Sulo ng Pilipino: July 2015

Monday, July 27, 2015

Pretending

Pretending

(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 07-27-2015 MON)

It's time for another massive dose of deception. It's the Palace Idiot's State of the Nation Address (SoNA) and another day of pretend.

Pretend this country is a democracy. Pretend that the bumbling Idiot is reporting to and not deceiving the nation in another annual SoNA. Pretend that the nation's political leadership cares for anything other than its own perpetuation in undeserved privilege and power. Pretend that this country is a republic, independent and sovereign. Pretend that the economy is growing. Pretend that the nation's poor are getting a better deal now than before. Pretend ad nausea.

Outside of politics: Pretend that this nation is blessed because of religion, and this WE proclaim this to the World. Pretend that religions, whether Roman Catholic or Protestant, Evangelical, Iglesia ni Cristo, Dating Daan, Tamang Daan, Jehovah's Witness, Mormon, Islam, and what have you are savings souls. Pretend they don't instead enrich their own clergy and the economic oligarchies--the real masters who share billions of the loot. Pretend to keep the masses from realizing that they have a right to this world and not just the next.

In foreign relations: Pretend that this country has a right to more territories when it does not and cannot defend and develop territories it is already entrusted with by history. Pretend that this country must fight for its international rights when it cannot even preserve and protect its own people's rights to basic food, health care, education, housing, creativity, productivity, and family life.

Pretend that the most fundamental guarantees of its Constitution--written, too, by the most pretentious people--entitle Filipinos to "a just and humane society, and… a Government that shall embody our ideals and aspirations, promote the common good, conserve and develop our patrimony, and secure to ourselves and our posterity, the blessings of independence and democracy under the rule of law and a regime of truth, justice, freedom, love, equality, and peace…"

Pretend that all this is true even when 50 percent of the nation is assured of permanent unemployment or underemployment due to the oligarchic structure of this society's finance, credit, property rights, and economy.

Pretend as well that this country can and should aggressively prepare for "credible defense" when all of the nation's economic surplus, amounting to a trillion pesos or over $20 billion a year, is appropriated as profits by 40 oligarchic families or corporations in cahoots with transnationals while the national budget is left with a pittance to partition among 100 million hapless Filipinos.

Pretend still that the Philippines' defense budget of $500 million isn't paltry compared to Vietnam's $4 billion or China's $150 billion. Pretend, as some self-proclaimed US-succoring Filipino patriots do, that a $15-million Israeli missile system is "credible defense."

Can we stop pretending and, as a nation, start reclaiming even only half of the P1 trillion in annual profits the 40 or so oligarchic families and corporations siphon off into their bank accounts? Can we finally devote such resources to this nation's social welfare, economic and defense development, for a stronger population with a stronger will, and a stronger defense force? Can we seriously build a self-reliant economy by way of self-sufficient agriculture and industry so as to break free of the perpetual cycle of mendicancy?

Can we stop our religious pretense and return to secularism, science, and technology as the liberators of our people, and end the nurturing of the myth of religion as the savior of this nation? Can we wake up to the fact that religious groups are granted tax free status on billions of their annual revenues from collections and behest businesses with government, even when they do not produce real goods and render only service to the oligarchy to keep the masses and the nation docile, uninformed, and prostrate? Let's stop pretending that religiosity is spirituality--one is slavery and only the latter is authentic.

Some of the young leaders I am investing hope in have seemingly lost faith in the essential goodness of man. They have begun to believe in the articles of faith of the capitalist and oligarchic system, that "Greed is good" and there can be no genuine altruism, no natural instinct, among human beings for the collective good. They have been indoctrinated with the pretense that capitalism promotes, that all men are greedy at the core. That is the greatest sham one can delude himself into accepting even if, deep down, we must love all of creation since we are part of it.

We pretend today that there is no more "ism" to debate about; but as we can see in the stark and desperate realities our suffering society and people now face, the "ism" debate is still vital to our nation and our family's and our individual survival as human beings with human values.

