Unusually sharp comments from Earnest earlier Friday about a Filipino official's attempts to clarify Duterte's "separation" remarks may reflect White House uneasiness about the implications of the country's stance.
Philippine Trade Minister Ramon Lopez said Friday that his country would not stop trade and investment with the US. "The statement the President made maintains the relationship with the West. What we are saying is that there will be less dependence just on one side of the world," Lopez told CNN.
Asked about Lopez's comments, Earnest said "I've dubbed that person the Filipino Mike Pence," a reference to the Republican vice presidential candidate, who has often walked back or cleaned up comments by GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump. CNN
Yes, indeed, Philippines is a blessed nation,
The one thing it lacks is diligence and
cooperation.
God loves this country and understands our pain,
So if we strive harder, all our lost will become
our gain.
Philippines might become a better country one
day,
Because with God’s help, we know that there’s
still a way. Ramon Amancio Estanque
There once was a Filipino hombre
Who ate rice pescado y legumbre;
His trousers were wide, and his shirt hung outside,
And this, I may say, was his costumbre.
He lived in a nipa bahay
Which served as a stable and sty;
He slept on a mat with the dogs and a cat
And the rest of the family near by.
His daddy, un buen' Filipino,
Who never mixed tubig with bino,
Said, "I am no insurrecto - no got gun or bolo,"
Yet used both to kill a vecino. Carl Sandburg's American Songbag
Gee, Old Carl had me running for my safe space amid those verbal microaggressions, colonialist jibes at indigenous peoples and misapplication of Limerick stanzas delivering lame sounds and sensibilities. I do believe I have the vapors!
Thank God, Carl did not write those offensive words himself - no need to re-name Carl Sandburg High School's continent wide.
For now, anyway.
Sandburg's offering from the American Songbag is attributed to a U.S. Navy Captain in 1900 - a few short years after Americans liberated the Philippine Archipelago from Spain, subsequently screwed the liberated with the Treaty of Paris, causing our ally Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo to treat McKinley like Obama and began 'civilizing thim (the indigenous people) stiff' in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines. The most violent resistance to American largesse and democracy took place in the South Philippine island of Mindanao which has had a traditionally large Muslim population in the traditionally much larger Roman Catholic Philippine Islands. Mindanao has been the home of current Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and his family sine 1947.
President Duterte is a very complex man, abused by an American Jesuit priest in the 1950's, a lawyer, former Mayor and District leader, a tough law and order guy who admits to shooting more than few people who have crossed him, a man of his word and most of those words are beyond salty.
He is a plain man. Duterte will never take home a Nobel Prize.
His people love him; the United Nations hates him.
He is a leader of a nation with great strategic and economic importance to globe and President Obam and John Kerry may have lost partnerships with the Philippine people forged in fire and blood for more than 100 years. They have done so with 'pimp slap' diplomacy. Kerry and Obama have shown no regard for the Philippines, much less their President.
When asked to 'show the flag' in the South China Sea, where the Red Chinese Navy has built artificial atolls with anchorages and airfields for military vessels and aircraft, as well as muscled out territorial claims of not only the Philippines, but Vietnam, Indonesia and others.
When the Philippines brought a case against China at the Hague over China's artificial islands in its territorial waters, the U.S. supported the Philippines diplomatically.
In July, the Hague's Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled in favor of the Philippines. This would have been an opportunity for the U.S. to turn the screws on China. But instead the Obama White House encouraged China and the Philippines to resolve the matter themselves after the ruling of the international tribunal.
At the end of August, Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters that the U.S. was not interested in "fanning the flames of conflict but rather trying to encourage the parties to resolve their disputes and claims through the legal process and through diplomacy."President Obama lectured Duterte on human rights over the Islamist-Drug wars in the Philippine Islands
Duterte has now taken Kerry's advice. After announcing his country's new alignment with China, Duterte signed a series of trade agreements worth $13.5 billion, along with a promise to continue bilateral negotiations over the South China Sea.
His anti-U.S. rhetoric flared last month when he declared Mr. Obama shouldn’t lecture him on human rights. In an aside directed at no one, he used an exclamation of frustration meaning “son of a whore,” which some in the international press interpreted as a dig at the U.S. president. Mr. Obama then canceled plans for a one-on-one meeting with him at the regional summit in Laos. It was two days later that Mr. Duterte approached Mr. Obama there.
In recent weeks, Mr. Duterte has canceled U.S.-Philippine military exercises. He said he might annul a 2014 U.S.-Philippines defense pact, a key aspect of Mr. Obama’s “Asian pivot,” that lets the U.S. deploy soldiers to Philippine bases. And he has threatened to “cross the Rubicon” and ditch the countries’ 65-year-old treaty in favor of accords with Russia and China.The American Media, notably CNN, want to make political hay out of another international disaster at the hands of Obama and the patrician Kerry. They have taken to calling Duterte the Filipino Donald Trump and Obama sneers that President Duterte is 'colorful.'
Fifty seven years ago, another Spanish American War Prize was lost to our enemies - it still is but Obama erased that inconvenient fact with flourish of his executive pen - in Cuba. American snobs lost China to Communism after World War II and Cuba in 1959. Our snobs are managing no different - but the Philippines is much more important than Cuba had been to our geopolitical survival.
Duterte went to Beijing. “I’ve realigned myself in your ideological flow,” Mr. Duterte said in the Beijing speech, “and maybe I will also go to Russia to talk to Putin and tell him that there are three of us against the world—China, Philippines and Russia.”
Kerry and Obama are doing their best, yet again, as they had in IRAN Deal, to make sure that this will be the outcome.
Back to my safe place.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/31/world/asia/philippines-abu-sayyaf-jolo.html?_r=0
