Philippines men rule with nary a care for their 117.5M people. They filibuster immense drama nobody understands to distract from 30 hungry million families. It’s heartbreaking.
Young women dance around for attention looking ‘sexy’ for creepy guys like Donald Trump in an endless scheduled parade of beauty pageants and “cattle calls”. That’s not the sum of women’s activities. The plan is to get the hell out of the Philippines.
Most women who can are leaving the Philippines for good jobs in other countries where sadly, they are treated badly.
Analysis written by Micheal John, Editor in Chief
Philippines Population: Worldometers
The ratio of men to women in the Philippines is swinging toward a dearth of females. That is unusual because women have a longer lifespan.
Everything is changing. The Philippines wealth is held by a few dynasties numbering under ten thousand while most of the country is facing catastrophic poverty and hunger, despite government fibs about poverty levels. The Philippines economic disparity gap is extremely unfair.
Meanwhile the government of the Philippines wants to fritter its time, money and national security on a derelict, rusted-out bucket of bolts, a WWII navy wreck it dragged onto a sunken reef, claiming it proves Philippines ownership of an underwater mud pile in the Spratly islands which China has owned for thousands of years.
Philippines is run by a Patriarchy from a long history of colonialism. Many of the men are in the sights of the International Criminal Court investigators.
Testosterone being what it is, once chasing skirts is done as their perceived privilege, married or not (divorce is illegal), men will find reasons for arguing and fighting too.
Philippines politicians historically like fighting as a distraction from their incompetence, kleptocracy, corruption, and history of malfeasance against the people of the Philippines, some 60 millions of people of whom say today they live in poverty.
Hence the Philippines has been at the center of all wars in its region and its politicians have plundered and lost the country to each other’s dynasties and to other nations numerous times, occupied by the Americans, Japanese, Spaniards, Portugese, the Dutch and British plus others partially and briefly like Brunei, Indonesia, China, and Malaysia.
Now in a de facto sense, the Philippines is occupied by the Americans again. (The Americans should note that the Philippines which the Americans fled in WWII when the Japanese invaded, is essentially indefensible. No occupier has ever been able to keep the island archipelago.)
Currently in the Philippines, the patriarchy bickers with China which nation the Filipino patriarchy now provokes vigorously since the Americans occupy at least a dozen military facilities in the Philippines and are prepared to go to war with China, the Filipinos think but the Pentagon is freaking out.
Read: Philippines alleged island-losses not prevented by ever present US Navy
At the start of this year the cheerful history-rewriter now president of the Philippines named Bongbong Marcos gave the Philippines to the United States (Biden was gobsmacked at this unexpected win) to fight a war with China or at least out of fear, contain China’s success and rapid advancement as a superpower—that containment to be done by the USA with U.S. military forces from the Philippines regardless of how many Filipinos USA misbehaviour kills or disadvantages.
The Philippines is in a shameful state. Watch.
Recently, the Philippines government has been making a fuss about a deliberately run-aground WWII transport vessel on Chinese territory that the Philippines and three other countries claim is theirs, weakly.
The historical record is quite clear on ownership. China owns what it claims by all historical accounts and by universal common law. That’s not to say that China has historically shown much interest in the Spratly Islands and the Paracels until recent decades. But if China had participated in the 2013 arbitration brought by the Republic of the Philippines, it could have introduced its considerable evidence from past dynasties. The records are quite scattered however, but several scholars have done the research work.
Digital Globe satellite image showing the vessel in question.
“Foolhardy claims—at a time when half the Philippines population claims poverty—from twenty years ago, were based on the lust for oil and gas rights. Today those rights are worthless because of the climate crisis. Alternative energy is a must, not an option. Trying to start a war over something as worthless as a submerged atoll is pure madness, no less crazy than the absurd nine-dash-line,” suggested Dale Carter, security director of The RINJ Foundation. Ms. Carter has been studying the matter for years.
That would mean that China would need to stop pretending it believes that the absurd nine-dash-line affords China exclusive economic zone (EEZ) rights for each blotch of low tide non-H20 matter. Nonsense.