Capitalism--along with its most grotesque embodiment, imperialism--is a failed god while the old "mixed economy," with new names of "social-market" or "market-socialism," is proving to serve nations and the peoples of the World better. Of course, there's the shift from unipolarism to multipolarism that this nation is still oblivious to.

So let's stop pretending!

(Listen to Sulô ng Pilipino, 1098 AM, dwAD, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.; watch GNN Talk News TV with HTL on Destiny Cable Channel 8, SkyCable Channel 213, and www.gnntv-asia.com, Saturday, 8 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m.; search Talk News TV and date of showing on YouTube; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 0917-8658664)

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Futile end games to every Yellow problem

Futile end games to every Yellow problem

(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 07-22-2015 WED)

It's a feeling of exasperation when one takes stock of this country's trajectory--from its elections to its foreign policy, its economic realities, and so on.

Elections here are a proven farce with its election body and its automated election system completely discredited. Yet the freak show goes on.

Its major foreign policy pursuit is mired in a hopeless conundrum: UP Maritime Affairs Director Jay Batongbacal recently wrote that the UN arbitral tribunal may still rule in favor of China despite the latter's absence, a disaster as much as any hoped for win that will never yield any compliance even for a hundred years.

The Philippine "No Dialogue with China" crowd believed it had struck on a very powerful argument in the international stage when it raised the "island building" issue against China. But brought to wider attention by US and French-reared geopoliticist Peter Lee's July 18 article on Asia Times ("Okinotorishima-ization: South China Sea arbitration case enters middle game") on the Okinotorishima rock features near Taiwan and mainland China, visible during high tide and built up by Japan into a huge facility with a lighthouse, four-story structures, etc., and the basis of their argument becomes flimsy at best. Google the word and you'll see the huge Japanese "island," which these rabble-rousers are silent on.

At the conclusion of the lengthy article and to point out the futility of it all, Lee referred to our Iranian-Filipino colleague, Ateneo political science professor Richard Javad Heydarian, as "the leading defender of the Philippine strategy in the Western media, (who) endeavored to manage expectations if the Philippines does not prevail in the arbitration case… or prevails and the PRC disregards the ruling…" I texted to Richard that Lee apparently does not read enough of what he has written as I know that Richard has been calling on BS Aquino to start engaging in dialogue with China.

Richard texted back to me, "Actually even in my TV interviews on GMA and CNN, I emphasized on the need to have diplomatic engagement and on The Diplomat (an Australian foreign policy-military magazine) they have asked me to analyze the downside of pure confrontation with China. But there's a lot of negative reaction from the hardliners here when I talk about engagement…"

The hardliners he's referring to include the likes of the so-called West Philippine Sea Coalition and big mainstream papers, including the Inquirer, working non-stop to muffle broadminded discussion that could break the "information gulag," which they obviously would like to fence the Filipino public in.

But broadminded and visionary discussions calling for productive engagement with China and promising multiple bounties from such actions are eliciting positive responses. To our last column ("Thailand gets trains; RP, bases"), we received this text from a former multiple-term congressman: "Tnx. Quarreling with China deprives us of opportunities to link up the whole country by rail. Huhuhu…"

Of course, we also get our share of brickbats and name-calling (like "Fifth Columnist"… hahaha) from the hardliners who can articulate no more than such Neanderthal grunts.

The defense alliance of Filipino anti-China and Amboy crowds hoping to rope in to backstop their offensives against China are facing rough seas at home. The US, though still the world's largest military, is cutting back its forces by 40,000 troops and its budget by $90 billion, both of which do not augur well for its "Asia Pivot."

Meanwhile, Japan's Shinzo Abe government that is leading the "reinterpretation" of that country's Constitution to allow its military to join other allied armed forces (like those of the US and Philippines) is being opposed by 66 percent of the Japanese people (represented by a hundred thousand who protested before the Diet's deliberations).

Back home, Philippine mainstream media and a premier survey group are hyping the "lowest hunger rate" in a decade, which uncannily comes just before presidential election year, hoping to gloss over the country's continued dependence on food importation to complete its food requirements, its agricultural sector still trapped in marginal productivity, or its institutions for agricultural development wallowing in corruption.

