A War of Lies: Prelude to WW3

A War of Lies: Prelude to WW3
By Erick San Juan


How many people are aware that a world war has begun? At present, it is a war of propaganda, of lies and distraction, but this can change instantaneously with the first mistaken order, the first missile. (John Pilger)

A war that didn’t start in the South China Sea or any area in the Asia-Pacific region or in the Middle East not even in Europe or the Americas (North/South), physically but it is a war of lies and deception going on around the world through the internet and mass media, and in the process could escalate as a prelude to another World War. And this time much more destructive using mini nuclear bombs known as the B61 Model 12.

The possible destruction of a large population which started with a string of lies all woven to create a web of destructive deception, can be called weapon of mass deception. Just like what happened to Saddam Hussein and the Iraq war.

In the article of John Pilger, Start of a New World War, he writes – “All of them said that had journalists and broadcasters done their job and questioned the propaganda that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction; had the lies of George W. Bush and Tony Blair not been amplified and echoed by journalists, the 2003 invasion of Iraq might not have happened, and hundreds of thousands of men, women and children would be alive today.

The propaganda laying the ground for a war against Russia and/or China is no different in principle. To my knowledge, no journalist in the Western “mainstream” — a Dan Rather equivalent, say — asks why China is building airstrips in the South China Sea.

The answer ought to be glaringly obvious. The United States is encircling China with a network of bases, with ballistic missiles, battle groups, nuclear-armed bombers.

This lethal arc extends from Australia to the islands of the Pacific, the Marianas and the Marshalls and Guam, to the Philippines, Thailand, Okinawa, Korea and across Eurasia to Afghanistan and India. America has hung a noose around the neck of China. This is not news. Silence by media; war by media.

In 2015, in high secrecy, the U.S. and Australia staged the biggest single air-sea military exercise in recent history, known as Talisman Sabre. Its aim was to rehearse an Air-Sea Battle Plan, blocking sea lanes, such as the Straits of Malacca and the Lombok Straits, that cut off China’s access to oil, gas and other vital raw materials from the Middle East and Africa.”

With the ongoing war of lies and at the same time military exercises between and among nations, any miscalculated move is suspect for something else – like a false flag operation that can be used as a pretext to start a regional conflict in the process.

Through the use of communications technology via the worldwide web, a lie can spread like a forest fire and no one will ever know who started it all and in the end the feared first strike of the lethal nuclear missile is already launched and another nightmare of dead humans will envelope vast wasted lands contaminated with radiation for generations. What about the other lethal war plans like EMP-electromagnetic pulse, bio-terrorism, weather engineering, etc. it seems that every state power with MIC-military industrial complex are all prepared for a 'first strike' policy.

One of my advocacy to STOP TRUTH DECAY will somehow help my colleagues in the tri-media and avert this war of lies and MAD-mutually assured destruction ASAP !

 

Do We Have a Choice? by Erick San Juan

Do We Have a Choice? by Erick San Juan

The Philippines and United States have agreed on the five military bases in the country where the Americans can build facilities under the Enhanced Defense Agreement Cooperation.

The five “EDCA Agreed Locations” identified during the sixth Bilateral Strategic Dialogue in Washington DC this week are:

Antonio Bautista Air Base in Puerto Princesa, Palawan
Basa Air Base in Floridablanca, Pampanga
Fort Magsaysay in Nueva Ecija
Lumbia Air Base in Cagayan de Oro
Mactan-Benito Ebuen Air Base in Mactan

The annual dialogue was co-chaired by Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Russel and Assistant Secretary of Defense David Shear for the US, and Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs Evan P. Garcia and Undersecretary of National Defense Pio Lorenzo F. Batino for the Philippines, the Philippine embassy in Washington DC said in a statement.