None of the Spratly Islands is capable of generating exclusive maritime zones for anyone. It’s nonsense, said the July 2016 Tribunal Decision
Natural status high-tide land mass arguably does afford at least 12-mile claims but EEZ status is ruled out, especially if any part of the region impinges in another nation’s EEZ as is the case with the Philippines and Vietnam in some cases under dispute. There is plenty of precedent that supports this, like the Territorial Collectivity of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon.
The 2016 Tribunal decision which USA media misquotes, made it very clear it was making no ruling about ownership. About this decision, the Philippines population has been told some whoppers too. But it is time to simmer down and deal with real problems. Solving China’s hysterical obsession with the nine-dash-line should be left to psychiatrists.
The 2016 Tribunal decision was biased to one side and gave the Philippines nothing but a headache.
That is likely why the former President Rodrigo Duterte, was so perplexed at Manila politicrats’ reaction to some of his remarks in favour of the China side. He was correct. Under no circumstances is the 2016 Tribunal decision a panacea for the Philippines with no exception.
Meanwhile humanitarian workers in the Philippines are livid over China’s conduct in thwarting the food supply to Filipino kids—livid about the level of stunting among children. Half the Filipino children under five are stunted. The unsung heroes of face-to-face humanitarianism know the answer to why this is happening. Small fish have vanished from children’s traditional diet because the Chinese marine militia monkeys are blocking fisher folk from getting their catch. These small fish provide the much needed protein and crucial omega oils and vitamins the kids don’t get from rice and vegetables.
Singkamas at talong, Sigarilyas at mani, Sitaw, bataw, patani, Kundol, patola, upo’t kalabasa …
…At saka meron pang, Labanos, mustasa, Sibuyas, kamatis, Bawang at luya, Sa paligid ligid …Ay maraming linga (or sesame seed)
“What China has done unwittingly by slashing the ability of fisherfolk to bring their communities a good catch is a crime against humanity,” claims RINJ Foundation nurse Karinna Angeles. “My country needs to stop the nonsense about the International Criminal Court and file a claim against China, meanwhile sue China for money to feed every baby,” she said as her eyes filled with tears of frustration which are provoked not by Beijing but by weighing too many underweight babies, and fighting with mothers who are trying to sell some children to feed the remaining siblings, she later explained.
“Aggression events of an hysterically fanatic CCP, against 40 countries surrounding the South China Seas, imperil seafood supply to families and suppress the flow of goods,” claims a global civil society women’s rights group about growing aggression in the South China Sea. The women have proposed a formula for an interim cooperation agreement to the United Nations and to the parties in the SCS dispute. Citing:
China Nine-Dash-Line is not malice but likely is hysterical fanaticism
Duterte was a surprising messenger for peace in the Asian Seas.
Former President Duterte had a very good approach for China relations. Today, Marcos and Biden, which men together run the Philippines foreign policy, are on a war footing and China, which has never made war on anyone, is too patient to bite the apple and enter the war these two elderly inept-appearing politicians are provoking.
Xi Jinping is a seasoned statesman. stable and on course. It takes plenty of patience and solid convincing argument to change the course of a 1.4 billion population nation. But that is what is needed.
Mr. Duterte is a seasoned lawyer. He made no mistake about the emptiness of the arbitral tribunal adjudication. Rodrigo Duterte could have been an unusually great Philippines president if one ignored a few faux pas about extrajudicial killings and how the anti-drug campaign ran amok among Philippines National Police crooks, and out of control among the barangay crooks.
Those latter two points are significant if Mr. Duterte has smart lawyers. They are the defence arguments that could mitigate Duterte’s risk from the ICC. Duterte’s intelligence was thwarted by what he did not know: the hierarchy under Manila control was a series of warlords controlling fiefdoms from the Barangays to Malacañang and that anarchistic chain of crime families rotted the Philippines to the core. Still is.
