This may prevent a unified position on a legally binding and substantial Code of Conduct on the South China Sea.

Archived version

As the Philippines prepared to assume chairmanship of the ASEAN in December last year, it announced one of its priorities: to conclude the contentious decades-long negotiations on the ASEAN-China Code of Conduct (COC) on the South China Sea. Soon after, something unexpected happened. The Chinese Embassy in Manila dusted off its old “wolf warrior” diplomacy playbook, hurling insults at government officials—from senators to the spokesperson of the Philippine Coast Guard—who criticized China’s aggressive behavior and unrelenting rhetoric on its “ownership” of a large swath of the South China Sea (SCS), including the West Philippine Sea, which lies within the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone.

However, the US-Israeli war on Iran–which has resulted in an energy crisis in the Philippines–led to a change of tone in Manila-Beijing relations, an apparent softening of stance by the Marcos government.

...

The area referred to is Reed Bank, which is rich in oil and gas resources and lies within the Philippines’ EEZ. For many years, China has blocked the Philippines from exploring in this area, insisting on “joint development” with China as its partner. In the latest bilateral consultation mechanism held in late March in Quanzhou, the two countries discussed initial exchanges on potential energy cooperation, particularly oil and gas exploration. This is likely among the issues to be discussed in the planned meeting of the foreign ministers of both countries within the year.

..

Still, China’s disinformation campaign continues with three key targets:

...

First, it wants to quiet down Manila's transparency policy. The current strategy where the Philippines publicizes incidents of Chinese harassment in the West Philippine Sea—a name-and-shame campaign–started in 2023 during Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s presidency. This policy, anchored on the Philippines' 2016 legal victory in which an international arbitration court junked China’s excessive nine-dash line claim as having no legal basis, is aimed at gathering international and domestic support for the Philippine government.

Second, China wants its nine-dash line narrative to prevail in the court of public opinion. Despite Manila’s insistence that its neighboring hegemon abide by international law as laid out in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the arbitral ruling, China refused to participate in the arbitration case filed by Manila in 2013 and has consistently rejected the decision of the arbitration court. Beijing’s tactic is to repeat its illegitimate claim over the South China Sea countless times until it is perceived as true, albeit being a signatory to UNCLOS.

Third, Beijing appears to be undermining Manila’s leadership as the latter presides over what it aims to be the final stretch of talks on the COC. China is against a COC that is legally binding because it would constrain it from enforcing its claims. If concluded, the COC would set the rules of behavior in the contested waters and prevent miscalculations between the disputing parties.

...

Beijing has chosen to unleash its combative style of diplomacy. While many parts of the world, especially in the West, experienced “wolf warrior diplomacy” in recent years (from 2019 to 2021), the wave has just reached the Philippines.

Political scientist Chong Ja Ian thinks that wolf warrior diplomacy was rooted in the tensions in the South China Sea and buttressed by the 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling that invalidated China’s nine-dash line claim.

...

At the time, China spared the Philippines its bellicose rhetoric because Rodrigo Duterte, who was the president then, pursued a policy of appeasement.

The Economist came up with a “wolf warrior” index which showed that since mid-2022, the aggressive rhetoric has steadily fallen and in the beginning of 2025, the Chinese foreign ministry’s language had “softened to levels of cordiality not seen in the past six years…” This is because their confrontational diplomacy caused blowback, “soured relations with Australia and the EU, among others. Globally, public opinion on China tanked.”

...

In the Philippines, China is among the least trusted countries. A Pulse Asia survey in December 2025 showed that only one in 10 Filipinos said they trust China, or a rating of 11%. Compare this to the US (82%), Japan (64%), Canada (58%), and Australia (51%), the top countries Filipinos trust.

...

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/8261971

Here is the original report: Disinformation diplomacy: How malign actors are seeking to undermine democracy

"The information environment is increasingly being weaponised by malign state actors such as Russia, China and Iran and non-state actors like Daesh to sow distrust, undermine cohesion, and erode confidence in democratic institutions and norms," UK lawmakers warn in a report.

"Although this threat is not a new phenomenon, the scale and sophistication of foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) is increasingly recognised as an existential threat to democratic societies."

The report presents particularly Russia as a clear threat for the UK and transatlantic security.

"Russia’s behaviour is that of a state at war against the West, and this will not change whilst Putin is in power. Therefore, it is vital that the Government ensures the UK and its allies harden their information ecosystems to make them an impenetrable and unattractive target of Russian interference."

...

