MikeLigalig.com

PHILIPPINES SUBMITS MEMORIAL

Today, the Philippines submitted its Memorial to the Arbitral Tribunal that is hearing the case it brought against the People’s Republic of China under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea in January 2013.

The Philippines’ Memorial was submitted in conformity with the Rules of Procedure adopted by the five-member Arbitral Tribunal last August, which established 30 March 2014 as the due date for its submission.

Despite frequent insistence from Beijing that its claims in the South China Sea are based on international law and encompass only the “islands and adjacent waters” within the nine-dash line, Chinese actions tell a different story. Second Thomas Shoal is not an island or even a rock.  It is a low-tide elevation that is not subject to any independent territorial claim under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea or customary international law. The shoal belongs to whomever has sovereignty over the continental shelf on which it rests - by all indications the Philippines.

-Gregory Poling, “The Philippines’South China Sea Memorial: Sailing into the Wind,” Center for Strategic and International Studies
3 April 2014

. . .no international court or tribunal would agree to base its decision on arguments and contested evidence to the effect that China was the first country (several hundred years ago) to explore the South China Sea and discover, name, and administer its islands.  Mere reliance on alleged historical evidence of the kind invoked by Chinese commentators is insufficient to establish sovereignty over the waters enclosed by the nine-dash line or the islands of the South China Sea.

-Florian Dupuy and Pierre-Marie Dupuy
“A Legal Analysis of China's Historic Rights Claim in the South China Sea,” The American Journal of International Law, Vol. 107, No. 1
(January 2013), pp. 124-141

WHAT THEY SAY...


Many scholars, though, think that China's claims are essentially bunk.  The Law of the Sea Convention, which China signed and ratified, abolished the idea of historical claims as a way to determine maritime rights.

-Keith Johnson
“When is a Rock Not a Rock?”
Financial Times
4 April 2014

Poor Southeast Asia. So far from God, so close to China.


ASIA’S CAULDRON
The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific
By Robert D. Kaplan
225 pp. Random House. $26.


Correction: May 11, 2014

A review on April 20 about “Asia’s Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific,” by Robert D. Kaplan, referred incorrectly to “Finlandization,” a concept the author applies by analogy to China’s relations with its neighbors. The term describes the Soviet Union’s influence on Finland during the Cold War, not Russia’s pressure on the country during the czarist period.


http://www.nytimes.com/

The solutions that would be reached, though, might not be the ones that most people around the South China Sea would want. In the course of his travels, Kaplan found the spirit of Lee and Deng much in evidence. One realist after another told him that they did not wish to be Finlandized or to replace America’s embrace with China’s; but realism teaches us that history is driven more by necessities than desires. “At the end of the day,” one Singaporean said, “it is all about military force and naval presence â€" it is not about passionate and well-meaning talk.” Since 2011, there has been much passionate American talk of a pivot toward Asia; but Vietnamese officials, realists to a man, respond by quoting a proverb â€" “A distant water can’t put out a nearby fire.”

The heroes in Kaplan’s story are hard, pragmatic men who recognize this, men like Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew (“head and shoulders above most other leaders worldwide in the 20th century”) and China’s Deng Xiaoping (“one of the great men of the 20th century”). Realists to their core, both regularly turned on a dime, ditching what had once seemed to be deeply held convictions. Neither had much time for democracy; nor, it seems, does Kaplan. Admitting that such thoughts are “heretical to an enlightened Western mind,” he writes that “if you left the South China Sea issue to the experts and to the elites in the region, the various disputes would have a better chance of being solved than if you involved large populations in a democratic process, compromised as they are by their emotions.”

It is realism that keeps Kaplan’s book so refreshingly free of the breathless “oh my God it’s worse than you think” prose style that mars so much Western writing on the rise of China. In its place, however, realism encourages a Thucydidean detachment that some readers will find even more alarming. But that, Kaplan says, is the way it has to be, because the struggle over the South China Sea is going to be detached and unemotional. America’s struggle with the Soviet Union raised great moral issues and fired the passions of all involved; but it has proved hard to invest the South China Sea with the same philosophical freight as the Berlin Wall, despite the best efforts of some. (While writing a column for a newspaper â€" not this one â€" a few months ago, I was firmly informed that the editor wanted “less history, more scary stuff about China.”) “The fact is,” Kaplan observes, “East Asia is all about trade and business.”