But the liability for Mr. Duterte is the argument of whether he should have known his words would cause a calamity of prolific murder among thieves in the PNP and the Barangays—in which elements of government, the unelected warlords are rulers.
Mr. Duterte was happy with 5-6 thousand deaths claimed as arrest resists killings and not extrajudicial killings, but in his time there were unequivocally over 34,000 EJKs and some 31,000 in the time when the International Criminal Court and the Rome Statute were technically in force through the first quarter of 2019.
Mr. Duterte left the Philippines in a shameful state as did Ferdinand Marcos Sr. (Deposed in a people’s power revolution in 1986, the Marcos family became globally synonymous with ‘corruption’.), Mr. Duterte’s supposed one-time patron. The extrajudicial killings have not stopped. The country has been sold out and Sir Bongbong is headed down the same inglorious path in a corrupt political dynasty this time with the backing of the Americans.
Then too there is Mr. Duterte’s militarized lock downs during the pandemic which cost jobs and livelihoods to an extreme that is being felt today as half of Philippines’ families say they are living in poverty according to a recent Social Weather Station poll report. Nobody is offering Mr. Duterte a Nobel Prize for anything, nevertheless he did a lot for the Philippines but lost his credits by doing very obvious crime.
On 12 July 2016, the ‘law of the sea’ arbitral tribunal adjudicating a Philippines’ 2013 case against China in the South China Sea alleging China violated the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), ruled that major elements of China’s claim to the South China Sea waters—including its theoretical nine-dash line; recent militarization activities; and other malevolent activities in other nations’ coastal waters—were unlawful. The Tribunal made it very clear it was making no ruling about ownership. China reacted bitterly to the Tribunal ruling and the false allegations often made about the decisions on islands, reefs and atolls ownership. The Tribunal did not decide ownership. Any claim otherwise is a lie.
Release of The South China Sea Arbitration
(The Republic Of The Philippines V. The People’S Republic Of China)
The Hague, 12 July 2016
../ Status of Features:
“The Tribunal next considered entitlements to maritime areas and the status of features. The Tribunal first undertook an evaluation of whether certain reefs claimed by China are above water at high tide. Features that are above water at high tide generate an entitlement to at least a 12 nautical mile territorial sea, whereas features that are submerged at high tide do not. The Tribunal noted that the reefs have been heavily modified by land reclamation and construction, recalled that the Convention classifies features on their natural condition, and relied on historical materials in evaluating the features. The Tribunal then considered whether any of the features claimed by China could generate maritime zones beyond 12 nautical miles. Under the Convention, islands generate an exclusive economic zone of 200 nautical miles and a continental shelf, but “rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own shall have no exclusive economic zone or continental shelf.” The Tribunal concluded that this provision depends upon the objective capacity of a feature, in its natural condition, to sustain either a stable community of people or economic activity that is not dependent on outside resources or purely extractive in nature. The Tribunal noted that the current presence of official personnel on many of the features is dependent on outside support and not reflective of the capacity of the features. The Tribunal found historical evidence to be more relevant and noted that the Spratly Islands were historically used by small groups of fishermen and that several Japanese fishing and guano mining enterprises were attempted. The Tribunal concluded that such transient use does not constitute inhabitation by a stable community and that all of the historical economic activity had been extractive. Accordingly, the Tribunal concluded that none of the Spratly Islands is capable of generating extended maritime zones. The Tribunal also held that the Spratly Islands cannot generate maritime zones collectively as a unit. Having found that none of the features claimed by China was capable of generating an exclusive economic zone, the Tribunal found that it could—without delimiting a boundary—declare that certain sea areas are within the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines, because those areas are not overlapped by any possible entitlement of China.
Lawfulness of Chinese Actions: (As FPMag has repeatedly published for almost a decade)
“The Tribunal next considered the lawfulness of Chinese actions in the South China Sea. Having found that certain areas are within the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines, the Tribunal found that China had violated the Philippines’ sovereign rights in its exclusive economic zone by (a) interfering with Philippine fishing and petroleum exploration, (b) constructing artificial islands and (c) failing to prevent Chinese fishermen from fishing in the zone. The Tribunal also held that fishermen from the Philippines (like those from China) had traditional fishing rights at Scarborough Shoal and that China had interfered with these rights in restricting access. The Tribunal further held that Chinese law enforcement vessels had unlawfully created a serious risk of collision when they physically obstructed Philippine vessels.” Read more.
