Are Yu Dif? Didna Her?

While I was in college, I knew of an MA instructor who had very little patience with idiots of whatever age or stripe.

(Obviously, she wasn't an instructor in UP, but we'll get to that later.)

(No, wait, was she? Damn. I've forgotten. Heh heh.)

Anyway, this instructor once pointed out to her students that there is no such thing as a casual remark, when persons provided with authority answer questions. Neither do they make unimportant comments, she says -- more often than not, an innocuous statement becomes policy.

An example this instructor liked to use was that of that movie reality-TV parody EdTV. In one of the scenes the protagonist Ed Pekurny (played by Matthew McConaughey) requests for a soda. The fellow he asks the soda from asks "Coke or Pepsi?", to which Pekurny replies "Pepsi."

Boom. The brand of choice.

Thus, this instructor tried to teach her students that there are no such things as unimportant details. When gathering data via interview, when reading reports, when analyzing data -- she was rather unforgiving with her students' performance. Any gaps found due to information being glossed over resulted in a rather vicious tongue-lashing.

With the news making the rounds these days, I'm sure she'd be in quite an evil mood... and rightly so.

(Mahirap pa namang amuhin... or so I was told. Heh.)

***
I had planned to blog about this little snippet a couple of days ago, but I was a tad busy.

Anyway. After the Supreme Court handed down a TRO on the GRP-MILF MOA, there was this gem:

But in another interview, Kabalu said he could not predict the reaction of MILF ground commanders to the court’s decision, but offered assurances that the ruling would not discourage the MILF from pursuing the accord with the government.

“I cannot say how big or how deep it is, but this is a setback,” Kabalu said in a phone interview.

I don't know if anyone else did, but at that time I thought it was a threat, and I don't think it was even veiled.

Several days later, we have DJB's report on an "occupation", an apparent ultimatum by the government (short of declaring war), and the requisite denial by the MILF.

But let's take a closer look at the denial.

"Yung MILF na hindi dapat 'dun sila, yun ang aalis, kung meron [The MILF forces who are not supposed to be there, they will leave, if there are any]. But I doubt if there are [any]. The MILF forces in the area have been there before, they are local MILF," Jaafar said in a phone interview.

"Wala naman kaming iwi-withdraw diyan [We have nothing to withdraw], that is why we want an impartial investigation, because the MILF forces they [government] are referring to, matagal na sila diyan [they have been there for a long time]," he said.

Point: "The MILF forces who are not supposed to be there, they will leave, if there are any."

Point: "The MILF forces the government is referring to have been there for a long time."

Quite clearly -- although hidden by all the sound and fury of rhetoric -- MILF vice chairman Ghadzali Jaafar has staked out the MILF's position: that the MILF will withdraw only their forces who have recently entered the area, but will maintain their forces who have been operating in the area "for a long time" now.

An interpretation of this statement would be that the MILF long been an occupying force in the area, and will maintain its occupation and withdraw only the reinforcements that they have sent.

It would seem to me that both Eid Kabalu and Ghadzali Jaafar have been playing the smoke and mirrors game; because it would seem that the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity and its Memorandum of Agreement with the Government of the Republic of the Philippines just might not be signed into a full-fledged agreement, the MILF will take by force of arms what it cannot take by legal means.

The statement is the subterfuge. Right there is an attempt by the MILF to play the Republic for a fool.

Of course, with the apparent pullout plan, the MILF can claim to be playing brinkmanship. However, we still have this rather bright statement:

"Repositioning, this means that troops occupying a certain area will be moved," MILF Vice Chairman for political affaird Ghadzali Jaafar said in a phone interview.

Asked if the "repositioning" meant a pullout from the villages identified by government security forces, Jaafar said: "I think that is the meaning of that."

Repositioning? Interesting. Is this a chess game involving your other troops, Jaafar?

Clever piece of dissimulation on the part of the MILF, I would say.

***
However, it's not as if the government doesn't share the blame. After all, it seems as if the GRP negotiation panel is quite ready to hand over quite a significant part of Mindanao.

While it does seem to many that this a rather expedient solution (that is, in itself, a debatable premise) to the thorny problem that is the southern secessionist movement (with much being debated upon the legal aspect), I think that not enough analysis has been put forth about why Malaysia and the United States seem so keen on getting the agreement signed. While The Warrior Lawyer has focused on the arcana of the geopolitical implications of the deal, I prefer to look at more mundane matters.

First, let's take a gander over the proposed (as DJB calls it) Bangsamorostan:



Now, let's take a look at the agriculture of the area:

Permanent Crops and Arable Land -- quite a lot of land to grow crops in


Farming Systems -- the agriculture can support quite a number of types of crops

Length of Growing Period -- sowing and harvest all year round

Let's next take a look at the forest cover:

From Effectiveness of Logging Ban Policies in Protecting the Remaining Natural Forests of the Philippines

Let's take a look at the marine biodiversity of the area:

The center of the center of marine shore fish biodiversity: the Philippine Islands -- look at how rich those seas are

Here's something on mining:

From An Overview of Minerals Potential and Opportunity in the Philippines -- and largely unexploited, too


Now, what about oil? Check this out:

From Petroleum Potential of Offshore Palawan and Sulu Sea (Powerpoint on PDF here)


Oh, and yeah, maybe we can take a look at coal, too:

From Asia Pacific Energy Series Country Report on the Philippines (US Department of Energy)


Let's now imagine an overlay of all those against American aid in the proposed Bangsamorostan area:

From USAID Projects in Mindanao


Let's likewise bump all those overlays above against Malaysia's territory:

Malaysia

Like Al Gore asks in An Inconvenient Truth, I ask about the plans: did they ever fit together?