China is a multifaceted actor who is known to utilise a diverse toolkit including foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI), economic coercion, transnational repression, and cyber-attacks to conduct foreign interference. In comparison to Russia, the Chinese approach to FIMI is more institutionalised and heavily invested in information laundering official Chinese Communist Party narratives to achieve, as James Kynge Senior Research Fellow for China and the World at Chatham House explained, President Xi Jinping’s “telling China’s story well” mantra.36 This approach seeks to emphasise Chinese successes, diminish negative content, and push Beijing friendly framing of issues of concern.

...

The report mentions, among others, disinformation campaigns like Russia's Doppelganger or China's Spamouflage.

...

Social media companies, should be required to make algorithms transparent to the public for research and to produce annual reports on disinformation.

"We also considered evidence from social media companies, given their potential central role in limiting the dissemination of FIMI. We remain dissatisfied with their actions to combat foreign interference and the lack of transparency around algorithmic systems that can be exploited by malign actors. We call on the Government to amend the Online Safety Act 2023 to ensure social media companies are required to provide algorithmic transparency to safeguard against manipulation."

...

Whilst lawmakers recognise the wider pressures on public spending, they call on the UK Government "to increase its coordination with European and other allies."

"We therefore call on the Government to enhance its public communications and establish a centralised National Counter Disinformation Centre to improve coordination and response. This approach would complement international examples from allies like Sweden’s Psychological Defence Agency, Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation and France’s Vigilance and Protection against Foreign Digital Interference service (VIGINUM)."

...

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/8261971

Here is the original report: Disinformation diplomacy: How malign actors are seeking to undermine democracy

"The information environment is increasingly being weaponised by malign state actors such as Russia, China and Iran and non-state actors like Daesh to sow distrust, undermine cohesion, and erode confidence in democratic institutions and norms," UK lawmakers warn in a report.

"Although this threat is not a new phenomenon, the scale and sophistication of foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) is increasingly recognised as an existential threat to democratic societies."

The report presents particularly Russia as a clear threat for the UK and transatlantic security.

"Russia’s behaviour is that of a state at war against the West, and this will not change whilst Putin is in power. Therefore, it is vital that the Government ensures the UK and its allies harden their information ecosystems to make them an impenetrable and unattractive target of Russian interference."

...

China is a multifaceted actor who is known to utilise a diverse toolkit including foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI), economic coercion, transnational repression, and cyber-attacks to conduct foreign interference. In comparison to Russia, the Chinese approach to FIMI is more institutionalised and heavily invested in information laundering official Chinese Communist Party narratives to achieve, as James Kynge Senior Research Fellow for China and the World at Chatham House explained, President Xi Jinping’s “telling China’s story well” mantra.36 This approach seeks to emphasise Chinese successes, diminish negative content, and push Beijing friendly framing of issues of concern.

...

The report mentions, among others, disinformation campaigns like Russia's Doppelganger or China's Spamouflage.

...

Social media companies, should be required to make algorithms transparent to the public for research and to produce annual reports on disinformation.

"We also considered evidence from social media companies, given their potential central role in limiting the dissemination of FIMI. We remain dissatisfied with their actions to combat foreign interference and the lack of transparency around algorithmic systems that can be exploited by malign actors. We call on the Government to amend the Online Safety Act 2023 to ensure social media companies are required to provide algorithmic transparency to safeguard against manipulation."

...

Whilst lawmakers recognise the wider pressures on public spending, they call on the UK Government "to increase its coordination with European and other allies."

"We therefore call on the Government to enhance its public communications and establish a centralised National Counter Disinformation Centre to improve coordination and response. This approach would complement international examples from allies like Sweden’s Psychological Defence Agency, Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation and France’s Vigilance and Protection against Foreign Digital Interference service (VIGINUM)."

...

Here is the original report: Disinformation diplomacy: How malign actors are seeking to undermine democracy

"The information environment is increasingly being weaponised by malign state actors such as Russia, China and Iran and non-state actors like Daesh to sow distrust, undermine cohesion, and erode confidence in democratic institutions and norms," UK lawmakers warn in a report.

"Although this threat is not a new phenomenon, the scale and sophistication of foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) is increasingly recognised as an existential threat to democratic societies."

The report presents particularly Russia as a clear threat for the UK and transatlantic security.

"Russia’s behaviour is that of a state at war against the West, and this will not change whilst Putin is in power. Therefore, it is vital that the Government ensures the UK and its allies harden their information ecosystems to make them an impenetrable and unattractive target of Russian interference."

...