- Download The 500 pg Decision in favour of the Philippines)
- Download: Explanation of the July 2016 court decision in favour of the Philippines
- Download if you wish, the referenced Convention on the Law of the Sea: UNCLOS
- Download the Civil Society South China Sea Agreement Proposal which could walk this issue back to a peaceful resolution for the people of Vietnam, The Republic of the Philippines, Brunei, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Taiwan (Republic
of China/ROC), Indonesia and Malaysia.
- Read: “There are many strokes of madness in this bizarre folly.“
American soldiers should be home with their families. Send them home, Mr. Marcos.
U.S. Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Ian Wyckoff, a helicopter airframe mechanic, with Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron (VMM) 163, Marine Aircraft Group 16, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, delivers an Independence Day message to his friends and family from Palawan, Philippines, June 30, 2023. Lance Cpl. Wyckoff is a Roscoe, Illinois native. U.S. Marine Corps video by Cpl. Sean Potter
Philippines deliberately provokes China’s Coast Guard even after China told the Philippines in 2014 to remove the junked WWII vessel from China’s submerged reef.
The Philippines has been sailing vessels through “China-claimed waters” to access and fortify its illegitimate claim (rusty old World War Two-era U.S. transport bucket of old bolts intentionally run aground 24 years ago) of ownership against four other nations. Of course the Chinese Coast Guard is going to ward them off. China has claimed all the atolls, islands and reefs in the Spratlys and has done battle with Vietnam in years past over the claim.
China on Monday accused the Philippines of reneging on a pledge to remove the grounded WWII transport vessel from the shoal.
Chinese sailors on Saturday claimed they did not fire water cannons at a Philippines registered vessel but that they sprayed a fire hose in the path of the vessel on its port side—the first questionable tale. Since then China has officially acknowledged that it used a water cannon and explained why.
“In order to avoid direct blocking and collisions when repeated warnings were ineffective, water cannons were used as a warning. The on-site operation was professional and restrained, which is beyond reproach,” the Chinese coast guard said. “China will continue to take necessary measures to firmly safeguard its territorial sovereignty.”
While the biased Tribunal was foggy on the issue, a study of history makes it quite clear that China owns the Spratly Islands. The Philippines does not nor do the other claimants. The history is quite simple. The Philippines islands given back to the Filipinos did not include any of the alleged real estate China claims. The Americans explained, “We never had it because we never got it from the Spaniards after we defeated them in the end of the 1900s.”
The Spaniards said, “We never had it either, the French and the Chinese had it.”
The French say, “We had no use for it after the Franco-Sino wars so we gave it back to China.”
The Philippines claims that the Ren’ai Jiao atoll is part of its continental shelf. But objects which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own shall have no exclusive economic zone or continental shelf.
But that makes no difference. The precedent is islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, officially the Territorial Collectivity of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, which is a self-governing territorial overseas collectivity of France in the northwestern Atlantic Ocean, 19 kilometers from Newfoundland, arguably in the Gulf of the Saint Lawrence river. The islands belong to France. They are smack dab in the middle of the Canadian continental shelf and most Newfoundlers at 2:00a.m. in the morning claim, if you wish to bet, they can throw a dart that far if their hands are not filled with Canada Dry ginger ale and Screech from their last bet winnings.
The Ren’ai Jiao atoll in question is submerged and belongs to China. In 1999 a philippines clunker of a transport ship went aground there on the submerged coral and rock of the Ren’ai Jiao area and the Phillipines sent military personnel to the vessel who eventually stayed aboard the vessel to live, claiming the reef occupied by the Philippines. There is plenty of law about that scenario and this does not give the Philippines clear ownership or if that would be true Great Britain would own all oceans and seas.
