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A2
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2016 mst.daydesk@gmail.com
US SHIP SAILS BY CH ISLANDS WASHINGTON—A US destroyer sailed close to a cluster of islands claimed by Beijing in the South China Sea on Friday, the Pentagon said, amid continued tensions in the contested waterway. The USS Decatur passed close to the Paracel Islands and “conducted this transit in a routine, lawful manner without ship escorts and without incident,” Pentagon spokesman Commander Gary Ross said. “This operation demonstrated that coastal States may not unlawfully restrict the navigation rights, freedoms, and lawful uses of the sea that the United States and all states are entitled to exercise under international law.” The maneuver is the third South China Sea “freedom of navigation” operation conducted this year by the United States, which has repeatedly stressed it will ignore China’s “excessive” maritime claims. Ross said the Decatur did not sail within 12 nautical miles of the islands, but crossed through a broader swath of ocean claimed by China. Friday’s operation was the first since a July ruling by a tribunal at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which ruled there was no legal basis to China’s claims to nearly all of the sea—a verdict Beijing dismissed vehemently. China that month held a week of military drills around the Paracels in the northern part of the South China Sea, during which other ships were prohibited from entering the waters. Several other nations across the region including the Philippines and Vietnam have rival claims to various parts of the South China Sea. China has been accused of doing massive environmental damage to the sea by building artificial islands, some with airstrips, capable of hosting military facilities. The issue is a source of ongoing tension and anger in the region, and Friday’s US operation is likely to further inflame Beijing’s ire. AFP
BEIJING SLAMS SAIL-BY BEIJING, CHINA—China has slammed the US for sailing a warship near disputed territory in the South China Sea, saying the move was a “serious illegal act” and “deliberately provocative.” In a statement on its website late Friday night, the country’s defense ministry said two Chinese naval vessels warned off a US ship after it entered “Chinese territorial waters” near the Paracel Islands, known as Xisha in Chinese. China controls all of the islands, which are also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan. The ship’s “entrance into China’s territorial waters is a serious illegal act and a deliberately provocative act,” it said, adding that the ministry had made “solemn representations” to Washington. In a separate online statement, the foreign ministry said the action had “seriously violated China’s sovereignty and security interests, and had seriously broken relevant Chinese law and international law.” The Pentagon said Friday it had sent the destroyer USS Decatur close to the Paracel Islands, but that the ship had not passed within the 12-nautical mile zone that international law defines as territorial waters. The ships transited the area in “a routine, lawful manner without ship escorts and without incident,” a spokesman said. The maneuver was the third South China Sea “freedom of navigation” operation conducted this year by the US, which has repeatedly stressed it will ignore China’s “excessive” maritime claims. AFP
TRUMP: SEPARATION DUE TO WEAKNESS
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SO WEAK. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania in this file photo. AFP
HE United States has become so weak that the Philippines has begun distancing itself from decades of pro-American foreign policy and is now veering toward China and Russia, according to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Speaking at a rally in Fletcher, North Carolina, Trump said the Philippines has “broken with decades of pro-American foreign policy to instead leave for the orbit of China and Russia.” The GOP nominee attacked President Barack Obama for spending too much time campaigning for Hillary Clinton instead of working. “Our economy isn’t growing at all,” he added. The firebrand leader signalled on Thursday during his four-day state visit to Beijing that he intended to end the Philippines’ 70-year alliance with the United States in favor of China and Russia. “I announce my separation from the United States,” Duterte told a group of Chinese businessmen. “America has lost. I’ve realigned myself in your ideological flow and maybe I will also go to Russia to talk to [President Vladimir] Putin and tell
him that there are three of us against the world: China, Philippines and Russia. It’s the only way.” Until Duterte took office on June 30, the Philippines had been one of the United States’ most important and loyal allies in Asia, and a key to President Barack Obama’s “pivot” to the region. But since becoming president, Duterte has done a dramatic foreign policy U-turn that has baffled Washington and US State Department spokesman John Kirby said on Thursday the US would seek clarification from the Philippines about the “separation” remark. “It’s not clear to us exactly what that means in all its ramifications,” he said. Duterte on Saturday gave a series of comments to clarify those remarks. “Sever is to cut. Separate is just to chart another way of doing,” he said. “What I’m really saying was sepa-
