Rodrigo Duterte orders arrest of unvaccinated who leave their homes

Claims those who don't get the shot "put everybody in jeopardy."

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte this week directed officials to arrest unvaccinated individuals who leave their homes, claiming the national emergency posed by COVID-19 justified the extreme measure.

Speaking to the nation via television on Thursday, Duterte said that he was giving orders to the [village chiefs] to look for those persons who are not vaccinated and just request them or order them, if you may, to stay put,according to the Hill.

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GMO Drama: Philippines Approves Golden Rice, Greenpeace Demands Poor Children Go Blind Anyway

By Cameron English — July 30, 2021 @ American Council on Science and Health

The Philippines has finally approved Golden Rice, a genetically engineered crop designed to combat vitamin A deficiency. Greenpeace, never content to let evidence guide its agenda, has trotted out some mealymouthed justifications to urge regulators to reverse the decision.

“Vitamin A deficiency [VAD] is the leading cause of preventable blindness in children worldwide,” the American Academy of Ophthalmology noted last year. “An estimated 250,000 to 500,000 children become blind every year because of vitamin A deficiency. Half of these children die within a year of losing their sight.” In 2016 alone, VAD killed more than a million people.

The condition is most prevalent in poor nations like the Philippines, and the country's regulators have finally approved genetically engineered (GE) Golden Rice (GR), a crop developed literally decades ago to boost intake of beta carotene, which converts to vitamin A. Regulators in the US, Canada and Australia have determined that GR is safe for human consumption and poses no risk to the environment.

Naturally, the environmentalist group Greenpeace has reacted to the Philippines approval with feigned shock. The anti-GMO outfit “denounced the government’s approval of the commercialization of Golden Rice,” Business Mirror reported on July 26, “saying that the genetically modified organism (GMO) would make it more difficult for farmers to recover from the adverse impact of the pandemic.”

There's an eight-letter word to describe Greenpeace's assertions here. We'll leave it unsaid to keep this story family friendly, but there isn't a shred of evidence to justify the group's ongoing and unethical opposition to Golden Rice. Their claims are in italics, my replies follow.

'The continued approval of genetically modified ‘GM’ crops including so-called ‘Golden Rice’ will further drag down farmers amid climate and Covid struggles,' said Wilhelmina Pelegrina, Senior Campaigner for Greenpeace Southeast Asia.

Filipino farmers have grown GE crops for 14 years now; their yields are up and their pesticide use has plummeted. They're quite happy with these results, as any sensible environmentalist should be. It means the country is producing more food with fewer inputs. That's good for human health and the climate.

Moreover, as a vitamin-fortified rice, GR will help those in need develop and maintain a properly functioning immune system, which of course is critically important during a pandemic. Countries with high levels of VAD are plagued by infectious diseases. If anything, Golden Rice and other biotech crops are powerful weapons against the country's climate and COVID struggles.

Instead of relying on GM crops such as GR that have no proven benefits to farmers and consumers, the DA should promote ecological agriculture that works with and for farmers, and which offers Filipinos diverse grains, fruits, and vegetables for diverse diets, ensuring food and nutrition security.”

This sounds like sage advice, but it's useless and, frankly, a little insulting at this point. Imagine telling a desperately poor single mother she needs a “diverse” financial strategy that includes judicious spending habits, savings and a balanced investment portfolio. “Thanks, Dave Ramsey, now how do I pay my rent this month?” you could imagine her asking.

Because Greenpeace has no reasonable argument against GR's introduction, they have to pivot away from the issue at hand. Nobody denies that humans need a diverse diet to lead healthy lives, but this doesn't mean incremental steps in the right direction are harmful. 

“This is like arguing that until we find a cure for cancer we should not treat patients by means of surgery, chemotherapy or radiation therapy,” science writer Ed Regis told me during a 2019 interview. The point is that every effective strategy is worth pursuing. GR, vitamin supplementation and other dietary interventions work in concert; they aren't mutually exclusive.

Greenpeace argued that the commercialization of Golden Rice happened despite 'longtime opposition from Filipino farmers, scientists, consumers, health advocates, and environmental groups who have clamored for stricter regulatory systems for GM crops on the basis of the precautionary principle.'