These sentences might tempt readers to lump Kaplan into the company of “declinists,” writers who rejoice in announcing the imminent fall of the American Empire, but that would be too simple. ­Kaplan is in fact a leading proponent of the theory of international relations known as realism, which traces its ancestry back nearly 2,500 years to Thucydides. Kaplan is explicit about his intellectual debt to this tough-minded ancient Greek and, like him, glories in stripping away fondly held illusions to reveal the harsh reality of governments nakedly pursuing their own self-interest without concern for values, beliefs or ideology.

Kaplan is surely right to conclude from this that Beijing is unlikely to risk a military showdown involving Washington any time soon. Instead, he tells us â€" mixing historical analogies slightly â€" that China will “Finlandize” Southeast Asia. Confronted by the same kind of pressure that the Soviet Union applied to its Scandinavian neighbor during the Cold War, Southeast Asia’s governments “will maintain nominal independence but in the end abide by foreign policy rules set by Beijing.” Because Finlandization is so different from the way the United States threw Spain out of the Caribbean in 1898, the outcome will differ too.

“But,” Kaplan concludes, “the age of simple American dominance, as it existed through all of the Cold War decades and immediately beyond, will likely have to pass. A more anxious, complicated world awaits us.”

Throughout the book, Kaplan tempers hard-nosed geopolitics with an engaging mix of history and travelogue (no reader is likely to forget his evocative comparisons of Hanoi and Saigon or his description of Borneo’s water villages) and also stresses the differences between the two cases as well as the similarities. Probably the biggest of these differences is that in the 1890s the revisionist power in the ­Caribbean â€" the United States â€" was militarily stronger than Spain, the status quo power, whereas in the 2010s the revisionist power in the South China Sea â€" China â€" is militarily weaker than America, the status quo power.

In a rather similar way, he suggests, the South ­China Sea now links the trade of the Pacific and Indian Oceans; consequently, “were China to ever replace the U.S. Navy as the dominant power in the South China Sea â€" or even reach parity with it â€" this would open up geostrategic possibilities for China comparable to what America achieved upon its dominance of the Caribbean.” ­Because of this, the South China Sea is “on the way to becoming the most contested body of water in the world.”

The parallel Kaplan draws is straightforward and convincing. Between 1898 and 1914, the United States defeated Spain and dug the Panama Canal. This allowed Americans to link and dominate the trade of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, transforming the meaning of geography. “It was domination of the Greater Caribbean Basin,” Kaplan concludes, “that gave the United States effective control of the Western Hemisphere, which, in turn, allowed it to affect the balance of power in the Eastern Hemisphere.”

Kaplan starts out from some basic economics. More than half of the world’s annual merchant fleet tonnage (including four-fifths of all the oil burned in China) passes through the South China Sea. This commerce, Kaplan says, has turned that waterway into “the throat of the Western Pacific and Indian Oceans â€" the mass of connective tissue where global sea routes coalesce,” investing its straits, shoals and islands with extraordinary strategic significance. At the heart of Kaplan’s book is a striking analogy that aims to explain what this will mean in the 21st century: “China’s position vis-à-vis the South China Sea,” he suggests, “is akin to America’s position vis-à-vis the Caribbean Sea in the 19th and early 20th centuries.”

