On Friday, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said the US “will have to pay” to keep the agreement that allows US troops to be stationed in the Philippines on a rotational basis, known as the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA).
Duterte made the comments during a speech to Philippine troops. “I’d like to put on notice if there is an American agent here, from now on, you want the Visiting Forces Agreement done? You have to pay,” he said. “It is a shared responsibility, but your share of responsibility does not come free, after all, when the war breaks out we all pay.”
Duterte was ready to scrap the VFA and kick the US out of his country last year but reversed the decision citing tensions with Beijing in the South China Sea. On Friday, the Philippine president made it clear that he was still reluctant to allow the US military in his country.
“(The US) is free to advance their troops in our land … We do not like it because we want to remain neutral,” he said. “But the exigency of the moment requires their presence here, I am okay with that.”
On Monday, Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin said officials from the US and the Philippines are expected to meet and work out their differences over the VFA. The agreement was temporarily extended while the two countries work our a more permanent pact.
I’m sure a continuing supply of LBFMs will be part of the contract, as it is in every port in the world where the US Navy docks.
LBFMs – could you decode please. I was a sailor in the Pacific during the VietNam War. Because of our colonialist attack upon a country going through their own (internal) civil war – our warship was denied entrance to any port in the Far East except in the Philippines. The only recreational activities there were bar-room brawling and courting whores. I am guessing – LBFM refers to one of those two activities.
The latter. The US military turns every port and base into a whorehouse eventually. I heard the abbreviation from a Navy vet. Be careful searching for a definition, NSFW.
Little Brown F***ing Machine. Desperately poor girls in a Catholic country. Probably not their first choice.
Selling the only thing of value they have to sell.
Excruciating metaphor for American colonialism, …as Jeffrey Epstein and his little black book for Western elite. The Qanon (scholarly designation for the unknown author of the “ur-gospel” used by the Synoptics) theory of a powerful cabal of sexual predators in control of the deep state.
Gross. As gross as Angeles.
Philippines as an anchor in the first island chain is very important for the US in countering China, which will be discussed (as noted) by the two countries soon.
. . .from Nikkei Asia:
Meanwhile China has been working on improving its ties with Philippines, including pledging to provide vaccine doses as noted here in Global Times.
I’ve often wondered why so many Philippinos are so poor, scrounging for a living in the garbage dumps or forced into prostitution, when the United States has been occupying and pretty much running things in that country for the better part of a century or so. Is that the result of the so called freedom we are trying to force down every ones throats? Let’s look at our own country, the homeless people and ask ourselves why?
Bezos is our Marcos.
I like how Duterte turns around Trump’s “make them pay” to keep America’s military bases comments. Maybe it’s going to work with Biden?
Duterte would do well to settle any differences with China haveing US troops on his soil just make his country and people a target just like any country that has US troops on it`s soil .