Under EDCA, the US can not only increase its military presence in the country but also build facilities in local bases under the supervision of the Department of National Defense and the Armed Forces of the Philippines, expanding on the Visiting Forces Agreement. (Source: InterAksyon.com, March 19, 2016)

After declaring EDCA as constitutional by the Supreme Court, all systems go in its implementation as soon as possible. Some Filipinos believe that the presence of US military troops in the country will somehow deter the Chinese from its bullying its neighbors in the region. But some Filipinos, especially from the progressive left and the patriotic ones, the country doesn’t need the ‘big brother’ because it only increases the tension in the South China Sea and put the country in the crosshairs.

As what Peter Lee wrote in his article China is Not Leaving the “South China Sea”, “America is learning that the South China Sea is called the South “China” Sea for a reason, despite patriotic efforts in various nations to rename it the “West Philippine Sea” or “East Vietnamese Sea”.

Peoples Republic of China Foreign Minister Wang Yi declared that China was the first to discover, name, develop, and administer the various islands of the southern seas. Our ancestors have tilled those fields and toiled there amid hardships for generations. We know this place and love this place better than anyone else, and more than any other people we wish for the peace and stability of the southern sea and freedom of navigation.

Wang Yi’s flowery rhetoric about China’s sole historical claim to all the islands of the southern seas and their development is a historical nonsense.

But the second part, about the Beijing's  paramount interest and growing predominance in the South China Sea is closer to the truth. This is because the PRC is spending a lot of money, effort, and diplomatic capital to make it true.

What was not told was to please the millions of Chinese fisher folks not only roaming around the 9 dash line but also all oceans of the world. No wonder incidents like the Argentinian navy downed a China's fishing ship intruding its territory, emboldened the Chinese to test other territorial waters.

The People’s Republic of China sails through the South China Sea, flies through it, fishes in it, erects towns and airfields, sends in cruise ships and commercial jet liners on regular schedules, patrols it with an armada of coast guard and naval vessels, maintains forward military bases in it, builds faux islands in it, occasionally prospects within it with its massive semi-submersible drilling rig, dots it with radar stations and lighthouses, relies for it as a vital energy corridor…”

The mere fact that both Beijing and Washington are accusing each other of militarizing the region thereby increasing the hostilities in the SCS, neither will give way to ease the tension in the already militarized region. Much more leave the South China Sea.

As far as China is concern, so much investment had been poured in the SCS and literally fortifying it with troops and military hardware but US military isn’t going anywhere either.

“If the US wishes to evict the PRC from the South China Sea, it will have to consider stronger, more dangerous, and politically and diplomatically less palatable measures-and a more convincing menace than an imputed PRC threat to commercial freedom of navigation, or even as antagonist to the international norms and laws represented by the UNCLOS ruling.

The US military is now shifting the terms of debate from the shaky premise that the PRC presence in the South China Sea is a threat to global commerce and the world order to a somewhat more realistic anxiety that the PRC will, in the near future, possess sufficient military assets in the South China Sea to challenge and in theory impede or deny military maritime and aviation traffic by other nations.

This strategy is encapsulated in the continued alarms that the PRC is “militarizing” the South China Sea, an accusation that the PRC, particularly after the US Navy sailed a carrier battle group through the SCS in early March 2016, is not inclined to take seriously.

The focus on “militarization” is exemplified by warning the PRC not to announce a South China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone or ADIZ, which would require aircraft flying near and toward the PRC (including its contested SCS facilities) to identify themselves and state their intentions. To knock down a frequently stated canard, an ADIZ is not a declaration of territorial airspace and the ADIZ of various nations can overlap, as the PRC and REpublic of Korea ADIZs overlap in the East China Sea. One might think that the SCS, with growing military traffic by hostile powers, sorely needs an ADIZ to prevent misunderstandings, incidents, and escalation, but China hawks will try to advance the argument that in this case, as in many matters involving the South China Sea, ordinary logic simply doesn’t apply.” (Peter Lee)

The tension in the South China Sea will not stop until a real peaceful resolution will be agreed upon and implemented by China and the claimants in the disputed areas. But with the US in the background and continually prodding its allies to settle the disputes through multilateral talks, there will always be a threat to the region’s peace.

Do we have a choice?