What they won't say is that the Philippines continues to be trapped in "austerity programs," as evinced by the real 50 percent under- and unemployment rate for the past 30 years after the International Monetary Fund's structural adjustments saw millions leave for jobs abroad--this much Greece shall begin to see in the years ahead.

The Filipino nation is made to hope that the unending cycle of problems, among the many others that cannot fit here, can be solved in the next presidential elections. But the same old personality game of oligarchy-endorsed, media moguls cum US embassy- nurtured candidates are still in it while the political parties are the wagging tail to the celebrity candidate and not the other way around as it should be in a genuine democracy. And, to top it all, a foreign-controlled, non-transparent, graft-ridden election company and its machines are still usurping the electoral process.

Smartmatic was disqualified twice by the Commission on Elections' briefly reigning, straight and honest Bids and Awards Committee, headed by Helen Flores. But the Right Honorable Lord Mark Malloch Brown, newly-minted British full owner of Smartmatic (whom the US-based LaRouche movement calls the "guru of color revolutions" and finance predator George Soros' associate), arrives in Manila, sups with BS Aquino in Malacañang, and a week later Ms. Flores is removed, with Smartmatic getting the contracts for 170,000 Smartmatic voting machines. Where does this end? Only Noytards will pretend not to know what this end game will be.

Monday, July 20, 2015

Thailand gets trains; RP, bases

Thailand gets trains; RP, bases

(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 07-20-2015 MON)

Thailand is on a train-building spree. Thais rightly find that trains can develop their nation's wealth. The Thai government, for example, is cooperating with China on the Bt400-billion Bangkok-Nong Khai 160 to 180 kilometers-per-hour trains for linkage of trade and services and goods transportation in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) mainland. Thais are also very wise. They're cashing in on the China-Japan rivalry by getting the Japanese to outbid the Chinese on other train projects. Thailand is getting Japan to develop and fund the high-speed train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai (its premier tour destinations).

China has been dominating Asean economic developments for the past decades; only recently did Japan wake up to the need for it to start competing effectively. Japanese PM Shinzo Abe raised his country's ante in the Asean courting game by 30 percent late last year to $110 billion.

The train export and development has become one of the initial battle grounds for Japan and China. Asean countries are taking advantage: Indonesian President Joko Widodo has asked the Chinese government to develop the high-speed Jakarta-Bandung bullet train--and Japan is hurrying to put up its own offer.

In Cambodia, the Chinese are ahead in their development plans with that country for an $11-billion, 400-kilometer rail line cum steel mill from its northern Preah Vihear province to the commercial island of Koh Kong. Japan is attempting to vie for such projects too.

Even Vietnam has a 13-kilometer-long rapid transit train project with China, cutting travel time from Cat Linh to Hanoi. The list of Asean train projects with China is just too long to list in this column, and Japan is now close on the heels of China to catch up with Asean's modernization of its railway systems.

Here in the Philippines, decision-makers are pathetically misleading the Filipino people, isolating the country from productive, beneficial relationships that other Asean member-states are establishing with China. With Japan waking up to the need to upgrade its competitiveness, most of Asean are using this rivalry to their countries' benefit. But not here in the Philippines, where supposed "patriots" rally to isolate the country from China; futilely "boycott" its goods; and rally for the importation of "foreign (US and Japanese) military bases" disguised as Philippine installations and lobby for missiles and gunships.

Of course, the Philippine government begrudgingly has to deal with China. In the MRT upgrading project of its coaches, the government had to buy from China's Dalian Locomotive because it is the most affordable and one of the best among the world's suppliers. But that was not without a fight from the country's economic elite rulers who tried to stop it, or from the Western supplying company working through an ambassador, who tried to bribe its way through the top Filipino political family, to impose its train coaches that are four times more expensive than the ones from China.