Sunday Book Review

Sea Change
‘Asia’s Cauldron,’ by Robert D. Kaplan

By IAN MORRIS
April 17, 2014
International New York Times


An American warship in Da Nang for joint U.S.-Vietnamese naval exercises in 2011, a reflection of increased tensions in the South China Sea. Credit Hoang Dinh Nam/Agence France-Pressâ€"Getty Images


This is the latest in a series of insightful books, like “The Revenge of Geography” and “The Coming Anarchy,” in which Robert D. Kaplan, the chief geopolitical analyst at the global intelligence company Stratfor, tries to explain how geography determines destiny â€" and what we should be doing about it. “Asia’s Cauldron” is a short book with a powerful thesis, and it stands out for its clarity and good sense from the great mass of Western writing on what Chinese politicians have taken to calling their “peaceful development.” If you are doing business in China, traveling in Southeast Asia or just obsessing about geopolitics, you will want to read it.

let me have this thread devoted solely to the issue specified in the subject title, with opinions and news items from all possible sources from all sides.  as i wish to understand all narratives of this potential flashpoint, i may as well dedicate this thread to all who are interested in geopolitics and history, be they students, thesis writers, academicians, armchair historians, politicians.  comments are of course welcome. 

i agree too.  she has my vote, hands down.  we can't just look for her and find enrile, come to think of it.  meanwhile, i honestly want to look like chewbacca rather than beyonce.  as it is, too bad i have to settle for looking like those two doughnuts near the ears of princess leia. 

weeeeeehhh! ka-cute. sa iring, i mean.

wowie. could we?  would we?  i'm not too positive...

sorry, guaps. salin lang ni siya ni bai hubs.

barayt! if the author of this magnum opus were my student, i'd ask him right there and then to take over my class. then shall i have been finished completely.

toto, wo bist du? what's happening in ukraine, the country where you had a memorable scholarship, if i remember right? i hope the ukrainians achieve the peace they are seeking to gain. soon.

hi, loll. sofistikit na lagi ang grooming natin ngayon. enjoy kog look nimo, hehe.

so sorry about the rains in davao. asows, it was only a few years ago when davao was a stranger to typhoons. natuali na ang kalibots natin.

gross ug net ra gyod ako. no salary here.

kahilakon ko. kalooy sa mga turtles.

the carrot tops are just around the corner...

despicable. right in one's backyard. ugh.

Quote from: hubag bohol on April 19, 2014, 11:09:13 AM
"The spirit might be willing but, hello,
The flesh might fail to stay a mighty blow."

--Botoy, Jr.

the flesh might fail to stay a mighty blow, but, hello, the flesh may now be a fossil. (islander)

how obvious naman sa news nga tungod kay hubog si ondoy. selfie ray gipasumanginlan aron mas interesting. may he rest in peace.

great reminder.

this, too, came to me as a dream.

order pod ko bi...

...kun way body paint.

one more point for humanity!

very interesting. jesse james discovers this thread 2 years after; boggs castro comes along some 4 years later...

well, jesse, glad you're an international art collector. you happen to have a gauguin or a rembrandt? that would be most interesting because they never learned to paint what we call 'crab mentality'.      

lahi na man lagi ang tapad ni prince charles bisag mao gihapon ang iyang sinena... aw,lahi na diay ang iyang necktie ug polo shirt.  ang sayal ug medyas mao gihapon.

sir webmaster, i'm out of the philippines now. thankfully i'm on terra firma as my interplanetary tour, if i may add, happens only when i sleep.  sorry, i have no globe number.

duha ra man silang natambalan ani da...

Quote from: fdaray on April 30, 2014, 07:50:44 AM
Yes,, daghang Pinay gustong magminyo og Kano bisag tiguwang na.

Quote from: hubag bohol on April 30, 2014, 01:11:51 PM
He he...

ayayay, gapasabot ba ni nga it's in our national interest nga daghang pinay gustong magminyo og kano bisag tiguwang na?  klaroha palihog, sir fd.

are they both brides, or grooms?  or do these terms apply?  just asking...

here they are, puro gwapa.

hahaha! polyglot gyod ka, bai hubs. maghusa man ta ani. pero wamanapir yatakitamaki?

abi nakog ako ray nalisoan bahin ug hayop.

sige, pataka pag pangihi dinha...

we know how to answer. it's in our own national interest. as it should be.

Quote from: hubag bohol on April 24, 2014, 05:34:35 PM
Influential partner

When asked about the amount of influence the US has in the way things are going on the country, 90 percent of Filipinos answered “Great deal / fair amount.”

