Living in Harmony by Erick San Juan

Living in Harmony by Erick San Juan

So far so good is the current situation of our fishermen near the Scarborough Shoal as the tension between Chinese vessels and our fishermen eases. Filipino fishermen with their bancas are now enjoying their daily catch peacefully minus the harassment from the Chinese.

President Rody Duterte asked Chinese Ambassador Zhao Jianhua to allow local fishermen near the shoal when the two met on May 16 in Davso. Duterte told reporters. “If you will disallow troll fishing, commercial fishing, I would understand. But those bancas — don’t crush them — because the Filipino also needs to eat.”

A small favor requested by President-elect Duterte and granted by China.

But it would be quite different when it comes to the decision that the Permanent Arbitral Tribunal will release soon which China will not follow.

A reminder given by US President Barack Obama when he called Duterte that he must wait for the ruling of the United Nations arbitration court on the case filed by our country challenging China’s claims in the contested area in the South China Sea.

President Duterte assured Obama that “we will continue with our mutual interests, and that we are allied with the Western (world) on this issue on (the South) China Sea”.

“But I gave him an inkling that, well, I would agree to just go with you. But if it goes on still waters… there’s no wind to move the sail, I might opt to go bilateral,” he told a news program on GMA-News last May 17.

According to a report from The Guardian online, “Fears are growing that there will be a sharp rise in tensions in the South China Sea in the next few weeks after an international tribunal delivers a ruling on disputed islands and reefs that Beijing has said it will reject.

Western officials say they fear China will react to the ruling of the international tribunal for the law of the sea, which is expected to side with the Philippines, by raising the stakes in the busy trade route, expanding its land reclamation and construction activities to reefs in the Scarborough Shoal, close to Manila.

The White House is under pressure from the top US commander in the Pacific and some in Congress to take a tougher line with Beijing and carry out more military patrols close to China’s fortified islands, where there have already been close encounters between ships and planes from the two rival powers.

Beijing, which argues the tribunal has no jurisdiction on the matter, has warned the US against escalating the conflict, saying it will defend itself if necessary.

“Of course, when the ruling comes out, our friends in Philippines and in the United States will preach that the tribunal has binding power, and that China must obey the result. But surely we will be firm in saying that the results are illegal, that the tribunal has no binding power and China will not accept the ruling,” said Liu Zhenmin, the Chinese deputy foreign minister who has been a lead negotiator on the issue.

“The US knows about its own history in south-east Asia. We will oppose the US if it stirs up any conflict in south-east Asia. But if scenarios of the Korean War or Vietnam war are replayed we will have to defend ourselves.”

Liu added that he did not think “things would go as badly as that”, but warned that any US attempt to contain China’s rising sea power was doomed to failure. “We have been saying to our American friends you cannot really circle China by having joint military exercises or building military bases – you were not able to do that 30 years ago, let alone now. China’s rise and development will not be held back by anyone,” he said.

The fear of many countries in the region is China’s firm stand on its claim in the South China Sea and the possible consequence that will arise most especially from the US policy must be considered seriously but with a lot of diplomacy. As what President-elect Duterte said that if all fails from such multilateral negotiations, he will resort to bilateral talks with Beijing, and this will not be favorable to the big brother.

Although both Vietnam and the Philippines affirmed its support as allies of the US,  “Washington should clarify in its respective dialogues with Manila and Hanoi the extent of the United States' obligations and commitments as well as the limits of likely U.S. involvement in future disputes. Clarity is necessary both to avoid a scenario in which regional actors are emboldened to aggressively confront China and to avert a setback to U.S. relations with regional nations due to perceptions of unfulfilled expectations.” (by Bonnie S. Glaser, Senior Advisor for Asia, Center for Strategic and International Studies)

Clarifications as to the extent of Washington’s support will be crucial when push comes to shove between claimants and China.

Lets get our act together and live in harmony with our neighbors and allies.