China is a multifaceted actor who is known to utilise a diverse toolkit including foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI), economic coercion, transnational repression, and cyber-attacks to conduct foreign interference. In comparison to Russia, the Chinese approach to FIMI is more institutionalised and heavily invested in information laundering official Chinese Communist Party narratives to achieve, as James Kynge Senior Research Fellow for China and the World at Chatham House explained, President Xi Jinping’s “telling China’s story well” mantra.36 This approach seeks to emphasise Chinese successes, diminish negative content, and push Beijing friendly framing of issues of concern.

...

The report mentions, among others, disinformation campaigns like Russia's Doppelganger or China's Spamouflage.

...

Social media companies, should be required to make algorithms transparent to the public for research and to produce annual reports on disinformation.

"We also considered evidence from social media companies, given their potential central role in limiting the dissemination of FIMI. We remain dissatisfied with their actions to combat foreign interference and the lack of transparency around algorithmic systems that can be exploited by malign actors. We call on the Government to amend the Online Safety Act 2023 to ensure social media companies are required to provide algorithmic transparency to safeguard against manipulation."

...

Whilst lawmakers recognise the wider pressures on public spending, they call on the UK Government "to increase its coordination with European and other allies."

"We therefore call on the Government to enhance its public communications and establish a centralised National Counter Disinformation Centre to improve coordination and response. This approach would complement international examples from allies like Sweden’s Psychological Defence Agency, Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation and France’s Vigilance and Protection against Foreign Digital Interference service (VIGINUM)."

...

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/8261407

The leader of Taiwan’s largest opposition party arrived in China at the invitation of Xi Jinping on Tuesday for a “peace mission” at a time of increased military tensions between the self-governed island and the mainland.

Cheng Li-wun’s trip marks the first visit by a Kuomintang (KMT) leader ​to China in a decade ... Cheng said at her party headquarters in Taipei she had embarked on a “historic journey for peace”, but added that some people feel uneasy about the visit. “If you truly love Taiwan, you will seize even the slightest chance, every possible opportunity, to keep Taiwan from being ravaged by war,” the KMT chief said in defence of her visit. China sees Taiwan as its own territory and has not ruled out reunification by force, if necessary.

...

Lai [Ching-te, Taiwan's president], viewed as a separatist figure by Beijing, has called for ramping up Taiwan’s defence capabilities and bolstering the self-governed island’s defence budget, drawing lessons from multiple conflicts around the world, including the Russia-Ukraine war.

The Cheng-led opposition bloc, which dominates parliament, has also been accused of blocking a $40bn special defence budget since November 2025, which Lai has been pushing for to bolster Taiwan’s military muscle against China’s People's Liberation Army.

...

Cheng did not address the increasing military escalation from across the Taiwan Strait where China has been sending warplanes and naval vessels around the smaller island on a near-daily basis. China’s PLA forces have also recently staged two major military exercises around the island, with the most recent one in December, after the US announced arms sales to Taiwan and involved the deployment of air, naval and missile units for a joint live-fire drill.

...

Late on Monday, Kuan Bi-ling, head of Taiwan's Ocean Affairs Council, which runs the coast guard, posted a picture on her Facebook account of current Chinese warship deployments around the island – two off the east coast, and one each to the north, northwest and southwest.

"When you depart, you are doing so from within what they see as the 'Taiwan cage'," Kuan told reporters at parliament on Tuesday, referring to how China's ​military has termed Taiwan's planned T-Dome air defence ​system and talking about Cheng's trip.

Lawmakers in Taiwan slammed the visit, saying that the opposition leader is following the steps China wants her to. “From the fact that the accompanying journalists were chosen by China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, to the use of a Chinese aircraft, and even the uncertainty before departure over whether she would be able to meet president Xi, KMT chairwoman Cheng Li-wen’s visit to China was, from the moment she boarded the plane, locked into the ‘One China’ framework,” said Fan Yun, a lawmaker from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

...

The opposition, according to the lawmaker, is ignoring the obvious ground reality as public opinion polls in Taiwan show that support for unification has fallen below 10 per cent.

...

Regional experts say the trip serves Cheng little but benefits China more.

“Cheng’s visit won’t fundamentally change China’s calculation and preparation for a potential reunification with Taiwan. For Beijing, her trip primarily serves propaganda and diplomatic signalling purposes,” says William Yang, the International Crisis Group’s senior analyst.

For Xi’s domestic audience, the visit will display the government's progress on the mission of reunification with Taiwan, he says.