Philippines is followed by Kenya (85 percent), Brazil (83 percent), and South Africa (77 percent).

On the question “Is the US more of a partner, enemy,  or neither?” the Philippines ranked fourth in answering “Partner” with 81 percent.

Israel leads with 90 percent followed by El Salvador (88 percent), Senegal (84 percent).

first in everything else except this? interesting.

sad.  lisod ang ilang trabaho kay buwad sa init ug adlaw, unya nasaypan pa gyod nga lansang ang ulo sa kauban.

asows, lajo pa man unta ang november 2.

right on!

friends are also for giving a series of news items, headlines ending in "patay", such as those that greeted me when i opened tb today.

niabot na ang panahon nga di na angay mogamit ug motorsiklo kun manulis.  praktis na mog sakay ug silhig, mga ondo.

gisapot ko.  di ko motug-an ngano.

Quote from: hubag bohol on April 27, 2014, 03:15:54 PM

Hmm, unsay siyato, Ms. Singkit?

igsoon na siya ni sioktong, dearie.  kadtong mga natawo sa '30s wa makaila ani.

kuyawag ginhawa uy. mora mag gibitok.

Memorialization

At the end of 1957, when Fido was still alive, the Comune of Borgo San Lorenzo commissioned the sculptor Salvatore Cipolla to create a monument of the dog as a testimony of that exemplary story of love and fidelity. The work, entitled "Monument to the dog Fido", was placed in Piazza Dante in Borgo San Lorenzo, next to the municipal palace. Under the statue depicting the dog is the dedication: A FIDO, ESEMPIO DI FEDELTÀ (TO FIDO, EXAMPLE OF LOYALTY). The monument was inaugurated by the mayor of Borgo San Lorenzo, in presence of Fido and Soriani's widow. Originally, the statue was realized in majolica, but a few months after the inauguration some vandals destroyed it. Consequently, the mayor of Borgo San Lorenzo commissioned to Salvatore Cipolla a new statue, this time in bronze, which replaced the first one and that is still today in Piazza Dante.

wikipedia/
http://allthedaysordained.blogspot.com/2012/08/fido.html

Death

Fido died still waiting for his master on June 9, 1958. The news of his death was announced to the public by the newspaper on a four-column front page story in La Nazione. On 22 June, La Domenica del Corriere commemorated Fido with a poignant cover story. The cover painting by Walter Molino shows Fido dying on the roadside, with the bus waiting in the background. Fido was buried outside the cemetery of Luco beside his master, Carlo Soriani.

Daily life

After Fido recovered, he followed Soriani to the bus stop in the central square of Luco di Mugello and watched him board the bus for his job. When the bus returned in the evening, Fido found and greeted Soriani with obvious great joy and followed him home again. This pattern repeated every workday for two years: Fido would stay in the square, avoiding all others, waiting and sniffing the air until excitedly greeting Soriani and enthusiastically following him home.

This was during the Second World War, and on December 30, 1943, Borgo San Lorenzo was subjected to a violent allied bombardment: many factories were hit, and many workers, including Soriani, perished. That evening, Fido showed up as usual at the bus stop, but did not see his beloved master get off. He later arrived back home, but for fourteen years thereafter (more than 5,000 times) until the day of Fido's death, he went daily to the stop watching and sniffing the air in vain for Soriani to get off the bus.

Media interest in Fido grew during his lifetime. Italian magazines Gente and Grand Hotel (magazine) published the story of the dog, which also appeared in several newsreels of the Istituto Luce. Many readers were struck by the extraordinary faithfulness of Fido, including the mayor of Borgo San Lorenzo, who, on November 9, 1957, awarded him a gold medal in the presence of many citizens including Soriani's moved widow. Time magazine wrote an article about Fido in April 1957.