GWOT and Saudi by Erick San Juan

There are new revelations that caught my attention just like the open secret information that
The Global War on Terror (GWOT) is led by the United States and that it is not directed against Al Qaeda.

Quite the opposite: The “Global War on Terrorism” uses Al Qaeda terrorist operatives as their foot soldiers.

“Political Islam” and the imposition of an “Islamic State” (modeled on Qatar or Saudi Arabia) is an integral part of US foreign policy.

"America is the Terror State.

The GWOT is a diabolical instrument of Worldwide conquest.

It is a means to destabilizing sovereign countries and imposing regime change”. (By Prof. Michel Chossudovsky)

We have revisited 9-11 (in our last article) because of the brewing tension between the United States and Saudi Arabia on the 9-11 report which has 28 pages of classified information that will be released by the US through the US Congress after resolutions were filed. So far the declassification of the said ‘pages’ are still classified or the US Congress did not take action, yet.

But now, the table has turned and the Saudi government just accused the US government of blowing up World Trade Centers as pretext to perpetual war. (article by Jay Syrmopoulos)

He writes, “In response to the U.S. Senate's unanimous vote to allow 9/11 victims' families to sue Saudi Arabia in federal court, a report published in the London-based Al-Hayat daily, by Saudi legal expert Katib al-Shammari, claims that the U.S. masterminded the terror attacks as a means of creating a nebulous "enemy" in order to garner public support for a global war on terror.

The report by al-Shammari, translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), claims that long-standing American policy is "built upon the principle of advance planning and future probabilities," which the U.S. has now turned toward the Saudi regime after being successfully employed against first the Taliban and al-Qaeda, then Saddam Hussein and his secular Baathist controlled Iraq.

Al-Shammari claims the recent U.S. threats to "expose" documents implicating the Saudi government are simply the continuation of a U.S. policy, which he refers to as "victory by means of archive." He highlights that during the initial invasion of Iraq, under George H.W. Bush, Saddam Hussein was left alive and in power to be used as "a bargaining chip," but upon deciding that he was "no longer an ace up their sleeve" Washington moved to topple his government and install a U.S.-backed ruling party.

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 are now the "ace up the sleeve" of the U.S. government, according to al-Shammari.
        "September 11 is one of winning cards in the American archives, because all the wise people in the world who are experts on American policy and who analyze the images and the videos [of 9/11] agree unanimously that what happened in the [Twin] Towers was a purely American action, planned and carried out within the U.S. Proof of this is the sequence of continuous explosions that dramatically ripped through both buildings... Expert structural engineers demolished them with explosives, while the planes crashing [into them] only gave the green light for the detonation - they were not the reason for the collapse. But the U.S. still spreads blame in all directions. [This policy] can be dubbed 'victory by means of archives."

The impetus behind the attacks, writes al-Shammari, was to create "an obscure enemy - terrorism - which became what American presidents blamed for all their mistakes" and that would provide justification for any "dirty operation" in any nation.”

The word war on the real truth behind the 9-11 terror attacks in mainland USA is now raging and who will win in the end remains to be seen. But as what Prof. Michel Chossudovsky said the GWOT was designed for worldwide conquest through regime change and we have witnessed how this operation was implemented.

“Even Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton acknowledging that America created and funded Al Qaeda as a terrorist organization in the heyday of the Soviet-Afghan war:

    ““Let’s remember here… the people we are fighting today we funded them twenty years ago

    … let’s go recruit these mujahideen.

    “And great, let them come from Saudi Arabia and other countries, importing their Wahabi brand of Islam so that we can go beat the Soviet Union.”  (Originally published by Global Research in March 2013, video and transcript)

Our country was among the first to be part of that coalition against terrorists and in the process we became as the big brother’s lab to such operation and we saw that in the South with the Joint Special Operations Task Force in line with the GWOT. Until we have the EDCA and it is now the whole archipelago that the US converted as their military base. What else is new?