“Cheng's remarks during the trip, which will focus on calling for peace and reiterating her opposition to Taiwan independence, will be amplified by Chinese state media to try to exacerbate division within Taiwan,” he says.

...

The leader of Taiwan’s largest opposition party arrived in China at the invitation of Xi Jinping on Tuesday for a “peace mission” at a time of increased military tensions between the self-governed island and the mainland.

Cheng Li-wun’s trip marks the first visit by a Kuomintang (KMT) leader ​to China in a decade ... Cheng said at her party headquarters in Taipei she had embarked on a “historic journey for peace”, but added that some people feel uneasy about the visit. “If you truly love Taiwan, you will seize even the slightest chance, every possible opportunity, to keep Taiwan from being ravaged by war,” the KMT chief said in defence of her visit. China sees Taiwan as its own territory and has not ruled out reunification by force, if necessary.

...

Lai [Ching-te, Taiwan's president], viewed as a separatist figure by Beijing, has called for ramping up Taiwan’s defence capabilities and bolstering the self-governed island’s defence budget, drawing lessons from multiple conflicts around the world, including the Russia-Ukraine war.

The Cheng-led opposition bloc, which dominates parliament, has also been accused of blocking a $40bn special defence budget since November 2025, which Lai has been pushing for to bolster Taiwan’s military muscle against China’s People's Liberation Army.

...

Cheng did not address the increasing military escalation from across the Taiwan Strait where China has been sending warplanes and naval vessels around the smaller island on a near-daily basis. China’s PLA forces have also recently staged two major military exercises around the island, with the most recent one in December, after the US announced arms sales to Taiwan and involved the deployment of air, naval and missile units for a joint live-fire drill.

...

Late on Monday, Kuan Bi-ling, head of Taiwan's Ocean Affairs Council, which runs the coast guard, posted a picture on her Facebook account of current Chinese warship deployments around the island – two off the east coast, and one each to the north, northwest and southwest.

"When you depart, you are doing so from within what they see as the 'Taiwan cage'," Kuan told reporters at parliament on Tuesday, referring to how China's ​military has termed Taiwan's planned T-Dome air defence ​system and talking about Cheng's trip.

Lawmakers in Taiwan slammed the visit, saying that the opposition leader is following the steps China wants her to. “From the fact that the accompanying journalists were chosen by China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, to the use of a Chinese aircraft, and even the uncertainty before departure over whether she would be able to meet president Xi, KMT chairwoman Cheng Li-wen’s visit to China was, from the moment she boarded the plane, locked into the ‘One China’ framework,” said Fan Yun, a lawmaker from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

...

The opposition, according to the lawmaker, is ignoring the obvious ground reality as public opinion polls in Taiwan show that support for unification has fallen below 10 per cent.

...

Regional experts say the trip serves Cheng little but benefits China more.

“Cheng’s visit won’t fundamentally change China’s calculation and preparation for a potential reunification with Taiwan. For Beijing, her trip primarily serves propaganda and diplomatic signalling purposes,” says William Yang, the International Crisis Group’s senior analyst.

For Xi’s domestic audience, the visit will display the government's progress on the mission of reunification with Taiwan, he says.

“Cheng's remarks during the trip, which will focus on calling for peace and reiterating her opposition to Taiwan independence, will be amplified by Chinese state media to try to exacerbate division within Taiwan,” he says.

...

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/8247230

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/8246742

The Republic of Moldova has declared its readiness to help European countries holding elections counter disinformation and destabilization campaigns attributed to the Kremlin.

Archived version

Moldovan Deputy Prime Minister for European Integration, Cristina Gherasimov, stated that the country’s accession to the European Union is not only a security guarantee for Chisinau, but also an advantage for the entire European bloc.

“Moldova’s accession is often described as a security guarantee for our country. And it truly is. But it is equally a strategic investment in Europe’s own security,” she said.

In turn, national security adviser Stanislav Secrieru emphasized that Moldova brings direct experience in countering hybrid threats.

“We come with something unique. We have hard-earned knowledge and solutions tested directly on the ground to deal with Russian hybrid threats,” he stated.

...

According to authorities, Moldova has also dismantled a cross-border network that allegedly trained young people in camps in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia for destabilization actions in European countries. Participants reportedly trained to operate drones, use incendiary devices, and evade law enforcement during protests.

Officials say Moldova has already shared its experience with EU member states preparing for elections, including Hungary, France, Italy, Spain, and Poland. French authorities have already warned about potential Russian interference.

President Maia Sandu continues to promote Moldova’s EU accession, stressing that integration is essential for regional security.