Puppyhood

Fido probably began life sometime in the autumn of 1941 as an unowned street dog in Luco di Mugello, a small town in the municipality of Borgo San Lorenzo, in the Tuscan Province of Florence, Italy. One night in November 1941, on his way home from the bus stop, a brick kiln worker in Borgo San Lorenzo named Carlo Soriani found him lying injured in a roadside ditch. Not knowing who the dog belonged to, Soriani took him home and nursed him back to health. Soriani and his wife decided to adopt the dog, naming him Fido ("faithful", from Latin fidus).

Species:  Dog

Breed:  Italian street dog

Sex:  Male

Born:  Autumn of 1941
Borgo San Lorenzo, Tuscany, Italy

Died:  June 9, 1958
Borgo San Lorenzo, Tuscany, Italy

Nation from:  Italian

Known for:  waiting for fourteen years for the return of his deceased owner

Owner:  Carlo Soriani (until december 30, 1943), Carlo Soriani's widow (until Fido's death)

Appearance:  White with many dark piebald markings, short-haired, drop-eared, scenthound-like mix

Named after:  Ancient Latin dog name meaning "faithful"

Gold medal from Mayor; Made legally unlicensed; "Monument to the dog Fido" Piazza Dante, Borgo San Lorenzo

Fido (1941 â€" June 9, 1958) was an Italian street dog that came to public attention in 1943 because of his demonstration of unswerving loyalty to his dead master. Fido was written about in many Italian and international magazines and newspapers, appeared in newsreels throughout Italy, and was bestowed several honors, including a public statue erected in his honor.

i played tubig-tubig and siyato and bato-lata, yeheeey!

Quote from: islander on April 01, 2013, 12:43:33 AMLoyalty is what a dog provides. The ancient joke-name for a dog, Fido, is in truth the most perfect of all dog names - I am faithful. I am loyal. I remain.

as for fido dido (who's no longer a dog, though i thought all along that he's a dog!), well, an internet search gives the simplest meaning of the classical latin dido--in turn taken from classical greek--as "trick or joke".

for the dog fido, please go to the thread of the same name in "history", this forum.

this is something. here's hoping some salient points will be shared in this forum.  goes without saying that most, if not all, of us can't really attend this no impact gab.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=518XP8prwZo#

Kseniya Simonova
Winner, 2009 Ukraine's Got Talent

nakaluha ko, loll.  sad, sad, sad.  here are hopes that it was sudden and the pain wasn't long and tortuous.  hinaot, hinaot, hinaot.  rest in peace, ichigo.

where are the rifles?


Young miners in the Northumberland coalfield during the early 1940s. (http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/)

ilara ko tits. bahala na lang nang pterodactyl. they could have captured a dragon for all i care. but what do miners have to do with rifles? aren't they supposed to carry pickaxes?

Quote from: hubag bohol on April 17, 2014, 10:21:28 PM
Hmm, all or some or none of the above. Point is, as Eliot is wont to point out,

"The world revolves like ancient women,
Gathering fuel in vacant lots."

Older women are best, because they always think they may be doing it for the last time. (Ian Fleming)

aha! you're saying that the rose that cannot wither is now ancient? hear ye, queen! someone here is looking for fossils.

toto, magbinol-anon na pod ta.  mag-latin tag balik kun maka-contact na ta ni pope francis.  meantime, asa na man kang espidnoha karon?  you already in bohol? or still busy dissecting human diseases?

Quote from: hofelina on March 15, 2014, 10:18:03 PM
Doy Mike, makahuwat ka taman August, ako kang dalhan.

hof, niay best wishes nga madad-an nimo si dear leader webmaster mike ligalig ani, with much gratitude from me.

Quote from: hubag bohol on April 18, 2014, 06:10:11 PM
The newfound planet, called Kepler-186f, was first spotted by NASA's Kepler space telescope and circles a dim red dwarf star about 490 light-years from Earth.

aaargh! count me out of this quest for the unreachable stars, no matter how hopeless, no matter how far...

