Herman Tiu Laurel
Our Filipino compatriots may be forgetting. The world is in the midst of the first year of the Third World War. We see it as just news from far away in the East European region in Ukraine and think of it as a war between Ukraine and Russia, but it is not. It is Russia vs. the West, and it is only the beginning. Think about this, U.S. and Brit “advisers” are now admittedly inside Ukraine “training” Ukrainian soldier to use “sophisticated U.S. weapons” – just how U.S. started in Vietnam.
Flashback to the late 1930s when the European war started as Germany blitzed across Denmark to France, the Philippines and Filipinos were just reading about “the war” as a far, far reality across two continents to the left and the right of the Philippines, across the Pacific and Atlantic to one side and across the Indian Ocean on the other, but in just over a year the war in Europe burst out in Asia as Japan burned a path through Indo-China down to the Malaysian Peninsula and crossed into the Philippines.
Very few Filipinos give this specter of real war coming to the Philippines in this era much real thought, there are too many immediate life troubles for everyone, high fuel and food prices that give everyone onion tears, chaotic politics that followed the end of the Duterte period, rising drugs menace (Senator Bato says) and very unwise tension building upon the wind-up of the Americans against the only real friend of the Philippines – China, over the hollow “arbitration award”.
The war in Asia of the 2020s is already at hand, its first stages are already building up, with 5 additional EDCA bases, VFA for Japan, NATO warplanes basing in Australia, US and UK giving nuke subs to the Aussies under the AUKUS, Japan rearming and doubling its defense budget to become 2nd largest arms budgets after the U.S. while junking its “peace constitution”, and Filipino minds being poisoned against China by the warmonger U.S. and its Amboys in the Philippines.
Don’t be surprised if by the end of Christmas 2027 we will see celebrations in the City of Manila, Cebu, Davao as devastated as what we see in the newsreels from the Ukraine War as bombs destroy the quick and the dead and all the things around them like never before. I am sure many will scoff at the thought – until it happens when its already too late to do anything about it. Don’t forget that in the 1930s Manila was a glittering city that became the 2nd most devastated after Warsaw, Poland in 1945.
But who cares in the Philippines? The politicians are enjoying the limelight so easily when they invoke the baseless “bullying” allegations against China, politicians like one I call “Tonto-lentino” who describes a scattering of 20 boats are Sabina Shoal as a “swarm” while 6,700 plus Vietnamese boats all over the SCS and inside Philippine territorial sea reported with satellite photos by the SCS Probing Initiative doesn’t count for even a glance from Sen. Tonto-lentino.
Bloomberg reported that China is adding reclamations to its features in the Eldad Reef, Lankiam Cay, Whitsun Reef and Sandy Cay which the SCSPI again showed fresh satellite photos showing no such activity, but local media went to town spreading the story. But the U.S. CSIS think tank using satellite monitoring show Vietnam doubling its reclamations and size of its occupied island from 170 hectares to 220 hectares of 2 square kilometers already – but media and pols are silent.
In the meantime, the atheistic China continues to try to make the season in the spirit of Christmas between the Philippines and China. The Chinese embassy recently turned over 1 vehicle and 10 drones to the National Bureau of Investigation, demonstrating the cooperation between the NBI and Chinese law enforcement agencies in containing cross-border crimes and protecting society. The emassy also tuned over dozens of laptops to the PDEA to aid in the agency’s crime fighting.
The people hardly get to know about the continuing and countless assistance big and modest, from great multi-billion infrastructure like the P 12-billion Kaliwa Dam to supply 600 million liters of water to thirsty Metro-Manilans to the regular community gift package giving in the towns and cities around the country by the Chinese consulates in the key cities all around the country from Luzon to Mindanao. How ungrateful some Filipino politicians and media outlets are when I see this.
While China is generating good will, friendship and cooperation, the U.S. continues its age old style of “divide and conquer” using some self-serving Filipino politicians and media, calling for “respecting” the “arbitration that even the UN does not recognize but tries to fool the entire nation of 110-million Filipinos to swallow and eventual choke in if fooled enough to continue to swallow in even deeper. One must cash in a bet before the gamble collapses and come out empty handed or bankrupted. ### (photo courtesy of: LIBKOS/AP)