For the last time, I hope: WPS is nonsense, a US-invented propaganda!
I HAD given up writing that the “West Philippine Sea” (WPS) is total nonsense, as its main propagandist Philippine Coast Guard officer Jay Tarriela doesn’t listen to reason as he probably fears he will lose his job and the media limelight if he is no longer “spokesman for the Task Force on West Philippine Sea.” In reality, he is spokesman for a task force on silly fiction.
But then, recent posts on social media by UP professor Cielo Magno, whom I had admired a few months ago for her exposes on this government’s hijacking of the government budget, was declaring on social media that the WPS exists.
She claims that there is “no stronger” evidence than the fact that the WPS was created by law, Republic Act 12064 enacted in November last year. The law defined it as “on the western side of the Philippine archipelago, including the Luzon Sea and the territorial seas of Bajo de Masinloc and the maritime features of the Kalayaan Island Group, collectively called the West Philippine Sea.” It was first named as such by the late president Benigno Aquino III, upon the recommendation of leftist crackpot Walden Bello.
OK for her to think so, but she badmouths — just like the uncouth Tarriela — those who don’t share her views are working for China’s interests. This is a UP academic with a Ph.D.? She resorts to that kind of ad hominem arguments that smacks of jingoism, even warning her viewers to be careful of such fake news. No wonder her Ph.D. was on some obscure topic that has nothing to do with economics, “influencing physician prescribing behavior.”
Law
Magno’s only argument is that the WPS is not fiction — since it was created by our law.
Honestly, I am shocked how parochial and gullible this lady is. I suspect the recent increase in views in her social media has gone to her head. Indeed, many psychologists have been warning how perceived but fleeting fame in social media often screws up users’ minds.
I can’t believe Magno is of the naïve view that if it is declared by a law, it has to be true. We have so many laws that later were either declared constitutional in its entirely, partially or rescinded by subsequent congresses, among them: the 2013 Priority Development Assistance Fund; provisions of the 2021 Anti-Terrorism Act; parts of the 2014 Cybercrime Prevention Act; the 2010 Truth Commission; and of course some provisions of the 2014 Reproductive Health Law. The Senate is not God that makes eternal laws. This one on the WPS was pushed by Sen. Francis Tolentino, hardly an expert on the South China Sea issue nor international law.
I devoted a chapter on this topic, titled “The WPS brainwashing trick,” in my book “Debacle: The Aquino regime’s Scarborough fiasco and the South China Sea arbitration deception” (available at amazon.com) and at least three previous columns, the most recent of which is “West Philippine Sea is fiction, and a dangerous one,” published July 29, 2024. A summary of the arguments there are as follows.
Ignorance
It is the height of intellectual laziness for a Ph.D. (no matter what her field of study is) to claim the WPS is “real,” to be unaware of the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO), the authority that the United Nations has given the task to affirm the names of oceans and seas of the world, without which we will have a chaotic maps of the planet. Even the megalomaniac, the late Kim Jong-il later backed down from his renaming of the Sea of Japan as the Korean “Korea East Sea,” as he couldn’t produce enough documents and arguments to merit a renaming of that sea. Countries have not had the gall or have been so stupid as to rename unilaterally even a sea within its territory. Renming a sea is not just like naming a street.
The recent exception of course is President Trump’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. Whatever the arguments for or against this move, in the end, it would be a matter if you’re the world’s hegemon or not for the world to accept your wishes. Apple, Microsoft and Google maps — US firms so afraid of Trump of course — now use the Gulf of America of course so as not to raise his now famous ire. But nobody else in the world yet, nor would.
I would bet in a few years’ time, there will be no such thing as “West Philippine Sea” in the western side of the archipelago, only the same old “South China Sea” named as such in the 17th century by European mapmakers. All other countries except ours respect the world’s convention that none of them have renamed their exclusive economic zones. EEZs are merely maritime zones defined by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos) as the area 200 nautical miles from their so-called baselines, roughly their land boundaries, and not meant to be given names.
150 countries
There are 150 countries in the world that have EEZs; we are the only one — not the US whose renaming of the Gulf of Mexico has nothing to do with EEZs — whose two inane presidents renamed our EEZ to carry the country’s name.
Often one would just have to present pictures to convince idiots how ridiculous their thinking is. I do this chore now by presenting a partial map (see image) of the world, if their leaders were as stupid as ours to rename their EEZs to have their countries’ names.
So there will be a China Sea, Taiwan Sea and East Vietnam Sea, etc. etc. The South China Sea has been reduced to just a sliver where there is no EEZ by any country. A major part of our “West Philippine Sea” would instead be the Japan Sea, North Indonesian Sea, Malaysian Sea, Taiwan Sea and even Brunei Sea. More than half of the Pacific Ocean would be renamed carrying the names of islands with the Unclos-authorized 200-nautical-mile EEZ.
The “WPS” is a dangerous fiction in that this government has been willing to risk our economic well-being by taking a belligerent stance against the economic superpower in the region, for the sake of holding on to a fictional “WPS.” It also creates a very wrong view among Filipinos that we can never settle our disputes with China since we have to defend “WPS.”
What makes the naming of our EEZ as the “West Philippine Sea” so ridiculous is the reality that we have very little control of most of that area with the international name of Spratlys (Nanhai Qundao to the Chinese, Quần đảo Trường Sa to the Vietnamese, and Kalayaan Island Group to us). The Aquino III government even lost Scarborough Shoal to the Chinese in 2012. The biggest military installations there are those built by the Chinese on its seven artificial islands and by the Vietnamese, which have forts using oil rigs in all the over a dozen of its occupied claimed reefs and islets. We have only one island — Pag-asa — with the most minimum of fortifications.
The term “WPS” has been a propaganda tool, invented and spread by the US, to brainwash Filipinos and create outrage against China, as the idea would be etched in their minds that the disputed areas of the South China Sea are incontrovertibly ours, since we call it the “West Philippine Sea.”
Die for it and fight China, the Americans with their weird-looking toady Tarriela have been brainwashing us.
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For the last time, I hope: WPS is nonsense, a US-invented propaganda!
Source: Breaking News PH
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