Crosshair by Erick San Juan

Crosshair by Erick San Juan


Our 1987 Constitution mandates: “The State shall protect the nation’s marine wealth in its xxx exclusive economic zone, and reserve its use and enjoyment exclusively to Filipino citizens.”  This is the mandate of the Constitution that we have all solemnly sworn to uphold.

To fulfill the State’s obligation to protect the nation’s marine wealth in its exclusive economic zone, the Philippines has filed an arbitration case against China in accordance with the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).   At stake in the arbitration before an UNCLOS Annex VII tribunal is whether the Philippines will keep or lose 80% of its exclusive economic zone and 100% of its extended continental shelf in the West Philippines Sea.

The maritime dispute between the Philippines and China boils down to whether there are overlapping EEZs between the Philippines and China in the West Philippine Sea. Are the waters enclosed by China’s 9-dashed lines part of the EEZ of China such that China’s EEZ overlaps with the EEZ of the Philippines?   China also claims that the islands in the Spratlys like Itu Aba generate their own EEZs which overlap with the Philippines’ EEZ in Palawan.

China argues, through its scholars and officials, that the arbitral tribunal has no jurisdiction over the Philippines’ claim for two reasons: First, the dispute involves maritime boundary delimitation arising from overlapping EEZs of the Philippines and China, a dispute that China has opted out of compulsory arbitration.  Second, China’s 9-dashed line claim is a historical right that predates UNCLOS and cannot be negated by UNCLOS. On these grounds, China has refused to participate in the arbitral proceedings.

 The Philippines’ response is that the waters enclosed within China’s 9-dashed lines do not constitute an EEZ because the 9-dashed lines are not drawn from baselines along the coast of continental land or habitable islands. Under UNCLOS, EEZs can only be drawn from baselines along the coast of continental land or an island capable of human habitation or economic life of its own. China’s 9-dashed lines do not comply with the basic requirement of UNCLOS for drawing EEZs. (Speech delivered by Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Antonio T. Carpio before the Philippine Women’s Judges Association, 6 March 2014)

The ongoing arbitration at the Arbitral Tribunal, formed under the aegis of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), should be treated by our government as part of a bigger picture on how to solve such crisis by defining a strong foreign policy that will protect our sovereignty.

Sadly, Richard Javad Heydarian (assistant professor in political science at De La Salle University, and a former policy adviser at the Philippine House of Representatives (2009-2015) has to remind us in his article of how poorly we are treating a major issue like the South China Sea. He writes – “After more than 15 years, the Philippines has finally decided to repair its ragtag outpost on the Second Thomas Shoal, located about 100 nautical miles away from the Philippines’ westernmost province of Palawan. The Sierra Madre ship – a 100-meter-long tank landing vessel, operated by the U.S. Navy back in the Second World War – has served as a tenuous expression of Manila’s sovereignty claim over the contested feature in the South China Sea.

For long, it has also served as an embarrassing reminder of how little the Philippines has invested in concretely defending its claims in a heavily-contested area. To paraphrase a Western journalist who visited the site in recent years, "the Philippine outpost from afar is an abominable site amid a beautiful maritime wilderness; surrounded by reefs and a vast blue ocean, Sierra Madre looks even more awful up close."

Since 1999, the rusty, grounded vessel has hosted – on a rotational basis – a handful of marooned and resilient troops, who have repeatedly resisted siege and other forms of intimidation tactics deployed by the far better equipped Chinese coast guard forces, which are even better armed than the Philippine Navy.

As the former Philippine National Security Adviser Roilo Golez told me, the Philippines’ South China Sea strategic planning “was dominated by internal defense officers who looked inward and ignored the China threat in spite of repeated warning.” No wonder, then, he said, that “nothing was achieved by way of minimum deterrence during the 1990s and the 2000s.” He lamented how military modernization funds were going to “minor items” that “were useless” for defending the country’s claims in the South China Sea.”

I agree with the former NSA Roilo Golez, if we have to modernize our armed forces, we should not settle for less especially those refurbished war materiel from the US. And most of all, it is not only a matter of military hardware. We must depend on our inner strength as a nation and not depend our security from outside forces.

The mere fact that we presented our case before an international tribunal, it is but logical to show to the world that we don’t need foreign military troops and materiel to use our military bases. Having two Visiting Forces Agreements – one with the US and another with Australia, and coming soon with Japan, will not do us any good.

Once and for all, we have to show our strength by not merely kowtowing to foreign ‘masters’ that will only shortchanged us and put us at the crosshairs of their enemies.

As I have written in our previous article (@ericksanjuan.blogspot.com), let us not agitate China because the mere presence of foreign troops is an agitation enough and could be a pretext that will justify China’s retaliation against us. The worst, we are not even prepared for it or have any tangible fall back just in case all hell break loose. 

