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.

 

(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)