Let us always be reminded of the mistakes that happened in the past and the lessons gained from history. There is a programmed scenario that will trigger the next world war and it will be delayed but unfortunately the program is still on.

There’s a lot to hope for with the incoming new administration of Rodrigo Duterte but let us remain vigilant and keep our prayers intact and brace ourselves for whatever the next six years will hold for this nation.

911 Revisited by Erick San Juan

911 Revisited by Erick San Juan

On the 14th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, Dr. Kevin Barrett, a founding member of the Scientific Panel for the Investigation of 9/11, made the following remarks during an interview with Press TV - “A real investigation of 9/11 would destabilize the United States’ political system… and it could even lead to a civil war.

The truth about 9/11 is so horrific that if the American people actually were to learn that truth they would completely lose confidence in their system, because the truth of the matter is that a faction of power here in the United States – the neoconservative faction – orchestrated the events of the September 11, 2001 as a New Pearl Harbor designed to launch their agenda of world domination and a rollback of freedom in the United States,” he added.

Revisiting the timeline of events that led to the 9-11 terror attacks, what really happened some fourteen years ago as to what the “controversy surrounding the infamous “28 pages” on the possible Saudi connection with the terrorists that were excised from the joint Congressional report on the 9/11 attacks is at fever pitch. But that controversy is a distraction from the real problems that Saudi Arabia’s policies pose to the United States and the entire Middle East region.

The political pressure to release the 28 pages has been growing for the past couple of years, with resolutions from both houses of Congress urging the president to declassify the information. But now legislation with bipartisan sponsorship has advanced in Congress that would deprive any foreign government of sovereign immunity in regard to responsibility for a terrorist attack on US soil and thus make it possible to sue the Saudi government in court for damages from the 9/11 attacks.” (The Classified 9/11 ’28 Pages’: A Diversion from Real US-Saudi Issues
by Gareth Porter)

But the question lies on the pressing matter for the US Congress to pass the said bill with President Barack Obama’s strong opposition. What is behind such opposition?

As the call for declassification and release of the Classified 9/11, 28 pages is getting stronger, this development prompted Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir to threaten to pull out as much as $750 billion in Saudi assets held in the United States. The Obama administration opposes the legislation, warning of “unintended consequences” – specifically that the US government could face lawsuits because of its actions abroad. Analysts of Saudi economic policy, however, do not take al-Jubeir’s threat very seriously since it would simply punish the Saudi economy.

Meanwhile, Obama in an interview with Charlie Rose of CBS News on 16 April, said that his Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is reviewing the 28 pages “to make sure that whatever it is that is released is not gonna compromise some major national security interest of the United States.” Obama said Clapper was nearly finished so the issue might finally come to a head within the next few weeks.

But it is unlikely that the declassification of the redacted 28 pages would add any dramatic new revelation to the story of the Saudis and the hijackers who carried out the 9/11 attacks. Former Senator Bob Graham, who was head of the Senate side of the joint intelligence committee, has implied that the 28 pages containing incriminating evidence about the hijackers’ links to the Saudi government. But Graham’s smoking gun is more likely to be speculative leads rather than real evidence of Saudi government support for the hijackers.

Past suspicions of an official Saudi role in assisting the hijackers has focused on the two Saudi al-Qaeda operatives, Nawaf al Hazmi and Khalid al Mihdhar, who moved to the San Diego area in early February 2000 and were immediately assisted by a Saudi man who was suspected by Saudis in the San Diego area of working for the Saudi intelligence service.” (Ibid)

The cause of the declassification of the controversial 28 pages on the 9-11 report is so big that it could be the basis for the Americans to unite against their government and stage a civil war in the process.

The heat of the coming US elections will be heightened by crucial issues such as the classified 28 pages of the 9-11 report and the threat from the Saudi government to liquidate as much as $750 billion in Saudi Arabia’s US Treasury holdings.