It can be difficult to address the concerns of activist groups because they understand the world fundamentally differently than scientists do. For many decades, the environmentalist movement has ensconced itself in a subjective, postmodern framework. Scientific research, the argument goes, is a social construct. It cannot be trusted because it's used by the powerful to advance some secretive, nefarious political agenda.

This is why Greenpeace appeals to fallacious arguments from popularity against GR in the face of overwhelming evidence of its safety and efficacy. The fact that many groups oppose GE crops is utterly irrelevant to the empirical questions about public health and environmental protection we're concerned with.

Activist groups and individuals who can't or won't grasp that foundational concept deserve our skepticism. Fortunately, it appears that the Philippines has finally had enough of Greenpeace's antics. Golden Rice is moving forward, and the world will be a slightly better place as a result.

• Embrace of 'Golden Rice' Globally Remains Frustratingly Slow
• Activism Imperils Potential of Golden Rice
• Golden Rice Moves Closer to Reality in Asia
• Science For The Win: Golden Rice Gets The Nod From FDA
• Hope for malnourished kids threatened by anti-GMO zealots

US, Philippines Call on CCP to Abide by International Law on 5th Anniversary of Landmark South China Sea Ruling

By Isabel van Brugen July 12, 2021

The United States on Sunday called on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to abide by international law in the South China Sea on the fifth anniversary of a landmark ruling by an arbitration tribunal repudiating China’s vast territorial claims in the region.

“Nowhere is the rules-based maritime order under greater threat than in the South China Sea. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) continues to coerce and intimidate Southeast Asian coastal states, threatening freedom of navigation in this critical global throughway,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement on Monday.

“We call on the PRC (People’s Republic of China) to abide by its obligations under international law, cease its provocative behavior, and take steps to reassure the international community that it is committed to the rules-based maritime order that respects the rights of all countries, big and small,” he added...........To Read More.....

 

Philippines Issues Tough Statement to China as South China Sea Tensions Intensify

By Nicole Hao April 5, 2021

Aides of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte criticized China on April 5 for anchoring hundreds of its vessels for a month in the disputed South China Sea areas, which could lead to “unwanted hostilities,” his legal counsel warned.

Duterte is usually reluctant to confront China. He even angered Filipinos by refusing to press China on respecting a landmark 2016 arbitral ruling that clarified the Philippines’ sovereign rights in its exclusive economic zone (EEZ), which can help the country take back the control of the Scarborough Shoal.

On Monday, Duterte’s lawyer Salvador Panelo called the prolonged presence of Chinese boats “territorial incursions” and told the Beijing regime: “We can negotiate on matters of mutual concern and benefit, but make no mistake about it—our sovereignty is non-negotiable.”

Duterte’s spokesman Harry Roque echoed the view later on that day and told a news conference: “We will not give up even a single inch of our national territory or our EEZ.”

The situation of the South China Sea is intense with over 250 Chinese fishing boats, which are believed to host militias posing as sailors, anchored around six areas, and warships from China, the United States, Australia, Canada, and Japan sailing nearby............To Read More.....

• Beijing Accelerating Timeline for Possible Invasion of Taiwan, Expert WarnsFrank Fang
• Australia, US Preparing ‘Contingencies’ Around Possible Taiwan Conflict
• Taiwan Reports New Incursion by Chinese Jets Into Defense Zone

Geopolitics by Peter Zeihan: Flipping the Philippines

By Peter Zeihan on February 13, 2020

Peter's new book, Disunited Nations, is available for pre-Order now on IndieBound, Apple Books, Hudson Booksellers, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Google Play, or Kobo. 

The Philippine government this week began the formal legal process of ejecting US forces from the country and ending the US-Philippine alliance. Chinese involvement in the decision isn’t so much suspected as assumed. The few pundits who can tear themselves away from the American primary process are bemoaning another American strategic retreat.

Me? Not so much.

The Philippines is one of those countries I normally have a hard time getting excited about. As a shattered archipelago it has a damn hard time holding itself together in anything that the rest of the world might recognize as a united nation-state. Secessionist struggles define the country’s modern incarnation, and outside of the major island of Luzon, the place is a riot of different ethnicities and languages. Add in rugged, tropical terrain and it will never be a local, much less regional power.

Which is hardly to say that the place doesn’t matter at all.

