MOST of the Philippine elite, I would guess, has always been pro-Israel, given the fact we have been brainwashed into the worldviews of the US, which, after the UK (that first authorized Jews to create their state in Palestine), has been responsible for the emergence of the Jewish state as the American-supported superpower in the Middle East. (see table)

The brutality of the attack by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas ) — in which women, the elderly, children and babies were murdered or held hostage — likely has further portrayed not just that terror group but Palestinians as a people, as the villains in the Middle East.

We have to see through the lies of the West, especially as the current war between Israel and Hamas can turn the entire Middle East into a battlefield. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, criticized for having underestimated Hamas and blindsided by its invasion, will, as he himself has said, order the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to reduce Gaza into rubble, with every Hamas killed.

THAT in effect was the warning given by Chinese ambassador Huang Xilian to former president Rodrigo Duterte, that the Philippines would be attacked by China’s forces if it has places militarily used against it.

“Places” of course are the nine sites President Aquino 3rd and then President Marcos, Jr. had agreed to allow US armed forces, under the so-called Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), to use as their temporary military bases — for stationing troops and stocking up weapons and war materiel — in a situation the Americans are going to war against some enemy, which is obviously China. This is likely if the latter decides to forcibly take over its rogue province Taiwan.

Duterte disclosed the ambassador’s statements in an edition of his regular program “Gikan sa Masa, Para sa Masa” (” From the Masses, For the Masses”) that was surprisingly ignored by the media. Duterte’s program is at SMNI News Channel, owned by firms linked to the religious leader Pastor Quiboloy, a longtime supporter of the former president.

“I reminded him (the Chinese ambassador) again that the Philippines does not have a quarrel with China,” Duterte said, “but his answer to me was, ‘if you provide places where there can be an aggressive action to China, the Philippines would always be a target’.”

“In the interest of the public’s right to know, there should be an open discussion. Americans should come clean and give us a truthful narration or narrative or an explanation and identify the places where they have installed bases here in the Philippines,” the former president said.

Duterte and Mamba: Two patriots opposing US military bases here.

He said the Marcos administration should be “open for discussion” because it would affect the Filipino people who “would be facing a war not of our own making” if tensions between US and China would escalate. Duterte said that the US could bring “nuclear warheads” to its military installations in the country. “By granting America several bases, we can be sure and I am sure as the sun will rise in the east that these nuclear bases … will have nuclear warheads,” he said.

WHILE most (Western) economists claim that Hamas’ invasion of Israel last Saturday so far has not been an “economic event” that would affect the rest of the world, war’s other name is chaos, whose impact is magnified, and accelerated, in a globalized world.

I don’t think Hamas — the acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement in Arabic — planned it as just a bigger intifada (“uprising”) that was boldly extended outside Gaza. That Israelis themselves see it as their version of “9/11” when al-Qaida reduced the Twin Towers in New York to rubble is foreboding — that attack led to the US-led wars against Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

Remember also that the Israel-Hamas war is not the only one raging at present. There is still the 19-month-old Ukraine-Russia war. Russia may just see the Israel-Hamas conflict as leading to the lessening of US resolve to defend Ukraine and undertake an intense, more ruthless campaign to subdue that country.

THE worsening of the country’s inflation to a rate of 6.1 percent in September, from August’s 5.3 percent — after repeated boasts by government just two months ago that it was under control — should jar President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. into making a decisive move 14 months into his administration,

He should fire what is emerging as an ineffective and spineless economic management team. This includes the Agriculture secretary himself; he should appoint ASAP a full-time Agriculture secretary.

Second of 2 parts

First of a 2-part series

THE “Scarborough Shoal stand-off” in 2012 should already have totally debunked the colossal lie still believed by many of our leaders, that the US, as its defense secretary has said several times with a strange grin, “has our back,” that it will defend its little brown brother in case of conflict with China.

Former Supreme Court justice Antonio Carpio encapsulated several times many of our leaders,’ especially the military brass’, undying faith in the US when he said, “Without the US as ally, we will lose the West Philippine Sea.”

Carpio obviously no longer reads newspapers in his retirement years. Despite President Aquino 3rd and his Foreign Affairs secretary trooping to Washington D.C. in 2012 to beg President Obama to escort our vessels in the Scarborough incident, despite his State Department secretary Hillary Clinton’s announcement on November 2011 on the deck of a US warship anchored on Manila Bay, that the US will defend the Philippines’ maritime claims, the US rejected Aquino’s cries for help in the Scarborough Shoal confrontation, for the sake of its own national interests. These included Obama’s worry that the unimportant Philippines could risk his reelection chances months from the stand-off.

PRESIDENT Ferdinand Marcos Jr. two days ago declared with much bombast, “While we are not looking for a fight, we will defend our territory.” He’s certainly got his work cut out for him. Or, his Foreign Affairs secretary isn’t briefing him properly, or he isn’t listening. (Such an irony of history: the sons of two arch-enemies said exactly the same thing, separated by 11 years.)

Marcos was referring to Scarborough Shoal, Bajo de Masinloc to us, which the Chinese last week encircled with a floating barrier in order, it said, to block the entry of Philippine government vessels into its lagoon without risking a collision of its ships if its coast guard attempts to block them.

When the Philippine ships seemed no longer attempting to enter the area, the Chinese removed the barriers; the Philippine Coast Guard boasted that it had dismantled the barrier by having a single diver cut the ropes that anchored the barrier. Hilarious really.

WITH our disputes over the South China Sea territorial and maritime disputes again hogging the front pages, I am again astonished at the massive misinformation on the issue, a testament indeed to the tremendous power of the US and its propaganda apparatus.

What gives these lies so much power is first, deep-seated anti-Chinese racism, which early in our history as a people led to massacres of the Spanish-era Chinese settlements, called the parian. Second, it is another instance of that deeply ingrained mentality that psychologists and anthropologists call the “us vs. them” syndrome: that is, evil is the other tribe, the other clan, the other fraternity, the other basketball team, and the other country with territorial disputes with us.

It is understandable for the man on the street, senators playing the gallery, and Philippine Coast Guard officials like spokesman Jay Tarriela basking in the media limelight and swallowing hook, line and sinker the American deception. Such brainwashing is easier because the SCS dispute involves complex concepts as abstract as, say, physics’ black holes or quantum entanglement: territorial sea, exclusive economic zone, and even the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos).

It is disappointing, though that a few columnists, otherwise intelligent and scholarly as well as known for diligent research, have easily fallen for the US propaganda line.

One example is a statement from a veteran columnist in his Philippine Star piece yesterday: “Under the terms of the Unclos, Bajo de Masinloc sits well within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone. The arbitral tribunal in 2016 rejected the validity of China’s sovereignty claims over Bajo de Masinloc and the contested reefs further south.”

ANYONE who has spent some time studying geopolitics, superpower behavior, and especially China’s moves to claim the hegemonic throne in Asia would be worried over our government’s immediate response to its setting up of a 300-meter floating barrier in the southeast portion of Scarborough Shoal, discovered Sunday by our Philippine Coast Guard (PCG).

The Philippines defied the superpower by having its personnel cut the ropes used for the floating barrier.

The ropes were cut by a man not even wearing a diving suit and scuba gear, which raises my suspicion that the PCG may claim it was merely done by fishermen outraged that they were being blocked from the fish-rich waters.