Fragile China by Erick San Juan

Fragile China by Erick San Juan

The following excerpts are from the interview of Asia Times top writer George Koo with Professor Susan L. Shirk, the author of 2007’s acclaimed “China, Fragile Superpower.”  Prof. Shirk is an influential expert on Chinese politics who served as deputy assistant secretary of state during the Clinton administration.

George Koo: How does the domestic insecurity of the Chinese Communist Party leadership influence its foreign policy? Under Xi, are they feeling more or less secure? To what extent did the world financial crisis of 2008-9 alter China’s perception of the US?

Prof. Shirk: “The CCP leaders are more insecure than ever. They continue to worry that their rule could end overnight like that of the communist party in the Soviet Union. Can a communist party continue to govern a society drastically changed by market reforms and opening to the world?  Pres. Xi Jinping’s focus is much more on domestic threats than international ones. And now that economic growth is slowing and people could be facing real economic distress, the threat of public discontent looms larger. The big question is whether Xi Jinping will try to rally people around the CCP by stoking anti-foreign nationalism and even possibly try to distract them from domestic problems by provoking confrontations over maritime claims. It could work the other way, of course. He could behave more cautiously toward China’s neighbors and the US to keep a peaceful international context for China to address its domestic problems, which is what China did before 2008.

The 2008 global financial crisis changed Chinese views of the US, leading to the misperception that the US was in decline and discrediting the American model. Because China recovered fastest from the crisis, people in China felt a kind of premature triumphalism. The Chinese public and elites started to demand a more assertive foreign policy. The muscle-flexing that resulted has raised anxiety among the neighboring nations about China’s intentions. The net result is harmful to China’s own national interest.”

It is good to know that what we have been saying all this time about the real condition of China, economically and its domestic affairs are now being confirmed by an expert. Actually even though how hard China tries to cover up the real score in its socio-eco-political affairs from the world, truth will catch up and expose whatever China is trying to conceal from us.

Another important point that was mentioned in the interview by Mr. Koo -

Koo: “The Chinese government has never adopted an Asian version of the Monroe Doctrine to keep the US out of its neighborhood”–a quote from your book. In light of recent developments since your book was published, to what extent is your statement still true or not so much?

Shirk: It is still true. It would be unrealistic for China to expect to dominate Asia the way the US as a rising power dominated the Caribbean and Latin America. The regions are very different. There are other large and powerful countries in Asia such as India, Japan, Indonesia, South Korea, and therefore there can’t be only one regional hegemon. Even if the US forces weren’t in Asia, it wouldn’t be possible for China to recreate a regional hierarchy like that of the Qing Dynasty. China is going to have to find a way to work together on a more equal basis with other regional powers.”

Coming from an expert on China, I agree with this observation so it is very clear that China is dreaming to be a hegemon by antagonizing its neighbors in the process. Xi Jinping's 'China Dream' will surely fail with a divided leadership and purging from within disguised as anti-corruption campaign. It is time for China to wake up and accept the reality that it will never achieve its glory like in the Qing Dynasty.

Even for China, there must be no uni-polar world, a multi-polar world and a peaceful co-existence with the rest of the world.

Why is China so Stubborn by Erick San Juan

Why is China so Stubborn by Erick San Juan

Why is China so stubborn and recently stated in a report that they will ignore the UN tribunal/UNCLOS’ decision on the territorial disputes in the South China Sea.

Even the persistent call of the claimants (and the rest of the ASEAN members) in the disputed territories with the prodding of the United States for China to stop its reclamation ops in the name of freedom of navigation. All efforts were in vain because China is still expanding its territories through reclamation and stationing its military on the said reclaimed areas. And they firmly stated to all parties concerned in the territorial disputes that they will settle the issue through bilateral dialogue and no outside parties (like the U.S.) to take part.