The Philippines is being misled not just on missing out on theses trains but in hundreds of billions of opportunities for trade, tourism, and financing. The AIIB (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank) is a golden opportunity to tap the huge financing pool China has set up, as well as the NDB (New Development Bank) in cooperation with the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), but the Philippines has been corralled out of them by its ruling powers, i.e. Western powers and their cohort ruling class in the Philippines, who all want to keep the Philippines under their control economically, financially, and militarily.

And so the Filipino people are kept in mental, intellectual, and information "concentration camps" while these powers "hamlet" the warmongers both inside and outside the country and peddle their war materiel--like this retired US Naval Academy graduate cum Gloria Arroyo National Security Adviser cum hard-selling vendor for Israeli missiles, who insists on these missiles against the better judgment of our Armed Forces' incumbent authorities who prefer to provide protection to our troops fighting terrorists and the Malaysian-supported Muslim insurgency. How more insane can these "patriots" get?

However, even in military equipment, the Philippines is missing out on the most affordable and among the highest quality defense materiel. Thailand, for instance, has bought submarines from China worth $1 billion. These submarines, arguably, should fulfill more effectively the overall need of the Philippines for external defense--to stop arms smuggling in the South that supplies the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, BangsaMoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, Abu Sayyaf, and others, as well as to interdict shipments that result in both economic, political, and military sabotage or to resupply Philippine-controlled islands in the South China Sea.

But I am being waylaid to military purchases issues when the real need of the country is economic development in order to afford bigger and more legitimate defense budgets in the future. The Philippines is the "kulelat" in trade with China while the most economically advanced in Asean have up to triple that trade volume, with Indonesia having double that of the Philippines with China.

The Philippines needs trains and other economic goods--not the US and Japanese military bases nor missiles and gunboats.

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

A nation waylaid by its traitor class

A nation waylaid by its traitor class

(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 07-15-2015 WED)

As if he had a stroke of genius, one columnist at the Malaya wrote: Win first then talk. He was, of course, referring to winning in The Hague on the South China Sea/West Philippine Sea issue. The writer apparently thinks the intellectual level of China's leadership is at the same level as his or the present ruling class' in the Philippines. He forgets the revolutionary tradition from which the present leadership of China springs and its victorious 60-year struggle to achieve its present proud status. A "victory" by the Philippine junket team at The Hague won't matter an iota.

The BS Aquino government obviously expects a victory at The Hague given its estimate of the self-interest of the Tribunal to insist its relevance, which is what some of the pro-litigation proponents have stated. They have warned the Tribunal in so many statements, which I paraphrase, "The ITLoS will become irrelevant if it does not support Secretary Albert del Rosario's case." What is also apparent is their notion that the employment of the four foreign, Caucasian lawyers will provide a clear advantage to the Philippines' case. That is certainly laughable.

Regarding this pricey legal team, Ado Paglinawan (formerly with our Washington embassy) emailed us from the US: "The Hague is clearly for optics… the show of force, massive propaganda with a lot emotional sound bites. All those monkeys spending our tax dollars can now proceed to our rouges' gallery… Ta..g ina, 30 million of our people are below poverty line and they waste our money that easily. There are two court trials to my best witness where we hired expensive attorneys and not just lost millions of dollars in the litigation but lost the case altogether.

"I watched this up close as Philippine press attache--first the Imelda trial in New York, and second the Westinghouse case in New Jersey. In keeping with the 'Aquino' and 'Liberal Party' hang-up for legalism, this is the third time we will lose millions of dollars and lose… Will the remaining idiots please line up at the left yellow row?"

If after the jurisdiction issue is settled in favor of The Tribunal itself then the other issues follow. With China explicitly not participating, Justice Carpio's three generations of argumentation will still not see China responding to any of this.

Ado Paglinawan is our Dialog-with-China advocacy group's first book author to be published through crowd-funding. It'll be out in a few months and others will follow. It's surprising how many others are seeing our point of view. Ado's first hundred-page book will be on "BS Aquino's Toxic Foreign Policy"; another book forming the compendium is entitled "A Problem for Every Solution," on how BS Aquino and the Yellows scuttle every solution to the nation's crisis--including the Mamasapano crime and others that only BS Aquino's ilk can inflict on this nation.

