“The WPS gaslighting has distanced the Philippines from China by the enmity it has created”
THE West Philippine Sea “cognitive warfare” narrative has been playing since Sept. 2012 when then President Noynoy Aquino signed Administrative Order 29 “Naming the West Philippine Sea of the Republic of the Philippines, and for other purposes.”
This came six months after the Scarborough Shoal standoff between the Philippine Navy with the Chinese Coast Guard which in turn came after the US (Obama) announcement of its “Pivot to Asia” in the last quarter of 2011.
To students of geopolitics and major-power strategic thinking, the connections of the historic events presented above should be obvious.
Nothing in the geopolitics of major powers happen in a vacuum, the same goes for the “West Philippine Sea” issue that clearly reveals the long-term planning that went into creating the cause célèbre issue between the Philippines and China that the US with its Filipino proxies uses to destabilize and justify its political and military interventions in the South China Sea and ASEAN region.
To be clear, no other country in the 193 members of the United Nations recognizes the West Philippine Sea exists, except the Philippines, not only because it does not appear in the International Hydrological Society map but also because the Philippines’ claim over the area of the SCS is disputed by four other countries and Taiwan.
Acquisition of sovereignty requires “effective occupation” which requires “intentional display of power and authority over the territory” which China is now exercising and the Philippines is only pretending to today.
To illustrate the present reality is the recent Feb. 18 incident involving a Chinese Navy helicopter and a Philippine BFAR plane carrying journalists flying into Scarborough Shoal air space.
The Philippine Coast Guard spokesman protested the Chinese helicopter conducted “dangerous maneuvers” too close to the BFAR plane. The Chinese press Global Times reported it as “PLA expels Philippine aircraft over China’s Huangyan Dao; expert slams Manila’s ‘riskier’ aerial provocations.”
China now is at the stage where it has stopped being soft on the taunting of the Philippines and exercising “power and authority” over the areas and land features of the South China Sea it proclaims sovereignty over.
The Philippine side represented by the likes of Comm. Jay Tarriela has nothing but bluster and braggadocio, putting civilian media in harms way to taunt Chinese action to bring home propaganda sob-stories to feed media and bellyache before what they think are gullible Filipino audiences.
The US and its Filipino proxies which include the major Filipino financial-business oligarchs have been gaslighting the Filipino public for the past decade-and-a-half, but the gas is running out.
On Feb. 4, 2025, Cong. Rodante Marcoleta in a congressional hearing openly declared that there is no such thing as a “West Philippines Sea” except in the minds of some Filipinos, that started a national debate on the matter finally exposing the myth that it is.
Far from being a harmless myth, the West Philippine Sea fairy tale has led the nation on a wild goose chase for the territory and EEZ it doesn’t have while the Salim group and Forum Energy-PXP-MPIC conduct its machinations behind the Philippine government under Noynoy Aquino and MPIC director, the late Albert del Rosario, to acquire a monopoly of the mineral wealth of the SCS by blocking the potential oil and gas joint ventures between the Philippines and China.
The WPS gaslighting has distanced the Philippines from China by the enmity it has created.
This has already caused massive real economic damage to Filipinos, like the loss of 1.5-million Chinese tourist arrivals and $1.5-billion (P90-billion) tourism revenues for our six million tourism workers.
Even worse, it can give the US the basis for creating a false flag operation blaming China for a human disaster and precipitating a major conflict – which is clearly what the US warmongers intend as evidenced by the US military bases in the country.
As the WPS “gaslighters” have been stumped by the challenge from Cong. Marcoleta to show a recognized international legal map showing the WPS, some of the WPS fanatics have taken to Google maps and nothing more.
Google Maps did come up with a parenthesized Gulf of America under Gulf of Mexico after Trump declared it in a fit of patriotic jingoism, that’s some victory while in the real war in Ukraine, Trump is giving up to Russia.
Get the drift?