The Philippine Archipelago is part of a series of islands that roughly parallel the coast of the East Asian mainland at about a distance of 1000 miles. Those islands – in addition to the Philippines, they include the modern states of Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia and Indonesia – are the most significant factor keeping China from becoming a power of significance. At no point in the 3500 years of Chinese history have the Chinese been able to sustainably trade directly with the outside world without leaning on a foreign partner, be it one of the members of the island nations surrounding China's coasts, SE Asia or even India.

With a singular exception: Today.

In the aftermath of World War II the Americans crafted the first global Order, in essence creating a global trade and security network as compensation for other countries siding with the Americans against the Soviets. In time this alliance expanded beyond Western Europe and the Western Hemisphere into East Asia, where it ultimately admitted Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia – and with Nixon’s trip to Beijing – China itself.

For the first time ever, everyone was on the same side, and the Americans actively prevented Order members from going to war with one another. This Order is what has enabled the Chinese to escape imperial predation (most notably by Japan and Europe), access global consumer markets, and import whatever raw materials – first and foremost energy supplies – were required in order to fuel their economic integration and expansion.

All the Americans need to do if the goal is to destroy China as an economic and political entity, is go home. The Chain’s geography will take care of the rest.

Enter the Philippines. The place may be a mess, but that mess makes it the Chain’s weakest link. Should the Chinese succeed in ejecting American political and military influence from the Philippines, then the Chinese just might be able to break through into the wider world.

It isn’t quite that simple of course, and not just because an outside power managing the Philippines is as difficult a task as a local power ruling it. Gaining round-the-clock secure access for civilian vessels would require militarizing the Philippines in a manner similar to what the Japanese and Americans did in the years just before, during and after World War II. That will generate just as much neoimperial heartburn for the Chinese as it did for their predecessors.

But the bigger issue is that the Philippines are not quite what China needs.

Again, it is an issue of geography. The Philippines are not at the Chain’s northern end where they could threaten the Chinese core or serve as the gateway to North America, nor at the south end where they’d be on the direct path to China’s core energy sources in the Persian Gulf and the large markets of Europe. Instead the Philippines are in the middle, on the path to the wide-open empty of the Central Pacific.

What the Chinese really need if they are to punch through the Chain is the Strait of Malacca, the point where Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia come together to bracket the world’s busiest trade and energy chokepoint. Securing Malacca – and let’s be blunt, this means de facto occupying Singapore and Malaysia and Indonesia – would bring the Chinese 1000 miles closer to their goals, while also crunching Japanese access to the same. (Although even then, India and Taiwan remain very much in the way.)

Still, you’ve got to start somewhere.

Don’t look for the United States to fight this.

For one, the American military bases at Hawaii, the Wake and Midway Islands, complemented by America’s still-firm military relationships with Japan, Australia and Singapore are more than ample for the Americans to project power to the Chain and the waters further west. Most of China’s navy has an operational range of no more than 1000 miles from their bases, which brings them to – but not through – the Chain. Anything short of a flat-out occupation of the Philippines in total won’t change that. Even then it would only be the very first step of a very long journey.

For two, the Americans are getting out of the global management game, so reducing their forward positions in East Asia, Europe and the Middle East is simply inevitable. Getting kicked out isn’t good optics, but as the Philippines are one of the less valuable bits, it makes sense the Americans would decamp sooner rather than later.

For three, the American-Philippine relationship has always been a bit…fraught. The Americans conquered the Philippines in the Spanish-American War of 1898, something the Philippines are of mixed minds about. America’s subsequent occupation of the place combined some of the less savory aspects of later wars in Vietnam and Iraq, making the Americans of mixed minds. Ongoing American operations against Islamic secessionists on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao are in reality one of America’s longest-ever military operations, something the Americans have long felt was simply the price having a footprint in the country. Few tears will be shed in America when the GIs come home for good. If anything, much bubbly will be popped on the hilarious day when Chinese forces wade into that absurd clusterf**k.

For four, even if the Americans were enthusiastic about staying, the Philippines have recently taken a political dive that Americans find…distasteful. Incumbent Philippine President Rodrigo Duarte is a less competent, less polite, more aggressive, more institutionally corrosive, more erratic, more violent version of Donald Trump. (Say what you will about Trump, he’s not actually calling upon his average supporter to go out and kill anyone he thinks is a problem. So far, conservatively, president-sponsored vigilante justice is directly credited for at least 5000 deaths between 2016 and 2018.) No, it isn’t the Americans you need to look to to counter this.

