China’s repolyo strategy @Ayungin Shoal

Ano nga ba ang nakikinitang endgame ng China sa pagharang nito sa ating mga bangkang maydalang pagkain, tubig, atbp. para sa 8-man contingent ng BRP Sierra Madre, military outpost natin sa Ayungin shoal, na teritoryo natin, hindi ng China.

Noong 2013, a year after the Scarborough scandal, ito ang sabi ng isang Maj. Gen. Zhang Zhaozhong ng China’s People Liberation Army kay Jeff Himmelman ng New York Times Magazine.

He described a “cabbage strategy,” which entails surrounding a contested area with so many boats — fishermen, fishing administration ships, marine surveillance ships, navy warships — that “the island is thus wrapped layer by layer like a cabbage.”

… Of taking territory from the Philippines, he said: “We should do more such things in the future. For those small islands, only a few troopers are able to station on each of them, but there is no food or even drinking water there. If we carry out the cabbage strategy, you will not be able to send food and drinking water onto the islands. Without the supply for one or two weeks, the troopers stationed there will leave the islands on their own. Once they have left, they will never be able to come back.”

Dagdag pa ni Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt, director of Asia-Pacific programs at the U.S. Institute of Peace:

Nothing in China happens overnight. Any move you see was planned and prepared for years, if not more. So obviously this maritime issue is very important to China.” https://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2013/10/27/south-china-sea/index.html

Fast forward to 2023. According to the AFP’s early July air patrols, there was a swarm of more than 50 Chinese “fishing” vessels in the vicinity of Sabina Shoal, not far from Ayungin. Na nadagdagan pa noong August 5, nang i-water-cannon ang ating Coast Guard.

In the Aug. 5 incident, there were additionally some 12 Chinese militia vessels aside from the six Chinese Coast Guard  ships in the area, according to AFP Western Command chief Vice Admiral Alberto Carlos. “These fishing vessels are really militia… they seem to be working (and) taking orders from the Chinese Coast Guard.” https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2023/08/11/2287783/afp-eyes-maritime-militia-wps 

Five days after the water-cannon affront, the West Philippine Sea was still aswarm with mostly Chinese vessels.

CARLOS. … as far as the entire WPS, based on our last monitoring, close to 500 or more than 400. But that is just an estimate because there might be duplication of sightings,” he said.

Last monitoring was just yesterday on August 10, in Mischief Reef alone, there were 191. Around 85 percent are Chinese vessels,” he added.

Ito na mismo ang repolyo strategy at work: pinapalibutan, binabakuran, ng China ang Ayungin ng sapinsaping mga bangka at barko  ng mga mangingisda kuno, pero marine surveillance ships at navy warships sa totoo.  Layers of boats and ships pretending to be loaded with  fishermen, na papalapit nang palalapit sa BRP Sierra Madre. Ang goal ay malinaw: ma-takeover ang Ayungin nang walang putukan, as in, takutan lang, with water cannons and laser threats and the like. Gray zone tactics that the U.S deems below the threshold of military warfare.

‘Ika ni Ray Powell, director of SeaLight at the Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation at Stanford University:

… China operate[s] in the “gray zone” by carrying out actions just below what might be considered acts of war but that achieve the same result — Beijing gaining territory or control without firing a shot.

… The Sierra Madre is visibly rusting away, it is becoming structurally unsound. At some point it will begin to breakup and otherwise become uninhabitable.  At which point china’s strategy works because all they have to do then is sort of ‘rescue’ the poor Philippine sailors off the shoal because they’re the only people around.

And then they will control the shoal.

Unless something changes, that is what will happen. It’s just a matter of when it will happen.

WHAT NOW

Matagal nang pahirapan ang pagpaparating ng supplies at repair materials sa BRP Sierra Madre. Ang tanong ngayon: Is China revving up for a full-court press kumbaga, as in, wala nang supplies na palulusutin?

Ayon kay Manny Mogato ng PressOne:

China has been waiting for the ship [BRP Sierra Madre] to collapse but the Philippines has been trying to save it by reinforcing it with cement and steel.

On Aug. 5 … The Chinese Coast Guard accused the Philippines of bringing in construction materials to BRP Sierra Madre, blocking the boats and using a water cannon to prevent the vessels from getting near BRP Sierra Madre.