“This foreign policy viewpoint is not new; similar tenets were laid out in the 1996 book "China Can Say No".The book was a collection of impassioned essays decrying Western disdain for China, and the importance of China being able to defend its interests against Western attempts at containment. In an interview with National History, one of the authors, Song Qiang, later admitted that the tone of the book might have gone overboard — 'we basically wanted to shock people or die trying,’ he said — but he stood by the basic premise. China must “say no… to the culture of foreigner worship, no the mentality of inferiority,” Song said.

Many of the ideas in China Can Say No remain highly influential in Chinese foreign policy thinking today, both at the grassroots and the official level. First, Western countries (particularly the U.S.) are believed to be conspiring against China, with the goal of preventing China from reclaiming the power and influence it enjoyed prior to the Opium Wars and the “century of national humiliation.” If anything, this idea has grown more pervasive in the last 20 years, as China and the U.S. are increasingly acknowledged to be in a strategic competition for influence in the Asia-Pacific (and even as far away as the African continent).

As a result, Chinese people view their country as a victim, as Wang noted, a lone fighter trying to eke out its fair share of global influence from the established powers. The idea that “China can say no” still holds powerful emotional sway today — in fact, as China’s power (whether military, economic, or diplomatic) has grown, the expectation has only grown that China can and will “say no” to foreign challenges to China’s national interests. Accordingly, Beijing is pushing hard for a re-evaluation of issues that the U.S. has long considered routine (such as arms sales to Taiwan and presidential meetings with the Dalai Lama). China previously accepted such insults because it was weak, the thinking goes. Now that China is strong, all bets are off.” (Source: The ‘China Can Say No’ Effect, the Diplomat online, August 7, 2014)

With this policy in place and China’s military strength being used in extending its territories without consideration to its neighbors, a regional conflict will surely happen.

Remembering the not so fiction book by Humphrey Hawksley and Simon Holberton, Dragon Strike: The Millennium War, a futuristic book which was published in April 1997 wherein events in East Asia have served to confirm the authors’ fear about China’s ascendancy as a superpower in the offing. I have written this in details way back in 1998 and was published by several newspapers on how China will start a war in the South/East China Sea due to its expansionist goal as an emerging superpower.

As I have written in that article almost two decades ago that the threat of another “Yellow Peril” is no fragment of the imagination. It is as real as you and me. But what worries me most is that in the event of a Chinese offensive, the members of the ASEAN would probably take a non-confrontational line. In short, “a military response from these nations is not expected. Even collectively, they are no match for China. The wealth in those countries are basically controlled by Chinese businessmen just like here in the Philippines. They might live away from China, but they cultivated contact with the Communist leadership in order to win contracts.” This is the honest opinion of Hawksley and Holberton, and I agree.

I’ve been saying this so many times in my radio program, in my writings and speaking engagements that countries like ours should fear China from within because in the process we will be overtaken (and later conquered) without firing a single shot. That’s why my call to all Chinoys who are already part of our race to say their piece and be firm to take their stand against China or help in the back door negotiation if push comes to shove that the Filipinos will be challenged by China’s aggressiveness.

If China can say no so can we if we will stand united to keep our sovereignty intact against foreigners – enemy or friend.

Narco-Politician Must Be Exposed by Erick San Juan

Narco-Politician Must Be Exposed by Erick San Juan

Sen. Bongbong Marcos pretends to be an anti-drugs advocate when in fact he should be investigated for his substance abuse especially COCAINE. I challenge him to undergo BLOOD TEST, NOT DRUG TEST and be verified by a concerned independent members of medical associations. Everybody were shock to read in the newspapers today that even a priest is taking shabu. Much more with NARCO-POLITICIANS running our country today. Tapos parang tayo lahat walang paki alam if we will have a narco politician as our Vice President. 2 weeks ago i challenged him to undergo BLOOD TEST NOT DRUG TEST but he's so quiet about it.

We really have to do something before its too late. "Kargo de konsensya natin na binigyan tayo ng konting katalinuhan at kaalaman, di tayo kumikibo. Kung di tayo kikibo, sinong kikibo at kikilos." This is a test case for DILG-PDEA-AIDG to jail a big fish.