Filipinos
have enough problems of our own than add to the already swirling burden
in our minds. But dwelling on international controversies cannot be
helped especially with the recent announced “rebalancing” of US military
and naval forces in the Asia-Pacific, where there had been no tension
of major significance insofar as that imperial power’s homeland security
is concerned.
Of course, the US would want the world to believe that
the so-called security interests of its allies — namely, South Korea
and Japan vis-à-vis North Korea — are part of its concern. But as to
whether this “adversary” really poses a threat remains largely in
question.
North Korea, to begin with, has been incessantly portrayed
as a hermit totalitarian state with overblown descriptions of its
poverty alongside its having “the world’s fourth largest army,” while
totally obscuring the fact that the Korean People’s Army owes its
numbers to the multitudes working in factories or growing crops. Of
course, that nation’s nuclear weapons continue to make it
ever-so-convenient for Western demonizers to drum up the North Korean
bogey. But what these bashers don’t want the world to know is that such
nuclear weapons capabilities, which are only a handful, absent any
reliable long-range delivery system, are merely a deterrent to any
nuclear warheads that can rain down on it in the thousands at any time.
Sadly,
many Filipinos foolishly ride on this demonization of North Korea as
they do almost all the rubbish spewed by Western media. And this is
because most Filipinos are only exposed to local news and opinion
writers who are pro-Western and pro-US.
Surprisingly, there are still
many Filipinos who see through the black propaganda despite such
lopsided bias in the news. Even public opinion surveys show an absence
of any overwhelming support for the warmongering of the West, such as in
the recent Scarborough issue, where a significant portion of the
population still favored peaceful relations over confrontation.
While
we may just have to accept as a given the shrill voices over the
alleged “bullying” of China based on a misunderstanding of Chinese
cultural and historical, not to mention strategic, attitude to its
territorial integrity, the fact is, it was the Philippines that had
historically drawn “first blood” when the Philippine Navy sunk two
Chinese fishing vessels in 1999, at a time when China’s maritime and
naval assets were still considered “vintage.” The Chinese were indeed
very upset and sought compensation — to which the Philippine Chamber of
Commerce responded by footing the bill.
Then and now, Philippine
foreign and strategic policy has not changed from being a handmaiden of
US policy. That’s the reason for the present Philippine government
doggedly following the tail of the Obama and Clinton pronouncements
about the “pivot” and “refocusing” of at least 60 percent of US forces
to this region.
Yet equally worse, the Philippine government merely
uses up its Malampaya earnings to purchase outdated Western military
equipment, such as in the case of the BRP Del Pilar and the Italian jet
fighters.
All these should be very sad for Filipinos as all this
re-positioning can only mean a long-term ramp-up of a regional war in
Asia, as what the US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato)
had done in Yugoslavia in the 90s and in the Middle East and Africa more
recently.
Right now, the US is already fortifying its forces in and
around the Straits of Malacca and in the northern coasts of Australia,
where it can, with its still superior naval power, choke off oil and
trade routes to China — sure to be a “soft underbelly” for that Asian
giant, given its heavy dependence on external sources and buyers.
Even
though Malaysia and Indonesia may ultimately not be that cooperative,
trust the Philippines under the present ruling elite to be only too
willing to give whatever the US wants.
Undoubtedly, the events here
in the Asia-Pacific are closely linked with those in the Middle East
today, particularly in Syria — which may soon see the trigger of a
thermonuclear war, as pointed out by former Russian President Dmitry
Medvedev in a press conference last May 16.
Already, the US and its
Arab potentates in Bahrain, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia are supplying arms
to Syrian rebels, while Western media are engaging in massive
disinformation — such as in the heinous Houla massacre of women and
children, which the UN and German newspapers have discovered to be
actually committed by US-backed rebels to blame on the government — to
topple the Assad regime.
With Russia recently sending Marine
contingents to its naval base in Syria and China remaining mum about the
Philippines’ aggressive collaboration with the US, the Filipino people
must know that a real danger is paramount. A similar scenario to World
War II, where the Philippines was used as a “shock absorber” — resulting
in 1,000,000 civilian deaths, equivalent to 6.6 percent of the Filipino
population then (as against 1,700 US civilian deaths or 0.32 percent of
its population) — before any counter-attack by the West could ever be
mounted, is emerging. The only difference this time is that it will be
tactical and/or strategic thermonuclear weapons involved. Just imagine
the horror of at least 10 to 20 percent of our population being wiped
out.
Everyone should also remember that US forces killed an estimated
1 million Filipinos in the Fil-Am War. The symbol of that travesty
still hangs in US military bases, with two of the Balangiga Bells in
display — one at the F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyoming and
another at a US Army regiment in South Korea.
To this day, many are
unaware that the US didn’t actually win WWII. It was, in fact, Russia
that saved the day for the Allied countries at great cost — with its
11-million-strong military and 14 million civilian deaths — compared to
the 416,000 military casualties sustained by the US.
Obviously, since being pro-US means clinging on to a distorted sense of history, can anything be more anti-Filipino than that?
(Tune
in to 1098AM, dwAD, Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon,
Monday-Wednesday-Friday, 5 to 6 p.m.; watch Destiny Cable GNN’s HTL
edition of Talk News TV, Saturdays, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11:15
p.m., this week with Rep. Neri Colmenares on “Malampaya Scams;” visit
http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio
archives)
S
T
“
The
first time I wrote about Dolphy here in this space had to do with the
launching of his tell-all autobiography, in 2008. But that wasn’t the
first time we had worked together, for he had appeared in Aawitan Kita
on television, many, many years ago. He recalls having quit smoking in
1975, so his guesting in my show could only have been anywhere between
1970 and 1974, for the one picture still I have of that afternoon has
him holding on to a cigarette. 
