Childish games vs China

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)

Pinoy saps

DIE HARD III / Herman Tiu Laurel / March 31, 2014


Reading the official propaganda from several of the BS Aquino government’s mouthpieces, i.e. Edwin Lacierda, Voltaire Gazmin, and Albert del Rosario, as well as a host of “experts” on the China Sea dispute, one gets the distinct impression that all these voices are making a big deal out of the so-called support of Malaysia, Vietnam, and the West for the Philippines’ filing of a “memorial” on March 30 before the International Tribunal on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea at The Hague.

What saps they are making of Filipinos, especially the youngish “social media” crowd swallowing the bluff. Malaysia and Vietnam are getting billions of dollars in benefits from their dialogs with China (while egging RP’s adversarial position) while the West and its allies rake it in from arms sales to the Philippines.

The three years of disinformation, misinformation, strategy-of-tension propaganda, and provocations to create news media and social media stories have laid the ground for the brainwashing of many segments of the Philippine populace to accept whatever the ruling powers want to happen — from creating widespread myopia to gloss over US imperialism’s plot to create tension via its Asia “pivot,” disrupting Asian prosperity, to distracting from China’s “dialog” overtures by instilling an adversarial mood in the Filipino mind in order to prepare RP as eventual cannon fodder in the US’ strategy of “Offshore Control” to cut China’s freedom of navigation and trade routes. The US, its lackeys, and the controlled mainstream media have so far been very successful.

Just to recap the three years of “pivot” and its attendant propaganda and mass brainwashing campaign, recall all the contrived situations that have constituted the provocations from the Philippine government, particularly its Defense and Foreign Affairs chiefs: April 2012 — Philippine Navy arrest of eight Chinese fishing vessels provoked China’s maritime ships to intervene and not vice-versa; October 2012 — Secretary Gazmin accuses China of installing “concrete blocks” to construct a new base which was debunked by his own Armed Forces of the Philippines investigation that these are actually US target practice anchors; January 2014 — Hysteria over non-existent Chinese demand for all fishing vessels plying disputed China Sea areas to register with Hainan, with the Philippine Star triggering a baseless report of China invading Pag-asa within the year.

More recently, the scion of a World War II former Japanese puppet Agriculture and Commerce minister raised the bogeyman of China sabotaging by remote control the National Grid Corp. that controls the 19,500-circuit-kilometer of the country’s electricity backbone; not mentioning that the US Carlyle Group was key to the corporate takeover or that US-British control of Malampaya may have been deliberately planned to allow the market manipulation of electricity prices by the players last Dec. 2013 and Jan. 2014 that saw an overprice.

All these have been abetted by US and local PR trolls in social media (see Infowars: “Yes, there are paid government trolls on social media, blogs, forums and Web sites thanks to documents leaked by Edward Snowden”).
So, now, Philippine officials are “commissioning” the purchase of P20 billion worth of FA-50 fighter jets, which, according to aviation expert, US Marine combined services specialist Jorge Rillona, have the “capability in terms of performance and weaponry of a genuine multirole jet fighter plane that the Philippine Air Force badly needs to defend the country’s airspace in light of rising tensions in the region.”

On the other hand, China and its first aircraft carrier will rely on the SU-30MKK/MK2 Flander-G, which RHK 111’s Military and Arms page compares with the FA-50 in terms of: “Payload difference: Favor the Flanker-G as it can carry 117 percent (4,320 kg) more load. It can travel much further as it carries more internal fuel (9,400 kg versus 2,150 kg)… more equipment and arms (8,000 kg vs 3,680 kg). The Flanker-G is a much better offensive weapon… the capability of both aircraft in terms of Within Visual Range sand Beyond Visual Range… enables the Flanker-G to have a lot more opportunities to fire its weapons first. It (FA-50) also is no match against the Flanker-G in BVR combat as it is not yet certified to carry medium range air-to-air missiles as… it would be nothing short of suicide to ask our Geagle (FA-50) pilots to try to engage the Flanker-G in any sort of air combat given its deficiencies against that aircraft.”

PAF pilots will thus be made braver than the Japanese Kamikazes, with the former ready for suicide even without targets. With the FA-50, Philippine Air Force pilots will have the distinction of being target practice magnets of “over the horizon” radars and missiles of the Flanker-G, which will make them face their martyrdom even before they realize it is coming. Philippine government officials, who pushed the deal, will only send lavish wreaths afforded by their lifetime sinecures from “commissioning” such flying coffins.

(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 Let-Let Zarcal and Dennis Alcoreza; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 0917-8658664)

Global and local media cover-ups

DIE HARD III / Herman Tiu Laurel / March 24, 2014


Last week saw several media cover-up operations that we would like to point out to the public. First, we have the Department of Justice (DoJ)’s National Agribusiness Corp. (Nabcor) — PDAF “media payola” issue sustained by the Inquirer, where the latter had this March 21 headline: “Media men in payoff may face bribe raps… No special treatment for broadcasters tied to pork scam — Palace.” That was, of course, a defense strategy cooked up by DoJ Secretary Leila de Lima and Malacañang against the devastating revelation from the two unjustly sacked National Bureau of Investigation deputies, Reynaldo Esmeralda and Ruel Lasala, that a video tape exists (and will be released) of De Lima and BS Aquino’s appointed former NBI irector Nonnatus Rojas meeting with the alleged pork barrel scam queen Janet Lim-Napoles.

Rojas resigned after media exposed NBI “leaks” of the impending arrest of Napoles while De Lima and Malacañang cast diversionary aspersions on the other NBI officials and subsequently raised the media payola issue.
Media payola is nothing new and the habitual takers of these “envelopes” are known to most savvy members of the media community as well as PR agents. Politicians, major government agencies, and giant corporations have long engaged in this practice; and so it is barely headline material at all. Instead, what is of vital importance is the incontrovertible video evidence that can lead to an investigation of Rojas, who may just directly link De Lima and BS Aquino to his “secret” talks with Napoles.

Meanwhile, on the international front, the most significant media diversion is the headline, “Osama bin Laden claimed responsibility for 9/11 attacks, says son-in-law.” Suleiman Abu Ghaith, married to bin Laden’s daughter Fatima, recounted a meeting in an Afghanistan cave hideaway on the night of Sept. 11, 2001, where bin Laden supposedly said about the attacks: “Did you learn what happened? We are the ones who did it.” But isn’t that hearsay?

A 10-year bin Laden manhunt ended with him supposedly shot dead by US Navy SEALs in an Abbottabad, Pakistan raid. This latest “Osama did it” story has long been discredited as a yarn diverting blame from the conspiracy among Bush, Cheney, Jewish oligarch Silverstein, and Saudi and Israeli intelligence for profit and the “perpetual war.”

A 2013 YouGov US survey showed that one in two Americans doubt the official US government investigation blaming bin Laden. Forty-six percent believe the third building, Building 7, which collapsed on its own footprint, was caused by controlled demolition; only 28 percent still believe that fires caused it. Forty-one percent now support a new investigation, compared to 21 percent who don’t.

Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, composed of 1,500 top professionals and scientists, are campaigning to reopen the 9/11 investigations.

And what about that Navy SEALs team (whose members, by the way, were all killed in a suspicious copter crash a year later) raid on bin Laden? Famed My Lai Massacre and Abu Ghraib prison journalist Seymour Hersh in a book says, “not one word of it is true” and everything is “one big lie”; a gigantic stage production to reinforce the “bin Laden did it” diversion.

(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 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m., this week on “Manila’s truck ban” and “The Napoles-De Lima scandal”; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 0917-8658664)