490 light-years from earth! so 490 x 9.5 trillion kilometers. thanks for the word 'trillion' instead of writing zeros here, which i can't even imagine.

the perfect man cometh...

unsa na pod kahang klase sa servers ang magnegosyo kun mental telepathy nah?

oh, yes indeed. that's enough time to either have a baby in early grade school by now, change taste if not preferences, get burned, or do penance.

none of the above. but i'm aiming for orange or green.

di ting-hire karon kay holy thursday.

mas angayan gihapon si dear leader kim jong un.

kinaunhang eb sa anak sa ig-agaw igtagsa

at least, kitty is not that demanding...

it failed to impress.  i can't see a thing.

paksit si dad.

North Korea asks British gov't to act on salon's 'Bad Hair Day?' poster
     
The Associated Press
Wednesday, April 16, 2014

LONDON - North Korean diplomats have asked the British government to take action against a London hair salon's poster poking fun at distinctively coiffured leader Kim Jong Un.

The Foreign Office said Wednesday it had received a letter from the country's embassy objecting to the poster, and was considering its response.

The Evening Standard newspaper reported the letter urged Britain to take "necessary action to stop the provocation."

Staff at M&M Hair Academy say they were visited by diplomats from the nearby embassy after putting up a poster featuring a picture of Kim -- who sports a distinctive undercut -- and the slogan "Bad Hair Day?"

Police say they spoke to both parties and determined no crime had been committed.

The embassy didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/

This undated photo provided by M&M Hair Academy in west London shows barber Karim Nabbach standing next to a poster poking fun at North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. North Korean diplomats have asked the British government take action against the salon. (Provided/AP/M&M Hair Academy)

The estimated $25,000 statue, which took about eight months to create, was funded by private donors. It eventually found its way to the Jesuit School of Theology at the University of Toronto's Regis College.

"Unlike a lot of sculptures of Jesus that have ever been represented that are meant to be put on a pedestal, this sculpture meant to be put just on a city street," Schmalz said.

Schmalz also sent a 'Jesus the Homeless' replica to Chicago, where it's awaiting a permanent home. Another copy is on its way to Perth, Australia.

And the sculptor has been working with the Vatican to find a place for the statue in Rome, where they hope to install it near St. Peter's Square.

With reports from CTV Kichener's Priya Mann and CTV Toronto's Calvin To

http://www.ctvnews.ca/

Schmalz, a graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design, lives in St. Jacobs, near Waterloo. He specializes in large-scale bronze Christian-themed works, which have been commissioned for public monuments and Christian churches.

He was inspired to create the 2.5-metre bronze statue after seeing a homeless person wrapped in a blanket in Toronto.

"Initially what I basically thought in my heart or in my head was: I just saw Jesus," Schmalz said. "And I wanted other people to have that experience when they see homeless people or marginalized people, to see that relationship with Jesus."

"The first thing he did when he saw my sculpture was he prayed, and then he blessed the piece,” Schmalz told CTV News. “And to have Pope Francis bless your sculpture is one of the most amazing experiences possible."

Father Terry McGuire, a retired Catholic priest living in Waterloo, Ont., isn't surprised the statue caught the pope’s attention.

"To me it coincides with Pope Francis in terms of his care and concern for the poor," McGuire told CTV News. "And Tim has a way of bringing out the feeling."

Quote from: hubag bohol on April 15, 2014, 12:51:03 PM

Pope Francis examines the 'Jesus the Homeless' sculpture in Vatican City as creator Tim Schmalz looks on in the Vatican.


Twice-rejected 'Jesus the Homeless' statue gets blessing from the pope

Corinne Ton That, CTVNews.ca
November 29, 2013 10:08AM EST

It was a statue that couldn’t find a home: a life-sized sculpture of Jesus depicted as a homeless man sleeping on a park bench, wrapped in a blanket, with his crucifixion wounds evident on his bare feet.

But after being rejected by two renowned cathedrals â€" St. Michael's in Toronto and St. Patrick's in New York -- 'Jesus the Homeless' finally found a fan in the Vatican: Pope Francis.

Sculptor Tim Schmalz travelled to Rome with 'Jesus the Homeless' last week to present the statue to the pope.

chewbacca, please answer this.

too bad i can't make the chart out.  it's too big for my small netbook...