US minesweeper USS Guardian damaged Philippine Reef (tags)
APL dares Philippine President Aquino to penalize US Navy for Tubbataha damage
Filipinos should not depend on the US for its own defense of the Kalayaan Island Group- AJ (tags)
If there is the best way to illustrate the lop-sided Philippines-United Stares relations is about, it can be shown when latest US missile destroyers will join ageing Philippine warships for naval exercises this week in a timely show of unity as tensions with China escalate over a maritime dispute. While US has modern missile ships it has given WWII vintage ships like all the war materials hands me down to its puppet state. And the bad thing is that the Philippines has to buy it not at a bargain price but a cut throat cost. For 11 days of the RP-US exercises start on Tuesday off the southwest Philippine island of Palawan in the Sulu Sea, close to the disputed waters of the West Philippine Sea where Manila has complained of increasing Chinese provocation. Officially the training is an annual event not linked to the territorial row, but it nevertheless offers the Philippines comfort shortly after appealing to its long-time ally and former colonial power for help in containing China.
Only 5% of Philippine coral reefs remain (tags)
Read this and weep: A marine scientist from the University of the Philippines has revealed that only 5 percent ?equivalent to just around 1,000 square kilometers?of the country?s total reef area remain in good condition in the face of the wanton destruction of our coral reefs by poachers.
Very few people know that the US military is directly involved in the fierce fighting going on in the Philippines between the Moro insurgents and the corrupt and brutal Arroyo regime supported by the Bush neocons and the warmongering Pentagon planners. Will you continue to allow US tax dollars to be wasted in this barbaric genocidal war against indigenous peoples? Over a thousand extrajudicial killings and "forced disappearances" under Arroyo's tenure, plus a few hundred Muslims dead as "collateral damage," may be the signs of US "benevolent hegemony" (Robert Kagan) and US "magnanimous imperial power" (Dinesh D'Souza). McKinley's "Benevolent Assimilation" lives on!
Philippine Government Launches New War on Muslim Groups (tags)
War officially came to southern Philippines again as the government of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo unilaterally put an end to eleven years of negotiations with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) September 3. A month early the government abruptly broke off talks with the MILF on the eve of signing an autonomy pact. There are numerous reports of U.S. Special Forces accompanying Philippines Army units on their deadly sweeps in the Bangsamoro (land of the Moro people) region. More than 100 people have been killed so far and half a million refugees have fled from the fighting. Bourgeois liberals and the petty-bourgeois left lamely call on the government to resume the “peace process,” which in any case was only intended to wear down the insurgents. Revolutionaries instead seek to mobilize Philippine workers to drive out all U.S. forces, whatever their legal status; to force the withdrawal of the AFP from the contested southern areas; and to defend the Bangsamoro people and their right to self-determination.
The Philippine armed forces fielded more than 10 warships around Sulu in what could be the single biggest naval blockade meant to trap Abu Sayyaf terrorists in their lair. Armed Forces chief Gen. Hermogenes Esperon Jr. said yesterday the naval blockade formed part of the "small unit tactics" designed to eventually wipe out local and foreign terrorists holed out in Sulu, as part of the military’s ongoing offensive dubbed Oplan Ultimatum