One of the wooden boats made it though. The shallow waters around BRP Sierra Madre prevented the large Chinese vessels from following it. The other boat left after evading too much pressure from the water cannon.

Sa palagay naman ni Alex Magno ng PhilStar:

This [Aug 5] incident is not an accidental one.

This will be the standard Chinese tactic from hereon. They will try to disrupt every resupply mission, hoping that we eventually throw up our arms and decide it is too costly to maintain that small detachment on Ayungin.

China has initiated a severe test of wills. They will continue to cram the waters they claim with Coast Guard and “militia” vessels. All these prowling vessels will try to intercept every Filipino vessel that moves into what they claim is their territory.

At heto ang reaction ni Ex-Foreign Affairs Sec., now PH Ambassador to the UK, Teddy Locsin sa August 10 pahayag ni AFP Chief of Staff Romeo Brawner Jr. na balak ng gobiyernong mag-deploy ng naval reservists sa West Ph Sea.

TEDDY LOCSIN. We’re gonna need gunboats—more of ours out there, the higher risk of misencounter triggering the Mutual Defense Treaty—and ending its vacuities. Brawner is right; we gotta be all over the arena so our only military ally knows it isn’t a shadow play. A war for real is coming. 

Yes. A war for real. Without shades of gray. Because Ayungin is ours, #AtinAngAyungin, no ifs or buts.

*

A Game of Shark and Minnow

‘Little blue men’: Is a militia Beijing says doesn’t exist causing trouble in the South China Sea?

AFP eyes maritime militia in WPS 

Philippines should take action vs. China’s ‘gray zone’ tactics —experts 

Water cannon incident confirms Chinese fishing vessels are militia – WESCOM 

‘Creeping invasion’ — Walk the talk, Gibo tells China 

Scarborough Shoal and the Spratlys in ancient maps

Between America and China…

Notes on Lea Salonga and on “Here Lies Love”

No debate — Lea is right to be wary of strangers. Her fans should not take it personally.

What IS debatable is the charge that she is a “Marcos apologist”, first raised in 2016 when BBM was contesting Leni’s win as VP, apparently based on her replies (in social media) regarding her “stand on the Marcoses”.

LEA. They have always been kind to me and my family. … I will not disrespect them. … If not for that part of my life (I sang a lot in the palace for foreign guests since I was 10 until I was 14) I probably wouldn’t have ever dreamed I could make it as a performer abroad. I can’t ever look back upon it with regret. If nothing else, every presentation showed how beautiful our fashions were, and how talented our artists were.  https://i.redd.it/dkfitkzqs, f11.jpg https://i.redd.it/dkfitkzqslf11.jpg 

Lea was simply speaking the truth of her personal experience of the Marcoses back in the early 80s. By the time she started  performing in the palace at age 10, she was already singing and acting on stage (The King and I, Annie (title role), The Sound of Music, atbp. with Repertory Philippines) and guesting on TV shows. No doubt her exposure to and participation in Imelda’s high-end affairs that were always world-class went a long way in preparing her for the Ms. Saigon auditions and playing the title role, no less, sa West End UK and Broadway NY. But does it mean she is blind to the abuses of the Marcos regime?

LEA. In celebrating the good, I don’t ignore the bad. The good and bad are part of the whole truth. The abuses should not ever be forgotten. … When you’re 10 and sheltered, you know what you know. And then you discover more as you grow. … I only learned more the older I got. As with everyone else. … I do not doubt the truth about the Martial Law experience for many of our countrymen. That would be spitting on history.  https://www.gmanetwork.com/entertainment/showbiznews/news/23075/read-lea-salongas-opinion-about-the-marcoses-create-buzz-online/story

Fast forward to a July 6 2023 Playbill interview with Lea in the run-up to the re-staging of David Byrne’s Imelda musical “Here Lies Love” that she co-produces and where she plays Ninoy Aquino’s mother Doña Aurora.

PLAYBILL. Salonga vividly remembers Aquino’s death, the news coverage of it in the Philippines as well as his face on all the magazines afterwards. As part of her research for the role, Salonga spoke to Aquino’s brother-in-law Ken Kashiwahara. “[Aurora] was the one who had to make the decision to have his body on display,” says Salonga. “So that left such an indelible mark on so many people, and then just sparked an awakening in many folks from home.”