ration of foreign policy, which in the past and until I became president, we always followed what the United States would give the cue.” “It’s not severance of ties. Severance is to cut diplomatic relations. I cannot do that. Why? It’s in the best interests of my country that I don’t do that,” Duterte told reporters in his hometown of Davao after returning from China. Nevertheless, Duterte launched another tirade against the United States for criticizing his war on crime, which has left more than 3,600 people dead and raised fears about extrajudicial killings. Duterte said a defense pact signed in 2014, known by the acronym of Edca and which allows for a much greater US military presence in the Philippines, remained in jeopardy. “It will affect Edca and the rest of the agreements, maybe, I will have to consult the military, the police and everybody,” he said. Duterte also said he did not care if the United States or the European Union cut their foreign aid to the Philippines, worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year, over concerns about human rights abuses in his war on crime. “Assistance, USAID, you can go to
hell,” he said, referring to the US government’s overseas economic and development assistance organization. Duterte often laces his rhetoric with vulgar language, and has repeatedly referred to US President Barack Obama as a “son of a whore.” On Saturday, he let loose again at US and European critics of his war on crime. “You sons of whores. Your euro, that’s a piece of paper. You run out of toilet paper, you wipe up your ass,” he said in a rant that at times appeared not to make sense. “You guys are bullshit. Why am I saying this? It sounds the height of vulgarity. You started it.” Duterte, 71, also repeated criticism of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, saying it was based on a lie and triggered turmoil in the Middle East that cost many lives. “If there is one thing that America has failed miserably, it is in the province of the human dignity,” he said at the end of his critique of US foreign policy in the Middle East. Duterte said he also endorsed Russian efforts to keep Syrian President Bashar alAssad in power. “If Assad is out they (the United States) will have destroyed the entire Middle East,” he said. Bloomberg, AFP
JAPINO...
From A1
NEXT GENERATION. A young girl and her brother marvel at the statues of superheroes that also once enthranced their parents at a Mandaluyong mall. Lino Santos
A silver pendant inscribed “Rina,” in Japanese script, hangs from her neck and she carries a leather jacket from Beautiful People, a Japanese label for whom she walked the previous night. Her schedule is punishing: she’s up at 7 a.m., rushes from show to show, working until 10 p.m. and finally falls into bed around 1 a.m. In between it all, she is studying, which she does online to fit around her schedule. When high school ends in March she hopes to spend more time in New York, which she loved visiting in September. “I really like the people,” she explains, laughing when asked if she thinks New York is loud and dirty compared to Tokyo. She loves the energy, the diversity and the get-up-and-go attitude. Marc Jacobs left a deep impression. She thought his spring/summer show of rainbow rastafarian locks “so cute,” although she dissolves into more laughter when asked what his towering, seven-inch platform boots were like to walk in. “I was really careful not to slip.” Wearing no make-up, her face is radiant with natural beauty, and her dark brown hair falls just below the shoulder. It used to be longer, but was cut -- without warning—backstage at Alexander Wang. As a model it pays to be professional and amenable. Fukushi is both, and besides, the soft-spoken Taiwanese-American fashion genius of New York urban cool was “so kind” to her. “He didn’t know where I was from,”
she giggled. Described in the Japanese fashion press as “exotic” Fukushi is the daughter of a Spanish-Filipino mother and a Japanese-American father. Born in Manila, the family returned to Japan when she was a baby, and she grew up in Tokyo, although she speaks Tagalog as well as Japanese. “I thought she had the perfect proportions,” says her agent Mayumi Kozakura, incredibly one of three scouts who spotted her the first day she went out shopping with a friend in Tokyo’s Harajuku district. But at 176 cm (five feet, nine inches) Fukushi is short for a runway model, by Western standards. It’s one of the reasons she admires Kate Moss so much: the British model who defied beauty norms by pioneering so-called heroin chic is even shorter. “When she wears clothes, they look fabulous,” Fukushi says of Moss. “She has inner beauty and I think that is so important.” Tokyo Fashion Week sees Japanese designers mostly shun Asian models in favor of white Western girls, albeit with catwalks in Europe and New York under increasing pressure to show diversity. “I like myself and I have confidence. What is wrong about being Asian or Japanese?” she says. “I don’t feel ‘I am sorry for being Japanese’. If I am confident that clothes look good on me, people don’t see anything wrong. So it doesn’t annoy me.” AFP