It’s the Japanese. While the Philippines taken alone are not a big deal, the archipelago’s flipping would represent the first real change in the region’s strategic structure since the Japanese defeat in 1945. For the US this is rather ho-hum, but the Americans don’t live in East Asia. The Japanese do. Japan’s navy could sail circles around China’s, but it operates at an extreme numerical disadvantage and its sail to strategically vital locales like the Persian Gulf are 2000-3000 miles further for the Japanese than the Chinese. Losing the Philippines isn’t a death-blow, but it certainly is a step in the wrong direction – especially if the Americans get out of the business of doing the heavy-lifting for Asian security. Expect a flotilla of Japanese diplomacy, military assistance, tech transfers and outright bribes as Tokyo attempts to pick up what the Americans are dropping.

Strategic issues aside, there is one aspect of all this the average American is likely to notice.

When the great outsourcing boom got going in the 1990s, much of the call-center work that Americans once did shifted to India, a low-wage country colonized by the Brits. Unfortunately for the Americans, many are uncomfortable with the mish-mash inflections of South Asian and British accents that makes up Indian English. But the Philippines had been a de facto American colony for a century. English-speakers in the Philippines sound much closer to the American Midwest than the rest of the world’s English speakers whose linguistic roots are much closer to the Brits. In the world of call-centers, the Indians now handle the rote technical work that is non-customer facing, while the Philippines are treasured for their people skills. That division of labor is unlikely to last should Manila go full-Beijing.

You think you hate automated call menus now, just wait for the abject horror to come…

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The Philippines -- The Poland of the Pacific?

September 12, 2019 By Joseph Somsel

Given China’s position as a classic Asian land power and America’s role as an oceanic hegemon, a military challenge has emerged in the near seas close to China through which the essentials of modern industrial power flow – oil, to name just one. That means the control of the South China Sea is the next step in the establishment of a New Chinese Empire. As in 1938, when Poland lay between the Wehrmacht and the Red Army, the Philippines is the weak point between the U.S. and China.

It is common knowledge that America intends to ring the South China Sea with putative allies -- South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Vietnam. A goal of our foreign policy is to unite these countries into a defensive cordon. Meanwhile the Chinese Communist Party seems to be doing what it can to antagonize the neighbors. Its “Nine Dash Line” ocean aggrandizement, the militarization of shoals and reefs, the bald-faced, brute-force stealing of ocean resources, all should make clear that China is not a good neighbor.

American diplomatic efforts to solidify the front-line countries into a balancing force rely on their basic self-interests as we see them. Our allies sometimes have different views and see complications that Americans may forget. Increasing military cooperation between the Japanese and the South Koreans faces a long history of antagonisms and bitterness, including the literal “rape-rape” of the WWII comfort women. The Vietnamese still remember what we did to try to prevent the current Communist regime from taking over the country. Pieces of B-52s downed during the Christmas Raids of 1972 still adorn public parks in Hanoi......To Read More....

Filipinos getting wise to China'd-up Duterte, after China bites off a chunk of the Philippines

By Monica Showalter

Protests are breaking out in the Philippines over China's takeover of Thitu island near the Spratly and Paracel chains in the South China Sea, which is an island recognized in international law as belonging to the Philippines. The Philippine protests are about China. But they're really directed at the Philippines's president, Rodrigo Duterte, who up until now has tried to persuade everyone that he's a tough guy -- who by his actions was all in for bowing to China.

The mask is off. The locals are protesting that he's really not that tough. So now he's got this, as reported by Asia Times:.............

Seems that appeasing Beijing wasn't such a bright idea after all. A lot of countries are disputing China over those islands, but only Philippines, under Duterte, thought appeasement would be the way to go with the ravenous behemoth to its northwest. Bowing down to China has not only cost the Philippines an island, it's now leading to domestic turmoil. ..........To Read More.

Rodrigo Duterte, Ultimate Realist?

By Harry Kazianis

In the pages of Foreign Policy last week, Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Max Boot weighed in on the frightening moves of what many are calling Asia’s Donald Trump -- the new president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte. In his analysis, Boot attacks the underpinnings of realist foreign policy thinking, using Duterte’s recent actions as his strawman. He notes that “ideology and domestic politics do not much concern these thinkers [realists]; they believe that a nation’s foreign policy is much more likely to be shaped by factors such as geography, demography, and economics.” ......To Read More...