“The creativity of the Americans and their Filipino proxies is unlimited.”
As every Philippine political observer should know, the country’s political atmosphere is infused with U.S. propaganda, disinformation, cognitive warfare or PsyOps, whichever one of the many tags one may choose to use for the information warfare the Americans are employing to keep the Filipino masses in a constant state of “anti-China” mindset.
This information warfare has been escalating since the “pivot to Asia” was announced by the U.S. in the November 2011 by then President Barack Obama. From that time on, countless situations have been creatively engineered to generate narratives projecting China as “aggressive” and “a bully.” They set up situations like the Scarborough Standoff, getting their proxies to arrest Chinese fishermen and they cry foul when the Chinese Coast Guards ships rescue their fishermen.
The Scarborough Standoff was expertly spun into The Hague arbitration case tale brought to a panel that was neither a court nor did any arbitration as there was only one party to the case, but the narrative was woven into a very rich tapestry of legal issues destined to be decided in favor of the US client, the Philippines, as it was all paid for and argued by only the Philippines. Justice Carpio even argued that China would be forced to comply anyway but eight years later, China still rejects the ruling.
The intensity of the information war against China around the world, but particularly in the Philippines, intensified further as the U.S. under Trump launched his trade war against China, the Pentagon introduced the “Wuhan virus” inside China and Trump called in the “Kung Flu.” In 2022, the U.S. Congress allocated $500-million additional fund in its “America Competes Act” to fund anti-China information campaigns.
This year, the U.S. Congress allocated $1.6-Billion funding for “anti-China information” budget for the next five years, and we are seeing in the Philippines the constant escalation of anti-China propaganda and political-social activist activities stemming from all these funds. One of such projects started in February of 2023 when U.S. Col. Raymond Powell kicked off the “assertive transparency” campaign using Tarriela and company in provocations in the guise of “supply missions” to the Ayungin shoal.
The “assertive transparency” project ran for a-year-and-a-half and even used civilian ships crewed by paid NGOs, without success against the Great Wall of ships of the Chinese Coast Guard and maritime militias. This was followed by the “Escoda shoal starve in” by the BRP Teresa Magbanua, again frustrated by China’s Great Wall of Ships that famished and dehydrated the Philippine Coast Guard ship crew and gave up limping away from the shoal.
The creativity of the Americans and their Filipino proxies in staging new variations of their information war projects is unlimited. In a very complex “story telling a lie”, the U.S. spin-masters seized on the POGO industry when the thin line between legal and illegal operations are blurred, politics and corruption mix in, as a handle to create another “evil Chinese” narrative twirled around the story of Mayor Alice Guo, citizenship issues and, voila, a “spy network.”
The weaving of the spy network tale around Alice Guo was so intricately done by the U.S. network of creative and criminal talents that they found a “witness”, She Zhijiang, a convicted felon jailed in Thailand awaiting extradition to China for being guilty of illegal gambling. The U.S. spin masters created fake documents, location sites, etc. for its client state Qatar’s news channel, Al Jazeera, to report Alice Guo as a spy asset for China.
Creative as the U.S. information warriors may be, they just can’t get the complex story correct down to the details, like witness She Zhijiang claiming Alice Guo and family left China for the Philippines in 2002 when in the Philippines senate investigation with Senator Win Gatchalian, it was established that Alice Guo was a student at Grace Christian High School from year 2000 to 2003. On that alone, the whole Al Jazeera story collapses.
We are not surprised that the National Security Council through its Assistant Director General, Jonathan Malaya, has expressed “skepticism” over claims of Guo being a spy, “Espionage is a reality in the Philippines,” Malaya said. “And it is likely that foreign spies are operating here. However, the details surrounding this case (involving Guo) don’t add up…” However, if we add up all the spy stories of the Philippines the past century, one finds that spying for the Americans is on top.
rpkapunan@gmail.com
