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US asked for, DND, AFP OK’d, Cagayan airport as EDCA site

We’re now the US’ unsinkable aircraft carrier

THE Americans asked the Philippine government to designate the Cagayan North International Airport in the north to be one of the additional four sites they could use as their forward operating sites (FOS) in war mobilization under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) between the two countries. President Aquino 3rd first agreed to the pact in 2014, with President Marcos Jr. expanding the number of FOS that the US could use.

Two government confidential documents provided me with such a plan. First was a late 2022 letter addressed to Jose Chan-Gonzaga, the assistant secretary for American affairs at the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), that was sent by Pablo Lorenzo, assistant secretary for strategic assessments and international affairs at the Department of National Defense (DND).

The letter asserted: “This pertains to the inclusion of the Basa Air Base (BAB) Runway Repair Project and the Cagayan North International Airport (CNIA) as additional project and additional location, respectively, under the EDCA. As recommended by the Armed Forces of the Philippines, the department shares the view that developing the CNIA as an additional proposed location as well as the inclusion of the BAB runway project as an additional project under EDCA may be favorably considered given its strategic value of constructing facilities and pre-positioning defense assets in these areas.” (emphasis mine)

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Tremendous pressure on Marcos for expanded EDCA, why?

TREMENDOUS pressure was put on President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. to implement quickly and expand the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), sources in the Foreign affairs department disclosed.

They pointed out that the US ambassador to Manila, MaryKay Loss Carlson, even inadvertently revealed such pressure when she said in a recent TV interview: “Never in my 38 years as a diplomat have I seen so many of our top officials talk to a head of state in such a short span of time.”

Document (redacted) showing DFA and DND lower officials agreeing to
                             Cagayan North International Airport as a new EDCA site.

She said: “Three of what we call the ‘big four’ have been here to talk to Marcos: Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. And not only that, you have had visit here the secretary of the Navy, the commandant of the US Marine Corps, the undersecretary of state for political affairs Victoria Nuland, and in the coming week the secretary of the Air Force.”

Indeed as the US ambassador pointed out, that number and quality of US leaders talking to Marcos in such a short time — when the US has been busy with the Russian war to take over Ukraine — is unprecedented. And I certainly don’t think all those high-ranking US officials were here for just getting-to-know-you chit-chats or without any agenda in their talks with Marcos.

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EDCAs vs Russia, now vs China

TO be honest, I am in awe of the United States, its strategic thinking and moves to maintain its hegemony over the globe forever. In 2005 and 2006, it struck so-called defense agreements with Romania and Bulgaria, respectively, which allows US military forces to use military camps to stockpile their war material and station its troops for an emerging war.

Sixteen to 17 years later, these camps are proving to be of great strategic value if Russia’s war against Ukraine spills over to Eastern Europe: the US forces will be using those bases against the Russians. They will also be used if Bulgaria and Romania agree to allow these camps to serve as a staging ground for the delivery of weapons from the US and NATO to Ukraine.

US can use military bases of Romania and Bulgaria, Ukraine’s neighbors

Of course these defense agreements — that would allow the US to use Bulgarian and Romanian camps — were among the US and its allies’ moves (the most important of which is the prodding of Ukrainian leaders to get their country to become a NATO member) that convinced Putin that Russia was being encircled. In Putin’s mind, he had to stop that and invade Ukraine. He fell though into the US’ hands, and is now demonized as a ruthless killer of Ukrainian civilians.

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Read more about the article Understanding the nine-dash phantom line
FIGURE 1: Official China map (2001) showing nine-dash line and the Spratlys that it calls Nansha.
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Understanding the nine-dash phantom line

First of 3 parts

IN recent days, this paper has been the venue for the dominant American propaganda line against China’s alleged expansionism in the South China Sea. Not coincidentally this line, a lie, was put into high gear after President Obama launched his so-called Pivot to Asia policy, a thinly disguised program to contain the rise of China as the Asian superpower.

That line goes like this: China on its own drew a nine-dash line around most of the South China Sea on its map of its territory, and then claims everything within it as its own, demanding that the world, especially the nations bordering that sea, to recognize its sovereignty over the features and waters inside the line. China bashers here and abroad have claimed that the line is “the main driver of the South China dispute.”

Recently, a columnist cut-and-pasted reviews (not even the publication itself) of a book he raved over as explaining definitely, what the nine-dash line is and that it has no basis in international law. The book’s cleverness — and that of American propagandists — is that it exploits people’s fondness for fairy tales, with heroes or villains. In that particular book, it claims that “a singular cartographic combatant” in 1936 created that nine-dash line that the author asserts “is at the heart of today’s struggle over the South China Sea.” The heights of imagination indeed; “A cartographic combatant!”