God forbid!

China: Deng's Self Fulfilling Prophecy by Erick San Juan

China: Deng's Self Fulfilling Prophecy by Erick San Juan

“If one day China should change her color and turn into a superpower, if she too should play the tyrant in the world, and everywhere subject others to her bullying, aggression and exploitation, the people of the world should identify her as social-imperialism, expose it, oppose it and work together with the Chinese people to overthrow it.” – Deng Xiaoping speech at the United Nations, April 10, 1974

After four decades the words of Deng Xiaoping is now almost a reality. But it seems small fries like the Philippines and US allies in Asia are the perceived easy targets. We all have to be vigilant and not to commit the same mistake just like what happened here before the 2nd world war where the Japanese came, disguised as lowly merchants, poor Japanese nationals looking for work like our OFW's, drivers, gardeners etc. When the war broke out, these Japanese re-grouped and were found out too late that most of them were officials and soldiers of the Japanese Imperial Army and their local counterpart was the "LUPONG TAGAPAG-PAGANAP".

See the pattern of history of the creeping invasion of nations? What's worrying many pundits is the possible repeat of history with a creepy scenario. Then the poor Chinese migrants from China mostly came from Amoy have reinvented themselves from being street vendors, small time junk buyers, retailers of junk foods, etc., few were members of Red China's underworld - the TRIAD who metamorphosed through sheer hard work into what we now call the TAIPAN's. We Filipinos didn't mind that. But the latest strategic assessment is really quite scary. Due to national security issue, I cannot elaborate at the moment. My group of patriots just don't want a repeat of what happened in Indonesia and Malaysia with the purging of Chinese there and the attack of the angry Vietnamese against the chinese in Vietnam due to the bullying of China.

The installation of China's military structures in the South China Sea, the 9-dash line, the ADIZ plus President Xi Jin Ping's ‘China dream’ which is now becoming a nightmare due to the regrouping of his political enemies inside China including former loyal allies of Xi whom he jailed due to suspicion of corruption plus the leak of Xi and his family's own corruption exposed by Bloomberg made the plot thickens.

The world was alerted of a possible collapse from within despite the "praise releases" of a good economy in China. Even Google removed the invented Chinese names of shoals from the internet map due to global protests. The floating scenario emanating from Beijing experts is that China is preparing for war "to fight an outside enemy to unite China".

I'm calling the attention of our compatriots especially the progressive lefts who have been so quiet on the issue of China's bullying. I hope that their sudden noise against China is NOT part of the ploy as some analysts thought.

PLEASE DON'T AGITATE CHINA, a possible justification of attack, another REVERSE ARROW plan of invasion. In spite of China's history of non-aggression, a former Beijing resident friend of mine reminded me that the situation in the past is different this time. China has a military inspired president and he could be worse than Mao Tse Tung he added.

I have written a lot on how China in the past infiltrated even our intelligence officers in the military like then Gen. Pedro de la Pena, our big business and anti-communist leaders. Thanks to the American 'communist' William Pomeroy who worked for the US clandestine operations, they were all exposed and most of them jailed.(See my latest book DOSSIERS and blog about it at  ericksanjuan.blogspot.com)

Let us call the attention of our local Chinese here. Most of them could have averted the saber rattling between the Philippines and China if they were told by the government. We now want to hear your voices. As the Lord God said- "Are you with us or against us?

May God bless the Philippines!

Present Crash: Double Blast from the Past

Present Crash: Double Blast from the Past
By Erick San Juan


While all Western eyes remain firmly focused on Greece, a potentially much more significant financial crisis is developing on the other side of the world. In some quarters, it’s already being called China’s 1929 – the year of the most infamous stock market crash in history and the start of the economic catastrophe of the Great Depression. (Source: Jeremy Warner, 7/9/2015)

That’s not all, a double blast from the past, the global financial crisis of 2008-2009.

From the article of Pam Martens and Russ Martens (July 8) – “It’s starting to feel like we never actually emerged from the 2008 crisis: the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve simply threw $13 trillion at the crisis and walked away, hoping that an endless zero-interest-rate-policy (Zirp) would patch over the cracks in the global financial system. What we seem to have now is an endless series of rolling crises instead of one big global crisis. The rolling crises, from Puerto Rico to Greece to China’s stock market, all have one thing in common – the unravelling of too much debt. That could rapidly turn into a full-fledged global crisis if policymakers misdiagnose what’s happening, treating the problems as isolated crises instead of a interconnected debt hangover from the go-go years.

The plunging price action in industrial commodities this week strongly suggests that debt was not sufficiently purged in the 2008-2009 economic meltdown and debt liquidation is back with a vengeance.