The spectacle at The Hague is the ruling class's project to regale the Filipino public with while their half-wit commentators persuade themselves and the nation of their supposed genuine patriotism.

Meanwhile, the MRT and LRT operations are deteriorating by the day: After several months laying off the mass transit trains, I took the LRT from Cubao to Doroteo Jose where I and thousands of commuters sweated a torrent of sweat. Hoping to get to Central station with my stored value card I was told to buy a single trip ticket as the turnstile card reader wasn't working.

I climbed down three stories of stairs (ALL escalators not working) to get a taxi; none passed. As I was already late for my two appointments, I gave up and climbed up those three flights of stairs and took the LRT back to Cubao. And, yes, all these after they raised fares by a hundred percent or so (I've lost rack), with the Supreme Court still sitting on the TRO (Temporary Restraining Order) for six months now, to stop the fare hikes for commuter protection advocates like Riles Network, which proves the LRT (and MRT) fare hikes are wholly unjustified.

Nothing works in this society under the treasonous ruling class and collaborationist intelligentsia, like that economist of the Foundation for Economic Freedom (FEF) who urged his readers to "Connect the Dots" as he and his peers support the same "austerity measures" on the Philippines in the 1980s as the IMF, ECB, and EU now impose on Greece.

With the Philippines' de-industrialization, it suffered 50-percent unemployment (and underemployment), forced millions to migrate for jobs, and countless Filipinos were locked in impoverishment while foreign and local oligarchs became ever more enriched.

This is a nation waylaid by its traitor class from its promising and prosperous future that its natural wealth was meant for.

(Tune to: Sulô ng Pilipino, 1098 AM, dwAD, Tues. to Fri., 5-6 p.m.; GNN Talk News TV with HTL on Destiny Cable Channel 8, SkyCable Channel 21, Sat., 8 p.m. and replay Sun., 8 a.m.; search Talk News TV and Saturday date on YouTube; text reactions to 0917-8658664)

Monday, July 13, 2015

BS Aquino makes a fool of RP

BS Aquino makes a fool of RP

(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 07-13-2015 MON)

They just couldn't restrain themselves. BS Aquino's factotums had to have an all-out junket at The Hague. With Department of Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto del Rosario was a delegation reportedly consisting of 50 people. They didn't even try to mask their intent. Including the irrelevant likes of Ronald Llamas and a few more hangers-on with absolutely no role in the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea (ITLoS) case makes the junket all the more obvious. Then there's the Philippine "all White" plus one miniscule brown man legal panel led by Green Card holder Del Rosario for good measure.

When the Philippines was pursuing the other, really important territorial case called the "Sabah claim," which BS Aquino and his ilk desperately want people to forget, the erudite legal experts expounding on the issues and representing the Philippines then were Filipino legal heavyweights Diosdado Macapagal, Arturo Tolentino, Jovito Salonga, and others.

We are told by Filipino lawyers that the hiring of these foreign legal experts involves hefty commissions. Whatever the real motivation behind this is, hiring foreign lawyers already compromises the image of the Philippines' case at the ITLoS. I can only imagine other Association of Southeast Asian Nations states laughing.

Another irrelevance to The Hague team is Sonny Belmonte. He claimed the big delegation is to impress the court. I would think that the judges would prefer to be impressed by the power of legal arguments rather than the number of delegates--but Belmonte's view is really very Filipino, thinking that the "mob" can replace thinking. I will not comment on Belmonte's meeting with Jose Ma. Sison for I have too much respect for the "reaffirmists" here I work with on various people's issues in the country. But, of course, Joma's position has implications on the World's anti-imperialist struggle.

The same day as the start of oral arguments on the Philippines' case against China's claims at the ITLoS, two historic anti-Western imperialist conferences convened in Ufa, Russia.

The first, consisting of the BRICS alliance of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, represents the major countries of four continents and almost half of the World's population and economy. Indonesia, representing the Islamic world, is the next major country at the door step of the BRICS, an alliance that has been dubbed not just an alliance of civilizations but also of cultures--unlike the G7 that's homogenous (except for junior partner Japan).