Salonga was 15 [during the People Power Revolution] … she remembers her parents making food at home and packing it into containers. “I remember my dad driving out to send it to whoever he could reach. Just to keep people on the street,” recalls Salonga.

To play such an important figure of recent Filipino history, it’s a task that Salonga describes with a deep intake of breath and a deepening of her voice, “Ohhh! It’s a lot.”
 https://playbill.com/article/lea-salonga-and-arielle-jacobs-know-that-here-lies-love-is-controversial-but-they-stand-by-it

Unfortunately, “Here Lies Love” is said to be too kind to Imelda.

RUBEN CARRANZA. David Byrne’s attempt to humanize Imelda Marcos insults the impoverished people she and her family stole from. And because it is playing at a time when the Marcoses have lied their way back to power, ‘Here Lies Love’ will only reinforce those lies and serve, intentionally or not, the larger Marcos agenda of denying truth and revising the history of their dictatorship.” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/06/theater/here-lies-love-background.html

GINA APOSTOL. The effect of Here Lies Love is comic, benumbing, discordant, enthralling. The disco ballads, oozing Imelda’s rags to riches tale, underline the damaged psyche that held a country in its hair-sprayed grip for 20 years. They’re songs of a broken party girl whose megalomania leads to vicious, unforgivable murder — effects of dictatorship. But after the mayhem, as we know, and as the play notes, Imelda remains beautifully coiffed, unjailed. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/dancing-dictators/

LUIS FRANCIA.  Imelda actively took part in governing the country, and had been named by Ferdinand as his successor in the event of his death. Wags always said that the country had His and Hers governments. It was this and her attendant notoriety that drew Bryne’s attention in the first place. Beyond superficial nods to political events such as the declaration of martial law (“Order 1081”) and the imprisonment of Senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino (“Seven Years”)–the Marcoses’ most celebrated political opponent, whose assassination in 1983 eventually led to the demise of the regime—there is no sense of the public and political context that shaped Imelda, a grievous omission that undercuts Here Lies Love’s attempt to investigate what as well as who made Imelda what she is.  https://web.archive.org/web/20220818071905/https://thefanzine.com/when-disco-was-the-soundtrack-to-martial-law-david-byrne-fatboy-slim-and-imelda-marcos/

ERIC GAMALINDA. One can only offer so much detail on the long and convoluted saga of the rise and fall of the Marcoses. But in a narrative of breakneck speed (90 minutes), Imelda becomes the true heroine: complex, flawed, and brought down by hubris — almost Grecian in her tragedy. During one number, when she sang, “It takes a woman to do a man’s job,” the audience actually exploded in applause.

In the end, as Imelda shrinks from the glare of helicopter lights overhead, you still see her as a victim of circumstance. Her final song, “Why Don’t You Love Me,” is the anguished bellow of a lost soul, unable to comprehend the fate handed to her, when all she wanted was to “spread love.” https://www.rappler.com/entertainment/theater/inventing-imelda-review-here-lies-love-broadway/

But all that’s on Byrne, not Lea.

That Lea plays not Imelda but Doña Aurora places her on the right side of history.

The next challenge is to bring “Here Lies Love” to Manila, where it all happened. To some extent, staging it in the U.S. is easy and safe: that audience will always see it from a certain distance. Staging it in Manila would open it, us, up to a different set of discussions, about our history and its telling, the personal and the political, and the role that culture plays in nation’s search for meaning.

Here lies the nation that gave birth to “Here Lies Love”. We are the audience it deserves. And with the Marcoses back in power, there is no better time than the present.

Balik TVJ

The story-reveal of Tito Vic & Joey’s sudden exit from Eat Bulaga was kind of he-said-she-said — sabi nina TVJ, sabi ng mga Jalosjos — that barely agreed on anything. What was clear lang to all and sundry was that TVJ did not get to bid their audience of some 44 years a proper goodbye. They were unceremoniously replaced by unfamiliar faces of unknown talents, mostly newbies, everyone trying very hard to have fun and be funny a la Legit Dabarkads, as though high energy, never mind history, is all it takes as long as hawak at gamit ng show ang Eat Bulaga title and the “recall quality of the enduring brand.” Big mistake.