The China stock market, the second largest in the world after the U.S., locked down 72 percent of its stocks on Wednesday, according to Bloomberg, with “at least 1,331 companies halted on mainland exchanges and another 747 falling by the 10 percent daily limit.” This has effectively frozen $2.6 trillion of stock from trading, according to Bloomberg.

The Shanghai Composite, which clearly would have fallen by a much greater amount if all stocks had been trading, fell 5.9 percent at the close, bringing its loss to 32 percent from its peak set less than a month ago. The Shenzhen Composite Index, consisting of smaller companies and tech stocks, has plunged 40 percent from its peak this year.”

People repeating history, actually the worst part of it. Remember how the Japanese became jetsetters and even bought US golf courses and the Empire State Building, then the stock market plunged and so many Japanese big business did 'Harakiri'. Then the Soviets became the new jetsetters in the mid 90’s because of Gorbachev’s Glastnost and Perestroika, until the November 1998 chopping of the Berlin Wall which I witnessed with amazement, when almost the whole Eastern establishment collapsed.
Now we can see the possible implosion in China due to the open-secret in-fighting between the economic and political leaders versus the military hardliners headed by Xi Jinping.

Japanese acquisitions of American assets have been a frequent occurrence. Thirty years ago, they were the cause for anxiety. Now, they should just be a reminder that China probably won't take over the U.S. either, no matter what their billionaires manage to buy.

And we thought that China is too big to fail. I thought that it’s only in the Philippines that we are bombarded with good news coming from the government. With the collapse of Greece, suddenly the truth that I know for so many years is now a reality with China losing big in the international market.

Propaganda after propaganda that the spinmasters are desperately doing to cover up the real state of China’s economy suddenly catch up with them with a big bang.

Lesson to our own financial and economic ‘experts’, what goes around comes around, thrash in, thrash out.

US-China et tu Brutus by Erick San Juan

US-China et tu Brutus by Erick San Juan

Top secret military documents from World War II have revealed the depth and strength of the alliance between China and the United States against Imperial Japan, as well as joint efforts to rescue downed US pilots.

The cache of intelligence documents, detailing a number of daring missions, is on display at Jianchuan Museum in Anren, Sichuan province.

More than 1,100 documents and other artifacts were donated by the family of Major Richard Hill (1908-92), a US military intelligence officer who coordinated the rescue of 46 US pilots shot down over occupied China.

Fan Jianchuan, who owns the museum, said he is passionate about bringing the largely forgotten story of US-China collaboration to life for a new generation, and that the path to future peace and friendship lies in these wartime ties.

"I hope Chinese will be grateful to the US after they visit the museum, and Americans will say 'thank you' to the Chinese for helping their pilots," he said.

The documents are housed in a wing of the museum called Flying Tigers Hall, named in honor of the US volunteer force that in 1941 provided China's only air defense against Japan. (Source: China Daily by Huang Zhiling)

Those were the days when friends before are now enemies, and the big question is - If the United States and China are supposed to be such “great friends”, why are both sides acting as if war is in our future?  Thanks to events in the South China Sea and the blatant theft of the personal information of millions of U.S. government workers, tensions between the United States and China are the highest that they have been in decades. (Source: Michael Snyder, 12 Signs That the United States And China Are Moving Toward War, June 21, 2015)

The growing tension in the SCS between China and among the claimants plus the US will lead to a shooting war just like what happened in the past when there was a build up of tensions between alliances until they reached that breaking point and global war broke out.

Precisely the situation now, why the US is taking sides with its allies in order to contain China as it gradually rises as the new military superpower in this part of the world. And this said territorial dispute is a good copy for Uncle Sam to “help” its allies like the Philippines who in turn will follow the will of the perceived master even the whole archipelago will be put in the crosshairs of the dragon as cannon fodder.

A different chessboard with different players as what will the likes of Weinberger and McKinder will use in describing the world in the brink of a war. But this time it would be very different as technology advances in the field of military including the use of cyber space to attack the enemy silently.

Casualties will be great with the use of thermonuclear and weapons that can wipe out large area of any given target with precision and speed in a matter of just clicking a button.

The parade of modern day military hardware (and some hidden military software) through the internet via state-owned mouthpieces are deliberately exposed as propaganda in order to create an atmosphere that both camps are prepared to any eventuality.

Such war propaganda were used since the First World War and the scenario that they built in their war rooms were almost exact. In modern times they are called false flag operations and creating pretext to justify desired events.

But like what Fan Jianchuan said, the owner of the museum, his museum is there to preserve the memory of the wartime friendship between China and the US, to "remind both countries to treasure it and work together to deal with factors that may affect world peace today".

Despite the playing of flowery words, treachery will always be there. As the saying goes-"There's no permanent friendship, only common interest.'"