What the Pax?

What the Pax? | Daily Tribune

This initiative comes as China, now overtaking the West in the said sectors, has suddenly become parsimonious in sharing with its putative Western competitors its own hoard of rare earth elements used for high technology.

You ask, high technology, say you. Where do we come in? We don’t have the capability to manufacture chips, specifically the all-important OEM wafers, that countries such as Taiwan churn out regularly; all we have are camote chips and wafer biscuits.

But then, Grasshopper, we have the raw materials, abundant deep inside the bowels of our territory. And that, dear reader, is where we come in. You see, in Tarlac lies a beautiful piece of unspoiled land one thousand and six hundred hectares of it, perfectly suited for building a secure hub for the USA to reduce its dependence on earth resources from potentially hostile governments.

Differently stated, the Philippines is giving the Americans access to our country’s vast reserves of silica, copper, chromite, nickel and cobalt just so they can beat China in world trade.

And what access we are giving them! The area — “industrial hub,” they sugarcoat it — will be off-limits to most Filipinos. It will operate under its own set of rules (read: laws), be run by foreigners, and dig deep into the land (using monster machines) to mine minerals needed by the US and its European and other allies.

In so doing, it will be trenching upon local communities and their livelihoods, polluting the earth, and using five million liters of water DAILY for production. The scenario is so repellent that I am reminded of those old Filipino movies where impoverished parents sell their daughters to rich, lecherous old men mouthing the words (in mock Spanish accent), “Acong bejele se iyo, hija.”

We are so angry at China for its daily incursions into our exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea, yet we surrender our sovereignty by giving up a former president to a foreign court and opening our territory to EDCA sites and Pax Silica.

So don’t blame our countrymen for asking, “Mr. Marcos, what the pax?”