Tito Vic & Joey had every right and reason to be offended by the outright grab of a brand that the trio built painstakingly from scratch, fuelled by creative comedic juices unlike any others’ in Philippine TV and pop culture. Sure, the producers had reason to look ahead, the trio is getting on in years, dapat paghandaan ang kanilang exit, sinong ipapalit na kayang i-sustain ang ratings ng said-to-be the longest-running noontime TV show in the world, lalo na’t may Vice Ganda na namamayagpag on the side.

But surely the Jalosjos squad could have treated TVJ with some respect instead of treating them like talents na puwedeng | madaling palitan ng kung sino-sino lang. As if the physical brand were all that mattered when really, without TVJ, Eat Bulaga is a hollow brand that doesn’t match the product and smacks of unfair, if legal, appropriation of Tito Vic and Joey’s creative property. ‘Twould have been smarter to come up with a new name, build a new brand that would match the vibes of an evolving lunchtime demographic.

Obviously I’m a TVJ fan, have been since the days of Discorama and “Tough Hits” where they’d do the singing trio act, punning and playing around with the lyrics of top hits (Billboard and OPM), in perfect harmony yet — it helped that they could really sing — toward punchlines ranging from the sublimely hilarious to grossly bastos. Check out Baby A. Gil’s “How ‘song wreckers’ Tito, Vic and Joey made Tough Hits” and also YouTube where you’ll find some 6 volumes of “Tough Hits” na nakakatawa pa rin LOLZ. And read here “Joey de Leon credits Danny Javier of APO for coining ‘Tough Hits’.

The only time we stopped watching Eat Bulaga was in the year of the RH debate when “Tito Sen” was vigorously opposing the Reproductive Health Bill, refusing women the right to choose. By the time he ran for VP in 2022 we thought he could win anyway if EB mobilized the kalye-serye constituency nationwide. Pero tila napaatras kay Sara?

And no we haven’t forgotten the 1982 scandal, but I must admit it didn’t stop us watching EB, I guess because the culprits claimed innocence and so we were all giving them the benefit of the doubt, that is, until that bomb of a public apology some two months later, which apparently was accepted not just by the victims but also by the madlang pipol. When the trio held that post-apology Saturday special in Araneta Coliseum to test kung mapupuno pa rin nila, the big dome was packed to the rafters.  The high point of the show was Dina Bonnevie’s surprise appearance, topped by a beso kay hubby Vic. All was forgiven.

CORRECTION: the big dome event event took place pala august 7, 1982. my mistake. not after the october 13 apology but two days after marvic sotto, jose ma. de leon and richard reyes filed a 5.5 million peso libel suit vs. pepsi paloma, guada guarin, rey de la cruz, 2 publishers and 2 reporters. the surprise appearance of dina bonnevie, i now suppose, was to send the message that she, too, totally believed that her hubby and friends were innocent of the rape allegations.

In fairness, they’ve been well-behaved naman ever since, LOL. Very occasional na ang mishaps, i.e., the politically incorrect “hurtful jabs” at women, minorities, atbp. na dating narereklamo. Kayâ sobra naman yung Rappler article that says they’re a “sleazy trio” and likens them to Trump (!!!) as “personification of toxic masculinity” hereabouts. Excuse me, ang “sleazy” at “toxic” ay yung convicted  pedophile of a patriarch (sentenced to two life terms in 1997) na pinakawalan ni GMA in 2007.

And what about the non-fan on Facebook who thinks “the boomer TVJ” are no role models and hopes their new show avoids “boomer content and old regressive values”.  Hello?  TVJ never came on as “role models”, rather as entertainers, troubadours singing the songs of the sixties and seventies and joking around to make us laugh, at them and at ourselves, earthy Pinoy humor resurrected, this in the time of martial law when there was little else worth laughing at or about.

These are not very different times, come to think of it, when there’s so much more wrong with nation and planet, and I’m just glad TVJ & the Legit Dabarkads are back, hopefully for a final season that’ll be a happy mix of live music and comic relief, old and new, boomer to genZ, at LGBTQIA+++ na rin. #GoBoomers

Missing Titan

Early on, I thought maybe it was just a stunt, you know, to excite, call attention, like a marketing promo. But now i pray they get lucky and get found while there’s oxygen to breathe.

Hours of oxygen left as rescuers searching for missing Titanic submarine hear more ‘banging’ sounds – live updates https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/submarine-titantic-missing-submersible-tourists-latest-b2360568.html