RELATED to the subject matter of my past two columns (on the PH-China dispute over the West Philippine Sea), this current discussion pursues the topic rather alarmingly. The former Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAFP) chief, Lt. Gen. Victor Corpus, has a way of calling my attention, through a post on Facebook, to a video richly detailed with US military maneuvers in the South China Sea beginning January this year. It was, of course, a post open for perusal by any visitor to his FB page, but coming as it did on the heels of my two pieces on the the Philippine case at the United Nations Permanent Court of Arbitration, I gave the video presentation more than a cursory glance.
Carrying a YouTube post tag “US Military Turns Up the Heat on China with More US Navy Ships,” the video clip is titled “Current Escalations in the South China Sea,” published by South Front Analysis and Intelligence through the website Tactical Clips.com. The presentation immediately strikes one as anything but about peace, with an aerial shot, for the opening, of a fleet of navy ships cutting trails of white across the blue of ocean waters, a giant carrier at the head of the v-column, with destroyers flanking it on both sides. Cut to a medium-close view of a fighter jet taking off from the runway of the carrier, which in a change-angle surges close toward cam to reveal its awesome, fearsome size, followed by shots of the maneuvers of destroyers. These sea movements are interspersed with anti-Chinese mass protest by Filipinos, a news conference by top US officials, a landing on the aircraft carrier by evidently a high war official, which cuts to a Chinese destroyer surging through the water, the Chinese flag fluttering on its mast.
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