Ren’ai Jiao is a submerged reef located in the Spratly Islands. The Philippines first claimed possession of the feature in 1999 by virtue of its run-aground Philippines registered vessel. The Chinese have owned the reef for thousands of years.
The Japanese occupied four groups of islands during World War II, and returned them, along with other territories, to China after World War II.
In both the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951 and the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty of 1952, Japan renounced its claim over the Spratly and Paracel Islands. The representatives of the Republic of Vietnam declared its sovereignty over the Spratly Islands and the Paracel Islands in the San Francisco Peace Conference of 1951; China was not invited to participate. Both Taiwan and the PRC, however, repeatedly refuted the claims by all other countries for these islands.
“China discovered, and has exploited the referenced islands in the South China sea for over two thousand years. Since the Chinese settled in these islands prior to any other people, China’s claim of sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea islands predates that of other nations. The Chinese government set up administration over, and divided islands in the South China sea into four groups: Dongsha (East Sand) Archipelago, Zhongsha (Central Sand) Archipelago, Nansha (South Sand) Archipelago, and Xisha (West Sand) Archipelago. China’s sovereignty over the Dongsha Islands and the Zhongsha Islands has never been questioned.” Citing Prof. Teh-Kuang Chang “China’s Claim of Sovereignty over Spratly and Paracel Islands: A Historical and Legal Perspective”
China’s sovereignty over the Xisha Islands and the Nansha Islands, which were called “Spratly”‘ Islands and “Paracel Islands” respectively, was challenged by France before World War II and by the Philippines and Vietnam after World War II. Those claims have failed.
American Professor Teh-Kuang Chang said about the continued disputes in 1991:
From both historical and legal perspectives, the Chinese claim to sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea, in contrast to the claims by other countries, can be summarized by the following three points:
1. Both the Chinese and Vietnamese claim sovereignty over the Paracels and Spratly Islands based on their historical records. However, historical records indicate that China’s claim is older and more substantial than that of Vietnam.
2. The Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipinos, and Malaysians claim sovereignty based on the international law of acquisition of territory by occupation of “no man’s land,” which is open to discovery. The Chinese made the discovery earlier and acquired the land before its competitors. However, the Vietnamese and Philippinos, as well as the Malaysians, invaded and occupied some the islands and claimed sovereignty over them. Thus, the conflict among these countries arises.
3. The sovereignty claim to the islands in the South China Sea not only involves a conflict of territory, but also affects economic interests and usage of waterways’ thereby reached. The conflict will not only be a matter of international law, but will also have political and economic consequences.
History of the derelict BRP Sierra Madre
The so-called Philippines outpost on Ren’ai Jiao is an American-built BRP Sierra Madre, a former U.S. vessel and former Vietnamese vessel now derelict Philippine Navy transport ship intentionally grounded on the reef and maintained by a contingent of marines. The Sierra Madre can be seen above.
“USS LST-821, renamed USS Harnett County (LST-821/AGP-281), was an LST-542-class tank landing ship built for the United States Navy during World War II. She was named for Harnett County, North Carolina and was the only U.S. Naval vessel to bear the name. She served the United States Navy in World War II and the Vietnam War. She was transferred to South Vietnam’s Republic of Vietnam Navy, which named her RVNS My Tho (HQ-800).
“After the Vietnam War, Harnett County was transferred to the Philippine Navy, which named her BRP Sierra Madre (LT-57). In 1999 the Philippine government deliberately had her run aground on Ren’ai Jiao in the Spratly Islands to serve as an outpost of the Philippine Marine Corps to assert Philippine sovereignty in the country’s dispute with China over the ownership of the Spratly Islands. To this day, she still serves that function.” Citing Wikipedia
The name of the sunken reef:
U.S. Board of Geographic Names: Second Thomas Shoal
China: Ren’ai Jiao, 仁爱礁
Philippines: Ayungin Shoal
Taiwan: Ren’ai Ansha, 仁愛暗沙
Vietnam: Bãi Cỏ Mây