{"id":5075,"date":"2018-05-28T06:12:38","date_gmt":"2018-05-27T20:12:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/?p=5075"},"modified":"2018-05-28T06:12:38","modified_gmt":"2018-05-27T20:12:38","slug":"dont-give-up-the-west-philippine-sea-by-rio-matro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/?p=5075","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t give up the West Philippine Sea by Rio Matro"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nIn an article posted by The Society of Honor, Joe America expressed disagreement in giving up the West Philippine Sea to China. He quoted Philippine President Duterte who said: \u201cThey are so big and strong and we are small and poor. We can\u2019t send Filipinos to war. They\u2019d be slaughtered!\u201d<\/p>\n

Duterte appears to be so unpredictable. At first glance, he shows that he is a strongman, fierce and unafraid, wanting to kill those people involved in the drug trade, not just the dealers but users as well. When described as such in the front page of Time Magazine, he denied the title of \u2018strong man.\u2019 He has in fact reportedly ordered the mass murder of some 20,000 Filipinos since he became president of the third world country in 2016. Under Du30\u2019s direction, the Philippine National Police has disputed the figures, claiming that only some 3,000 people had been killed by uniformed men. <\/p>\n

Joe America continues in his opinion column: \u201cThis \u2018woe is me\u2019 argument totally misses the point and substitutes emotionalism for reason. It is bad critical thinking. The point isn\u2019t to win a war. It is to defend one\u2019s legal rights. It is to be an independent, whole, autonomous state, not a vegetable nation that rolls over to yet another colonial power.\u201d <\/p>\n

Duterte is not willing to accept responsibility and yet, he claims to be the head of a sovereign nation. You can\u2019t deny accountability and be sovereign! He has definitely failed in his patriotic duty of defending the nation. It is an impeachable act of treason. <\/p>\n

But instead of asserting the right of the nation as owner of the West Philippine Sea, an area which is very much within the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of the country, President Duterte has many times said that \u201cChina is a friend of the Philippines.\u201d He appears to be complacent in the militarization of at least three areas in the EEZ. Instead of applying sanctions against China, Duterte has approved through his minions the Chinese plan of establishing a multi-billion-peso casino in Boracay which he ordered closed. <\/p>\n

Managing the age-old alliance with the United States appears to be an area of neglect. He has not bothered to establish defence alliances with Japan, Australia, and other neighbouring countries in the region. <\/p>\n

Joe America concludes: \u201cto lose resources and independence is negligence at its highest.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In an article posted by The Society of Honor, Joe America expressed disagreement in giving up the West Philippine Sea to China. He quoted Philippine President Duterte who said: \u201cThey are so big and strong and we are small and poor. We can\u2019t send Filipinos to war. They\u2019d be slaughtered!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5075"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5075"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5075\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5076,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5075\/revisions\/5076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}