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‘Lifestyle check’ order worsens PNP demoralization

PNP chief Gen. Rodolfo Azurin Jr. File Photo

PHILIPPINE National Police (PNP) chief Gen. Rodolfo Azurin Jr.’s announcement that the so-called lifestyle checks will also be undertaken on the organization’s over 600 generals and colonels has worsened the demoralization of the country’s police force.

The disaffection with the PNP’s leadership and its official supervisor Interior Secretary Benhur Abalos was triggered last week by the latter’s order for the top PNP officers to submit “courtesy resignations” to make the task of “cleansing the police” of its scalawags easier.

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‘Courtesy resignations’: Baseless, pointless and destabilizing

Aquino invented it; Marcos is using it. PUBLIC DOMAIN PHOTO

Last of 2 parts

THE Interior and Local Government secretary Benhur Abalos’ campaign to get the Philippine National Police’s 479 generals and colonels to submit this only-in-the-Philippines thing called “courtesy resignations” — wholeheartedly backed by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. — will be among this administration’s colossal governance blunders.

Talk of historical irony. It was Marcos’ nemesis who invented this fiction of courtesy resignation.

“Courtesy resignation” is the pulled-out-of-thin-air invention that President Corazon Aquino used in her Proclamation 1, issued Feb. 25, 1986, or the day she claimed to have assumed the presidency. In that proclamation, she said: “As a first step to restore public confidence, I expect all appointed public officials to submit their courtesy resignations beginning with members of the Supreme Court.”

“Courtesy resignation” was obviously a public relations spin for Aquino’s dictatorial order: “All you Marcos minions, including the Supreme Court, step down now!” The Supreme Court justices of course ignored Aquino’s order and so did Marcos Cabinet ministers and deputies who simply didn’t go to office, didn’t even bother to submit “courtesy resignations” and faded away from the government — refusing to pay “courtesy” to the new one-woman ruler. Even the highest ranking official after Marcos, Prime Minister Cesar Virata refused to vacate his post, pointing out that it wasn’t Marcos who appointed him but members of the Batasan Pambansa.

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Historians must confront the Plaza Miranda bombing

HISTORIANS, especially those of the Yellow persuasion currently monopolizing the martial law discourse at the UP, Ateneo and UST, must investigate the claim — for me, a fact without an iota of doubt — that the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) was responsible for the Aug. 21, 1971 bombing of the opposition rally at Plaza Miranda.

They cannot bury their heads in the sand, or cover their eyes, and pretend that the CPP had nothing to do with it.

Nor can they claim it was an insignificant event in our political history. It was intended by its architect, the CPP chairman at that time, Jose Ma. Sison, as he had explained, “split the ruling classes” so they would fight each other to cause a “revolutionary flow.”

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Secrets of the Plaza Miranda Bombing

In 1989, American journalist Gregg Jones published a book Red Revolution, which incontrovertibly showed that it was the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) that undertook August 21 1971 the bombing of the Liberal Party’s main electoral rally.

That was the vilest false-flag operation ever undertaken in this country. Even as Jones was largely sympathetic to the Communist insurgency, seeing it as a legitimate revolutionary movement against the dictatorship, his book had a chapter titled “Ghosts of Plaza Miranda.” There, he said the perpetrator was the CPP, as ordered by its chairman then Jose Ma. Sison. The book provided details on how the Plaza Miranda was planned and executed, the personalities involved, based on his interviews with officials at the Central Committee level.

Right after the grenades exploded at Plaza Miranda, August 21, 1971.
(From Jones’ book, attributed to Lopez Museum)
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Loren’s astounding naivetĂ© is dangerous

FIFTY-THREE years since the Communist Party launched a conspiracy to topple our democratic government through force, killing over 14,000 of the Republic’s soldiers and police, I find it scandalous for a senator of the Republic to claim that this scourge of this land is merely fighting for social justice.

I am referring to Sen. Loren Legarda, who in a speech the other day in Congress, a prime symbol of democracy, also said, referring to the Reds: “Believing in policies and philosophies that may be left of center, so to speak, does not make anyone subversive.”

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We have no heroes: Reds and Yellows have debased our concept of ‘heroes’

TODAY is National Heroes’ Day. What is strange about this holiday, so important that the country gives up a full day of working, that workers paid daily suffer, is the law that ordered it. Commonwealth Act 3827 of Oct. 28, 1931 did not specify who were the heroes the day was celebrating. The Act consisted of only three sentences:

“Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the Philippines in legislature assembled and by the authority of the same:

“Section I: The last Sunday of August of every year is hereby declared as an official holiday to be known as the National Heroes Day.

“Section II: This Act shall take effect upon its approval.”

Succeeding laws merely reaffirmed its date of celebration. However, we owe our being able to sleep late today to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, an economist by training and very practical-minded, who moved it to the first Monday of August, so we’ll have a long weekend, which she thought would be a boost to local tourism.

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