The second, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) consisting of China, Russia, and the Central Asian states (with India and Pakistan as incoming members) met from July 7 to 9.

Vladimir Putin hosted both meetings, debunking the West's isolation of Russia. While the SCO is preparing the unity of its members to combat terrorism (read ISIS and related terror groups engineered by the US and its client states), the BRICS has set up, among others things, the $100-billion New Development Bank and a $100-billion currency stabilization fund to counter the frequent currency attacks conducted by the West.

The BRICS and SCO are affirmations of the rise of the Asian Century with Eurasian giant Russia tilting toward the East. This ends the era of Western Imperialism.

Brick by brick, the multipolar world is being laid. It is in this context that China's security is essential in the struggle to end the resuscitation of the US "Asia pivot" and its hegemony.

A Philippines that is part of the liberation of the world would expand its consciousness to appreciate the imperatives of solidarity of all anti-imperialist countries--including China--while sharing in the opportunities and responsibilities.

To speak too directly about the real implications of members of the Philippine Left being waylaid into the campaign to restore US hegemony in Asia would be too hurtful. The united front is too important for this to be allowed to happen.

We in the campaign to restore the anti-imperialist perspective in the South China Sea/West Philippine Sea issue are patiently explaining the issues with individuals overwhelmed by the well-funded tri-media and social media propaganda (reportedly managed by Campaigns and Grey, a US PR firm with a $20-million budget for the Philippines).

This project has been very successful in shifting the raging emotions of the Filipino public away from the Mamasapano fiasco and apparently reversing the trend toward more productive attitudes to bilateral talks with China.

However, I am impressed that the latest surveys still show a staunch 17 percent of Filipinos trusting China despite the Great Wall of Disinformation of the Inquirer and other mainstream media. We will still reverse this soon as our forces for liberation from Western hegemony start cranking up books, pamphlets, comics, and other education materials.

The best allies of this anti-Western hegemony campaign are the incompetent and corrupt forces of the Americans themselves who cannot hide their sham. The junket at The Hague and the American legal panel supplanting any genuine Filipino effort, as much as the Mamasapano fiasco making fools of the Philippines, exposes them for what they are.

(Listen to Sulô ng Pilipino, 1098 AM, dwAD, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.; watch GNN Talk News TV with HTL on Destiny Cable Channel 8, SkyCable Channel 213, and www.gnntv-asia.com, Saturday, 8 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m.; search Talk News TV and date of showing on YouTube; visithttp://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 0917-8658664)

Sunday, July 5, 2015

Soho wiser than Carpio

Soho wiser than Carpio

(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 07-06-2015 MON)

On the South China Sea/West Philippine Sea (SCS/WPS) dispute, seasoned public affairs TV news anchor Jessica Soho displayed more intelligence and wisdom with her plain common sense than the much vaunted Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio.

That Soho interview was the culmination of Carpio's organized lecture series cum "experts' discussion" that kicked off last June at the plush Discovery Suites (sponsored no less by a Japanese neo-nationalist institute) and continued at the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila, as well as in the media circuit.

The July 2, 2015 episode of State of the Nation with Jessica Soho was where Carpio belabored the fact that the Philippines' International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea (ITLoS) case will "…take time…even an inter-generational struggle… (where even) if we will win … this generation will get the ruling… the next will convince the world… and maybe the next… after that will convince China…"

Since one generation is 25 years, Carpio is effectively talking of 75 years before any potential benefits. To this Soho reacted with plain common sense: "Will there be anything left in the SCS/WPS after that time?"

After stumping Carpio with that question, Soho then led him to reflect on the question of the growing majority of Filipinos as to why the Philippines is not engaging China in bilateral talks over the SCS/WPS dispute between the two countries. Soho asked Carpio why the Philippines has not taken the track of bilateral dialog at the same time (as many suggest, a two-track policy that includes dialog--especially after China spoke through its envoy, Ambassador Zhao Jianhua, last June 12 that it is open to dialog "without any precondition").