Can the Obama administration have the time to put on hold this matter under his watch until the election of the new US president?

Lets wait and see.

Who Will Strike First? by Erick San Juan

Who Will Strike First? by Erick San Juan

A threat of a nuclear tsunami is for real and the first strike policy that will come from a superpower can trigger such a global disaster.

This warning came from an article by William Jones (Executive Intelligence Review), 'Prelude to War in the Pacific' that “President Barack Obama’s provocative policy in the Pacific is leading to a conflict between nuclear powers, and can have no other result if the policy is not quickly reversed. These provocations have gone so far as sailing destroyers straight into waters legitimately claimed as territorial waters by the People’s Republic of China, in alleged freedom of navigation patrols, and attempts to line up local “allies” to join in. While the naval deployments are accompanied by all sorts of high-falutin’ moralizing rhetoric from the U.S. government, in reality they have less justification than the European gunboats on the Yangtze in the 19th Century.”

Still a long way until the Americans will choose their new President and a lot of things can happen between now and the day of the proclamation of the new US President. The world is in the wait and see mode as we witness the militarization of the South China Sea as the provocations continue.

I would like to share some salient points in the said article of Jones in EIR, reads : The Western media, in their typical manner, have depicted China’s claims to the Nansha (Spratly) and Xisha (Paracel) Islands as a Chinese “power grab,” although for most of China’s history, these claims have never been contested. In the 1970s—with the growth in the importance of the seabeds for offshore drilling and the expansion of the fishing industry with a diminishing fish population—other countries in the region have raised their own claims to the islands, and the Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia all began, with the help of their militaries, to build facilities on some of the islands, which China solemnly protested at the time.

After World War II, the United States fully supported China in reclaiming these islands from Japan. But the Cold War and the peaceful rise of China to become a world power have changed all of that. And recent U.S. actions have effectively sent signals to China that the United States will not accept the Chinese claims and is prepared to go to war to prevent China from asserting them, despite Obama’s hollow pretense that the United States is not taking sides with respect to those claims.

When the Japanese moved into Southeast Asia in World War II, everything changed. The islands were occupied by Japan until the end of the war. After the war, it was clearly recognized by the Allied Powers that the islands were part of Chinese territory and should be returned to China. Both the war-time Cairo Declaration and the subsequent Potsdam Declaration are explicit in their demand that Japan should give back these occupied islands to China.

In fact, the United States sent warships to the Kuomintang in 1946 to enable the recovery of the Nansha Islands. Books, periodicals, and maps published in the United States clearly indicated that the Nanshas are part of Chinese territory. While the San Francisco Treaty in 1951 also affirmed that Japan must give up the islands, it did not explicitly state that the territory belongs to China, an argument that is now being used by the Philippines to bolster its own claims. But China was not represented at all at that conference, and had no say in the formulation of the treaty. While the United States wished to invite Taiwan to represent China, Great Britain wanted the People’s Republic of China, and the dispute resulted in no Chinese representative being invited.”
 
So it has been like this that China was never represented in such ‘talks’ and in the process they lost the opportunity to claim what is theirs. And people repeating history as the Philippines and the rest of the nations in the region are awaiting the Arbitral Tribunal’s decision from The Hague. Again, China was not represented because that was their choice this time.

Solutions to ease tensions in the South China Sea will continue to be a perennial problem because claimants will always fight for what they believe is theirs and the threat of a war in the Pacific will continue to haunt us.

According to Jones “… But the U.S. invasions of Chinese waters, and the attempts by the United States to create a mini-NATO to target China using the few allies it has in the region, have made such a solution all but impossible. And unless the war-mongering Barack Obama is soon removed from office for his crimes, and his policy reversed, we may be looking at another war in the Pacific—and the threat of a nuclear tsunami.”

Lets all be vigilant and we're not sure this time as to who will strike first. Another false flag op is in the offing.

