili minister who served alongside Benigno Simeon Aquino Sr.) that forum participation is “by invitation only.” Although I got an indirect invitation, I believe that doesn’t count. Instead, I will start organizing an international forum of speakers from anti-war, anti-imperialism leading lights, such as GlobalResearch’s Michel Chossudovsky, Anti-War.com’s Brian Becker, LaRouche’s Mike Billington, et al.
Chito Sta. Romana pointed out on our GNN TV show that the Philippines, in signing agreements that open itself to US nuclear submarines, has made itself a target of Chinese medium-range missiles. Yet those are still a few hundred less missiles aimed at US bases across the region as against tons of radiation for our people.
(Tune in to “Sulo ng Pilipino” on 1098 AM, dwAD, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m.; catch GNN’s 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., this week on “Fascism on the rise?” with Satur Ocampo and “From truck ban to market clean-up” with Councilors Letlet Zarcal and Dennis Alcoreza; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 0917-8658664)