Carpio took pains to persuade his listeners that bilateral dialog is not a viable option as it would "jeopardize" the ITLoS case if China invokes the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLoS) requirement that disputants first submit to choice "peaceful means" of resolution, among which are dialog and negotiations, to resolve issues; and only upon the inability to come to terms through such initial "peaceful means" can the matter be brought to the court.

China contends that no such peaceful dialog has happened and Carpio's caveat may indicate that such can be claimed.

To buttress his arguments for the Philippines to desist from any effort to engage China in dialog and bilateral negotiations, Carpio was not beyond comparing bananas to lychees to make his case.

Citing the Nicaragua vs United States case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ)--not ITLoS--where the US was rapped for laying naval mines in Nicaragua's harbors against the Sandinista government (which, again, is not a territorial dispute) and where the ICJ decided in favor of Nicaragua with a $30-million award in damages (which the US repeatedly ignored), Carpio claimed that the US complied after mounting international pressure grew out of Nicaragua's repeated attempts at securing a resolution before the UN General Assembly.

The truth is the US did not even want to appear at the slightest bit to be complying with that ICJ ruling as it first required the repeal of a Nicaraguan law requiring compensation before even extending a politically motivated "aid" package of roughly over $500 million (not $1 billion as claimed by Carpio) to the US-backed Violeta Chamorro administration that succeeded the Sandanistas.

Carpio, as a member of the high court, demeans the stature of his position when he stoops that low as to attempt to deceive the public. His apparent need to dissuade the Filipino people from engaging in "bilateral talks" with China seems so overriding that he had no qualms doing this.

Many international judicial and quasi-judicial bodies, by their very nature, are not beyond the reach of geopolitical influences. The world has seen this, from Slobodan Milosevic's trial to the abuse of the International Criminal Court against African political leaders not allied to Western powers.

Many countries, including China in this case, do not countenance involvement of such multilateral institutions controlled by the West. In conflicts such as those in Libya, Côte d'Ivoire, or the Rwandan genocide, these institutions were part of the problem and not the solution. Conversely, the Tribunal may also be used to turn against the Philippines' interest.

Carpio and his like-minded anti-dialog clique are really getting desperate as more and more Filipinos are wishing for dialog and bilateral talks with China over the SCS/WPS impasse. As we wrote recently, "In the Laylo Survey from May 8 to 18 among 1,500 respondents, 53 percent of Filipinos supported a diplomatic solution (i.e. dialog) versus 47 percent who 'believe it is better'… to have filed a case… (which was followed by a) June SWS poll (that) reported 46 percent of Filipinos disapprove of the government's actions (filing the case at the ITLoS), which is a sea change from the SWS' 2013 survey where only 27 percent disapproved of the government's moves."

Note the advice from a young but internationally recognized Filipino writer, Ateneo professor Richard Javad Heydarian, in his Huffington Post article last June 30: "'Time for the Philippines to Adjust its South China Sea Approach' … Manila should pursue dialog with Beijing while it still can… the Philippines can still learn some lessons from its neighbors on how to better manage the ongoing disputes and best deal with the Chinese juggernaut. Diplomacy isn't only about mobilizing… against your foes. It is also about… managing differences with even the bitterest foes."

Got that, Carpio?

Wednesday, July 1, 2015

The DFA’s information war

The DFA's information war

(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 07-01-2015 WED)

It was the strangest news. The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) announced that it was going into comic books publication to explain its South China Sea/West Philippine Sea (SCS/WPS) policy. This followed an earlier announcement that the agency will start producing videos on the matter for distribution to the population.

The DFA engaging in such mass communication projects, when the nation's chief executive has other more competent agencies for such tasks, such as the Departments of Education and Local Government, is truly unprecedented.