There Is No Stopping The Word War

There Is No Stopping The Word War
By Erick San Juan

In the two-day meeting of the G7 (US, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan) recently in the Japanese city of Hiroshima, the group issued a joint statement saying: “We are concerned about the situation in the East and South China Seas, and emphasise the fundamental importance of peaceful management and settlement of disputes. We express our strong opposition to any intimidating, coercive or provocative unilateral actions that could alter the status quo and increase tensions.”

The G7 also urged “all states to refrain from such actions as land reclamations” and “building of outposts... for military purposes”. (AFP)

Obviously the statement of the G7 was directed on China even without directly saying it. And such comments angered China in the process, according to reports.

Beijing indicated that it felt targeted by the comments. In his response, China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang reiterated China's belief it has a legitimate claim to the territory.

He urged the foreign ministers to "stop making irresponsible remarks and all irresponsible actions, and truly play a constructive role for regional peace and stability".

And the word war continues as Russia came to the rescue and sided with China on the South China Sea issue.

“Russia backed China’s stand on the disputed South China Sea (SCS) issue and said ‘external’ forces should not interfere in the maritime dispute, an apparent reference to the U.S. presence in the area.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi and told him that the SCS issue should be resolved peacefully through political means, such as negotiations between the parties directly concerned, while ‘external’ forces should refrain from interfering.

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and international laws, including the pacts reached between China and ASEAN, are the legal frameworks that should be followed.”

Unfortunately, China really wanted bilateral agreement/negotiations between China and claimants in the contested area in the SCS and will not heed to UNCLOS decision. Even though Russia stated that China should follow such international laws.

Now it’s between Russia/China and the claimants in the SCS and also the US who is very vocal concerning the freedom of navigation op.

There seems to be no stopping this word wars and as long as they continue this, tensions will escalate and might lead to something else that will not end up so well.

As we await the decision of the Tribunal of the UNCLOS on the petition of our country regarding contested area in the SCS, together with the rest of the region, China is eyeing to build structures (airstrip) in Scarborough Shoal which some pundits believe will escalate the already tensed situation in the region.

And with the coming elections, China is hoping that the next Philippine President will be kinder enough to settle the SCS issue in their favor and be less dependent on Uncle Sam’s influence.

From the article of Richard Javad Heydarian (Assistant Professor in political science at De La Salle University), Asia’s New Battlefield: The Philippines’ South China Sea Moment of Truth – “At this point, everything boils down to how far the United States is willing to go to aid its beleaguered ally. There is growing pressure on the Obama administration to openly extend the Philippine-U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty to Scarborough Shoal in order to deter further Chinese belligerence. After all, America’s current policy of strategic ambiguity doesn’t seem to have worked. As America ramps up its military presence in the Philippines under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, it has no interest in seeing China establishing military bases eerily close to Philippine shores.

More directly, the Philippines also has the option of deploying frigates and coast-guard vessels to block any efforts by China to build military facilities on the contested shoal, with America providing back up support—through reconnaissance missions and aerial patrols, inter alia—by maintaining a robust presence ‘just over the horizon’. The two allies have been already conducting joint patrols in contested waters. America is currently augmenting its military footprint, particular air power, in the Philippines, signaling preparations for potential contingency interventions in coming months. In the Scarborough Shoal, America is expected to come to the Philippines’ rescue if Philippine “armed forces, public vessels or aircraft in the Pacific” come under attack by a third party (China) in an event of armed clashes. The United States, along with allies such as Japan and Australia, are also expected to assume the de facto role of enforcers once the arbitration verdict is out. Whether it wants it or not, the Philippines is now at the center of Asia’s new strategic battlefield.”

God forbid what we have been saying all this time that our country is the next battleground, the possible epicenter of conflict. Let us pray harder that our next leader will be blessed with great wisdom to avoid such stupid war and settle this centuries old dispute once and for all.