All that talk of share and share alike? Heh. 'Nuff said.

***
But to speak of the MILF movements with an even nastier tone, let me say this: as author Tom Clancy (one of my light reading favorites) likes to write, "A war of aggression is an armed robbery writ large."

Yup, it seems clear to me that there is a rather brazen brigand prowling North Cotabato and ARMM right now.

Still, I think it likely that this bandit is merely a cat's paw of two others... or maybe even three.

Still want the map of the Republic of the Philippines redrawn?

***
Speaking of redrawing the maps, here are two rather interesting stories: RP-China-Vietnam exploration deal on Spratlys lapses and 'Don't include Kalayaan Group of Islands in baselines bill' - RP UNCLOS delegate. Quote from the latter story:

Appearing at the Senate committee hearing on the bill that seeks to define the country’s territories, lawyer Estelito Mendoza, who is also a former solicitor general, said it is “simply absurd to put great risk on drawing base points in islands occupied by other countries.”

Mendoza said the Philippines does not have the “military or navy might” to enforce its claims on the disputed islands but it also risks violating international law if it includes the Kalayaan Group within its baselines.

“The question is whether the Kalayaan group of islands is part of the Philippine archipelago. We will have extreme difficulty establishing that point because we have never, during the centuries of the island's existence, regarded the Kalayaan as part of the Philippine archipelago,” Mendoza said.

The solution, said Mendoza, is to establish maritime limits first within the country to officially establish it as an archipelago based on international definitions.

“The best protection we have is that we establish these maritime limits in accordance with international laws. Under UNCLOS, even if a group of islands qualify as an archipelago, it does not acquire the status of an archipelago unless it draws baselines,” he said.

Considering that the most powerful weapon in our arsenal (at least according to The Nashman) is marching in formation (and because the jester-in-exile has not been given maritime command nyahahaha), I think that Mendoza is likewise trying to use smoke and mirrors.

Shucks. Aminin na lang ng deretsahan. Bottomline, we can't hold on to the flags we planted on the Spratlys. Everything else is smoke and mirrors.

What a sorry-ass state of affairs. We're an archipelago and yet our Navy and Coast Guard have not been given the tools to do their jobs.

***
Speaking of the beat of the Coast Guard, guess who's back sailing?

Sulpicio Lines, the country's premier shipping line, that's who.

But here's something that I think people are missing:

Absence of limitation

Rivera said it was not specified in the MARINA order if the operation of the two vessels could carry cargo and passengers.

But in the absence of any limitation, Rivera said the vessels could carry passengers too.

Rivera said the six other passenger-cargo vessels of Sulpicio Lines had also passed the second audit after correcting the deficiencies found by inspections teams.

However, the MARINA board of directors, chaired by Mendoza, has yet to decide whether to lift the order grounding them.

Rivera said the MARINA board could still review the recommendations of the inspection teams, especially those about the different level of deficiencies of the vessels.

The audit only covers the “hardware,” or the seaworthiness of the vessel and MARINA still has to audit the “software,” or the operational system of the shipping company.

Rivera said the software audit would take a long time because it would mean checking on the procurement system of the spare parts and how the company maintains its vessels among others.

Simply put, it's likely that they ships were checked if they could float, but there were no checks yet on their contingency planning and disaster response.

Heh. Why not. After all, the Board of Marine Inquiry is blaming the captain (who of course, quite conveniently, cannot be produced to answer otherwise), and with SLI seemingly successful in muddling quite a bit of the issues, I'm not too sanguine about justice being served.

Yeah, right. FIGHT!

(Oh, and you guys know something? Any shipping company -- land, air, or sea -- should know what a Material Safety Data Sheet is, and they should be monitoring the name of their cargo against their own MSDS records to determine the correct handling of the cargo. With Sulpicio saying that they didn't know that endosulfan was a pesticide, and with their attempt to shift blame to Del Monte, they are either lying through their teeth or are out-and-out negligent.)

It's the fine print that many clever lawyers live for, it seems to me.

***
Finally, I'd like to put a tack on my previous post.

Nah, why bother. The comment threads bespeak of the quality of the puportedly "Iskolars ng Bayan" more eloquently than I can.

Pity. What a waste of taxpayers' money. Perhaps Arbet is right and we should just shut the place down.

Ah, well. Later, all.

Oh, one more thing:

The Jester-in-Exile wishes TEAM PHILIPPINES the best of luck in the 2008 Beijing Olympics!

(Now only if GMA would volunteer to be the target for our archers or pistoleros... wishful thinking.)



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