Discussing this enigma with Philippine-China policy analysts, including Chito Sta. Romana, Rod Kapunan, and others, a consensus was evident: The DFA's impetus for this strange decision to produce videos and comic books must have been borne by the recent surveys showing the Filipino public, from Batanes to Jolo, favoring dialog and diplomacy over litigation and the contentious case filed against China at the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea (ITLoS). The two recognized public opinion surveys seem to have the DFA worried that its anti-China tirade and propaganda need to be boosted.

In the Laylo Survey from May 8 to 18 among 1,500 respondents, 53 percent of Filipinos supported a diplomatic solution (i.e. dialog) versus 47 percent who "believe it 'is better' for the Philippines to have filed a case" against China over their disputed SCS/WPS claims.

Meanwhile, a June SWS poll reported 46 percent of Filipinos disapproving of the government's actions (mainly, filing the case at the ITLoS), which is a sea change from the SWS' 2013 survey where only 27 percent disapproved of the government's moves. On the concern over war with China, the SWS surveyed the question in March 2015 and found that 84 percent of Filipinos were worried about it.

The Filipino public is learning, despite the "great wall of disinformation" set up by the DFA (with the Department of Defense's help, such as the September 2013 misreporting of US target anchors as "concrete foundations of China's new construction" to exaggerate tensions) and the distortions by mainstream media--with the latest being GMA News' "Taiwan claims Batanes" headline last June 3, failing to take into account an overlapping EEZ dispute, or "Chinese shoots guns at Philippine planes," which was later reported as a flare gun, then revised into a searchlight. The list just goes on and on.

China has opened every chance for the Philippines to reopen "without any precondition" the dialog between the two countries over the issues, which Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines Zhao Jianhua prominently reiterated in his visit to BS Aquino on Philippine Independence Day.

Looking deeper and wider, the BS Aquino government's obstinacy in keeping its door shut to dialog is a pretext for sustaining tensions, which serve to justify the "US' Pivot to Asia," as well as the drafting of a visiting forces agreement with Japan, all contrary to the wisdom and wishes of the Filipino people.

The Filipino people's concern over war brings me to the question about Tsinoys or Filipinos of Chinese descent that was triggered by Francisco Sionil Jose, who admits receiving $10,000 annually in the 1960s (worth P4 million today) from CIA front Congress for Cultural Freedom, when he argued last June 7 in the Inquirer that in case of a Philippine-China War, "many Chinese Filipinos will side with China."

Sionil Jose conveniently glosses over the fact that in the 1,500 years of engagement between the native inhabitants of the Philippines and the Chinese, there has never been any war. Why then is he so overcome by the forebodings of such a war that 84 percent of Filipinos seek to avoid, to the point that he baselessly questions the fidelity of Tsinoys to the Republic?

The reputedly Amboy Sionil Jose knows more than he is saying and it becomes obvious when you read American geopolitical theoreticians such as Robert Kaplan. In Kaplan's 2005 article, "How We Would Fight China," it says that "The Middle East is just a blip. The American military contest with China in the Pacific will define the twenty-first century."

Filipinos would do well to recall what then US President Lyndon B. Johnson said on his country's conduct of the Vietnam War: "We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves (later paraphrased to 'Let Asians fight Asians')."

The way Filipinos are being brainwashed against China by Amboys and born-again Japboys (such as BS Aquino III and Rafael Alunan III, being grandchildren of Japanese collaborators), US gofers (such as Albert del Rosario, Voltaire Gazmin, Annapolis cadet Roilo Golez), steak commandoes (such as Loida Nicolas-Lewis and Rodel Rodis), and mainstream media (namely, Inquirer and PhilStar), we will again see Filipinos dying for America's gain.

Genuine patriotic Filipinos, including Chinese-Filipinos, should expose these Amboys' information war and break their "Great Wall of Disinformation."

Every effort must be made to explain how cooperation with China will bring the bright and promising future the people seek, by becoming pillars of the Asian Century and the new multipolar BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) world.

Genuine pro-Filipino Filipinos should similarly produce videos, pamphlets, books, and comic books, and bring these to the masses, the middle class, as well as to social media. The stakes are high; the US intends to suck us into a limited proxy way and it's something that we must prevent.

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