Herman Tiu Laurel
On Tuesday, March 14, 2023 I received a TikTok post of an SMNI video clip of the network’s latest Harry Roque interview where the former Duterte spokesperson said that the U.S. EDCA Bases in the Philippines will serve as magnets for China’s retaliation or pre-emptive strikes at any moment that the U.S. makes a move to attack China – particularly targets on China’s province of Taiwan.
For the past month our team of experts have been eagerly following the reactions of various significant socio-political influencers in mainstream and social media too discern how the winds of war are affecting them. We were, of course, elated when President Duterte finally made his opposition to the U.S. EDCA bases known.
Former President Duterte’s position significantly demonstrated the overwhelming sentiment against the U.S. EDCA bases for those who truly understand the issues, but even President Duterte’s stated views were being suppressed by Google Search and the local mainstream media to the extent that it could. Only SMNI really carried the information from the Duterte interview.
There was one other significant person that we, the ACJ team of analysts, had waited to reveal his position. That is Harry Roque, former adviser and spokesman of President Duterte. He had been quiet about the issue since it erupt, but last Tuesday I saw the TikTok post and was delighted that Atty. Roque had finally picked up his weapon of choice – truth – to start the information battle on the issue
Harry Roque said, “Pero hindi ‘ata malinaw kay PBBM na kapag pinagamit niya ang ating mga base military at nagkaroon ng putukan, Pilipinas lang ang tatargetin sa buong Southeast Asia ng China sa ayaw o sa gusto man g Tsina kasi manggagaling yung mga pagatake ng Amerika laban sa Tsina. Papayag ba naman ang Tsina a gagamitin ang base military ng Pilipinas para targetin ang Beijing? Siyempre hinde!
“Eh bilyong-bilyon mga tao ang mamamatay kapag tinarget ng Amerika ang Tsina ano dahil pinaka populated country iyan sa buong daigdig. So, bago mangyari iyon aatakihin muna ng China ang mga Amerikano… saan? Sa base militar na naririto sa Pilipinas. Iyan po ang katotohanan.” The message unavoidably casts doubt on PBBM’s powers of judgment and Roque’s prospect of joining the cabinet.
But it should be clear to the nation that this is not a war against the president, we see Harry Roque’s move as an act of supporting and joining the war against the Americans’ effort to re-establish its neocolonial domination through these bases and the Macabebe AFP. I am trying to create that awareness that we are indeed in the Filipino-American War II – the final struggle to complete the Unfinished Revolution.
Meanwhile, anti-American re-colonization and anti-US EDCA bases advocates have begun to organize on a nationwide basis. One target is to generate several national meetings to spread awareness of the perilous consequences of accepting the US EDCA bases, and the other is to organize actions such as noise barrages across cities and provinces. One target by April is a Northern Luzon-wide mass meeting to be held in Cagayan Province.
An immediate project following the very successful anti-US EDCA Bases hybrid mainstream and social media forum cum march-rally at the Boys Scout monument at the junction of Timog and Morato is the Round Table Discussion (RTD) at the U.P. Asian Center where I and Henry Chan of Singapore are invited to explain the malevolent intent of the U.S. EDCA Bases in the Philippines. Several other experts will be joining the panel.
We will start initiating similar RTD’s in the Visayas and Mindanao. I will be getting in touch with our colleagues in Iloilo, such as Awards for Promoting Philippines-China Understanding laureatse Atty. Leomil Aportadera and Prof. Celso Cainglet, to start organizing. In Mindanao I hope to work with Mindanao Journal Serafin “Jun” Ledesma and Mr. Peter Tiu Laviña to organize similar RTDs in public forums or academe.
There is no time to waste, the war fever in the West is escalating and the strong itch to start ramping up the tensions in Asia is rising. The latest escalation is the U.S. spy drone entering Russia’s security perimeter over the Black Sea air space where the drone was shot down, and US warmonger Senator Lindsey Graham called on the U.S. to shoot down a Russian jet fighter in retaliation. The heat has upped a few degrees again.
While all these are going on the U.S. and the Western financial system is in the throes of the financial meltdown that might accelerate the U.S. impulse to war as the Great Depression once did to trigger U.S. dive into World War II. At this writing the U.S. Silicon Valley Bank collapse has taken down two more banks and even Credit Suisse has been pushed to the brink seeking $ 54-billion lifeline from the Swiss National Bank. ###