...

During a recent visit to Ireland, Sandu emphasized that ‘Russia is a threat to everyone’.

“Russia has also learned that it’s easier to impose its will through hybrid wars than through boots on the ground,” she said.

Sandu ... said this has been seen in Moldova in terms of Russian efforts to interfere in elections which she said have been “brutal”.

...

A small, landlocked country, Moldova sits between Romania and Ukraine. Sandu outlined how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine saw more than a million refugees cross into Moldova and that “for a population of 2.4 million this was quite a challenge”. Some 130,000 Ukrainians are still living there.

The war sparked an energy crisis for Moldova – which has since eliminated its dependency on Russian gas – and the economy has been “significantly affected”.

Sandu said Moldova’s airspace had been “violated constantly” and Russian Shahed drones had landed in people’s yards and on their roofs. A recent attack on a hydropower plant in Ukraine left 300,000 people in her country without safe drinking water.

...

[Edit to add the original link.]

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/8246742

The Republic of Moldova has declared its readiness to help European countries holding elections counter disinformation and destabilization campaigns attributed to the Kremlin.

Archived version

Moldovan Deputy Prime Minister for European Integration, Cristina Gherasimov, stated that the country’s accession to the European Union is not only a security guarantee for Chisinau, but also an advantage for the entire European bloc.

“Moldova’s accession is often described as a security guarantee for our country. And it truly is. But it is equally a strategic investment in Europe’s own security,” she said.

In turn, national security adviser Stanislav Secrieru emphasized that Moldova brings direct experience in countering hybrid threats.

“We come with something unique. We have hard-earned knowledge and solutions tested directly on the ground to deal with Russian hybrid threats,” he stated.

...

According to authorities, Moldova has also dismantled a cross-border network that allegedly trained young people in camps in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia for destabilization actions in European countries. Participants reportedly trained to operate drones, use incendiary devices, and evade law enforcement during protests.

Officials say Moldova has already shared its experience with EU member states preparing for elections, including Hungary, France, Italy, Spain, and Poland. French authorities have already warned about potential Russian interference.

President Maia Sandu continues to promote Moldova’s EU accession, stressing that integration is essential for regional security.

...

During a recent visit to Ireland, Sandu emphasized that ‘Russia is a threat to everyone’.

“Russia has also learned that it’s easier to impose its will through hybrid wars than through boots on the ground,” she said.

Sandu ... said this has been seen in Moldova in terms of Russian efforts to interfere in elections which she said have been “brutal”.

...

A small, landlocked country, Moldova sits between Romania and Ukraine. Sandu outlined how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine saw more than a million refugees cross into Moldova and that “for a population of 2.4 million this was quite a challenge”. Some 130,000 Ukrainians are still living there.

The war sparked an energy crisis for Moldova – which has since eliminated its dependency on Russian gas – and the economy has been “significantly affected”.

Sandu said Moldova’s airspace had been “violated constantly” and Russian Shahed drones had landed in people’s yards and on their roofs. A recent attack on a hydropower plant in Ukraine left 300,000 people in her country without safe drinking water.

...

[Edit to add the original link.]

Archived link

In 1958, Mao [Zedong, then the Chinese Communist Party's leader] ordered every village in China to produce steel. Farmers melted down their cooking pots in backyard furnaces and reported spectacular numbers. The steel was useless. The crops rotted. Thirty million people starved.

In 2026, every other company is having top down mandate on AI transformation.

Same energy.

...

Entire departments are stitching together n8n workflows and calling it AI — dozens of automated chains firing prompts into models, zero evaluation on any of them. These tools are merchants of complexity: they sell visual simplicity while generating spaghetti underneath. A drag-and-drop canvas makes it trivially easy to chain ten LLM calls together and impossibly hard to debug why the eighth one hallucinates on Tuesdays. The people building these workflows have never designed an evaluation pipeline, never measured model drift, never A/B tested a prompt. They don’t need to — the canvas looks clean, the arrows point forward, the green checkmarks fire. The complexity isn’t avoided. It’s hidden behind a GUI where nobody with ML expertise will ever look.

The backyard steel of 1958 looked like steel. It was not steel. Today’s backyard AI looks like AI. It is not AI. A TypeScript workflow with hardcoded if-else branches is not an agent. A prompt template behind a REST endpoint is not a model. Calling these things AI is like calling pig iron from a backyard furnace high-grade steel. It satisfies the reporting requirement. It fails every real-world test.

...

The “everyone builds with AI” mandate has turned into a hunger game of scope creep. Engineers use AI to generate designs and ship prototypes without waiting for the design team. PMs use AI to write code and spin up dashboards without filing engineering tickets. Designers use AI to build product specs and run user research without looping in product. Everyone is expanding into everyone else’s territory — not because they’re better at it, but because AI makes it possible and the mandate makes it rewarded. The org chart says collaboration; the incentive structure says land grab. What looks like productivity gains is actually a war of all against all, where every function is simultaneously trying to prove it can absorb the others before the others absorb it.

...

The Great Leap Forward’s famine didn’t arrive immediately. For a while, the numbers looked spectacular. Every province reported record harvests. Leadership was pleased. The requisitions increased.

The famine came when the real grain ran out but the reported grain kept flowing upward.

We’re still in the reporting phase. The dashboards are green. Adoption is up and to the right. Every team reports productivity gains that, if summed across the company, would imply engineers are shipping at 300% efficiency while somehow still missing the same deadlines.

...

The question nobody’s asking: what did any of this actually produce?

The answer, when it arrives, will be awkward.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/8222868

Archived version

Here is the free download: The White Book: Navigating the Russian Propaganda Minefield (pdf)

The book is an analytical guide that systematizes Ukraine’s experience in countering Russian disinformation — one of the key tools of hybrid warfare against Ukraine.

The book explains how the Russian propaganda machine operates: how its narratives are created, which channels are used to disseminate them, and which actors amplify their influence. It also traces the evolution of Russian disinformation — from political manipulation to its use as a weapon during the full-scale war.

That phrase, “cognitive war,” cannot be underestimated in its significance. “The White Book” argues that Russia is not merely spreading falsehoods. It is attempting to shape the frameworks through which people understand events in the first place.

In its final section, the book warns that disinformation has become a permanent feature of the information environment, increasingly amplified by overload, emotional exhaustion, bot swarms, deepfakes and algorithmic manipulation. The problem, it argues, is no longer only factual falsehood. It is the intentional erosion of the public’s ability to interpret information clearly. The democratic world, the authors suggest, is not only facing a battle over facts, but over the architecture of thought itself.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/8117688

Archived version

The National Maritime Council (NMC) has strongly condemned a series of “aggressive and dangerous” actions by Chinese maritime forces against Philippine vessels, personnel, and local fisherfolk in the West Philippine Sea throughout March.

In a statement issued on Thursday, the President-led council cited multiple incidents involving the China Coast Guard, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLA-N), and Chinese maritime militia.

“These unlawful acts endanger lives, violate international law, and undermine regional peace and stability,” it said.

...

“These incidents occurred in areas where the Philippines has sovereignty, sovereign rights, and jurisdiction,” the council added.

According to the NMC, Philippine operations in these areas were lawful and consistent with the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos) and the 2016 arbitral award.

In contrast, China’s actions ran counter to international law and the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea.

...

Among the most serious incidents was one on March 7, when a Chinese naval vessel reportedly directed its fire-control radar at the Philippine Navy’s BRP Miguel Malvar near Escoda Shoal (Sabina Shoal) —an act the council described as a “threat of force.”

On March 17, Filipino fishermen operating near Bajo de Masinloc (Scarborough Shoal) were allegedly harassed by Chinese vessels through dangerous maneuvers, sirens, and the deployment of rigid-hulled inflatable boats.

...

“The country also reiterates its call on China to withdraw and direct its vessels and maritime assets to cease and desist from illegal, provocative, and dangerous actions against Philippine vessels, and to stop activities that violate Philippine sovereignty, sovereign rights, and jurisdiction; and to comply with its obligations under international law,” it added.

...

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/8117356

Ordinary Iranians from various parts of Iran describe expanding strikes, economic pain and fear of repression.

...

We cannot give Setareh's real name or say what kind of work she does - no detail that might possibly identify her to the regime's secret police. But we can say that she is a young woman from Tehran who loved going to work, where she could meet her friends ... Now the nightly bombing has stolen her ability to sleep naturally. She lies awake worrying about the present, and the future ...

"We cannot afford even basic food. What's in our pockets does not match market prices... Iran has also been under sanctions for years, and the problems created by the Islamic Republic means that during this time we couldn't build any savings, at least enough to survive now or depend on something. To put it simply, the people I thought might have money to lend also don't have anything."

"I don't know how this massive wave of unemployment will be handled. There is no support system and the government will do nothing for all these unemployed people. I believe the real war will start if this war ends without any outcome." The outcome she wants is the end of the regime.

...