Saturday, March 3, 2012

The Power of the Iglesia ni Cristo (Church of Christ)


Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Comparison of China and The Philippines newest military Hardware.

The Philippine Navy’s largest warship, bought second hand from the United States, will sail into the West Philippine Sea crossing over from the Pacific in the next couple of weeks, while China's first aircraft carrier is expected to go on sea trials by the end of September.

In the event of a conflict over the Spratlys, where both the Philippines and China have claims, both ships may see action. The Philippine ship is a former US Coast Guard cutter. 

Just how do these two battleships stack up against each other? GMA News has produced this scale graphic representation to compare their sizes — and, for added comparison, threw in a representation of Metro Manila’s Light Rail Transit train.


click here to view larger image


The comparison between the two, as well as between the military forces of each country, is of courselopsided, hence the need for the Philippines to be allied with another superpower, the United States.

Despite its size — it will be the largest ship in the Philippine Navy — the Philippines' BRP Gregorio del Pilar was designed to serve in maritime law enforcement, and search and rescue missions. Thus, it is equipped to carry only helicopters. 

China's aircraft carrier, on the other hand, is capable of projecting power way beyond China's mainland territory, and can accommodate as many as three dozen fighter jets. 

More details about each ship below. 

PHL’s largest warship, a decommissioned US ship

The BRP Gregorio del Pilar (PF-15) was formerly known as the US Coast Guard Hamilton [High Endurance Cutter (WHEC)-715] and was transferred to the Philippine Navy on May 13, 2011.

The Del Pilar was bought by the Philippine government for the price of P450 million (around US$13.18 million) under the US Excess Defense Articles (EDA) program, paying with money from the Philippine Malampaya project over which the ship will ensure maritime security.

The 378-foot (115-meter) Del Pilar is on the last leg of its three-week sea voyage to the Philippines, and is the second Philippine Navy ship to have borne the same name, the first being another ex-US Coast Guard Cutter. The Del Pilar is supposedly the first of several ex-US Coast Guard Hamilton-class cutters that will serve the Philippine Navy. It was the largest ship in the US Coast Guard. 

President Benigno Aquino, in his State of the Nation Address last July 25, made the ship a symbol of the nation's defense build-up, coinciding with rising tensions in the Spratlys. 

"Soon, we will be seeing capability upgrades and the modernization of the equipment of our armed forces. At this very moment, our very first Hamilton Class Cutter is on its way to our shores," Aquino said in his SONA. "We do not wish to increase tensions with anyone, but we must let the world know that we are ready to protect what is ours."

The Del Pilar is the first gas-turbine jet engine-powered vessel in the Philippine Navy fleet, making it the fastest, biggest, most powerful, and the flagship vessel of the Philippine Navy. 

It was originally designed to carry a 20 mm Phalanx CIWS (Close In Weapons System) designed to shoot down anti-ship missiles and fixed-wing aircraft, but the weapons system was removed by the US and transferred to another US Coast Guard ship. Instead, the US installed additional radar and other electronic equipment as part of the transfer agreement with the Philippines. 

China's first aircraft carrier, one of the Soviets' last

The Shi Lang (PLAN 83), formerly the Varyag, is one of only two Soviet-era aircraft carriers of this class that exists, the other being the Kuznetsov, which is still in Russian service.

At the shipyards of the former Soviet state of Ukraine, the yet unfinished ship was bought at auction for US$20 million by a company widely believed to be a front for the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), under the pretext that the ship would become a floating entertainment center and casino.

Originally built to be a 90,000- ton nuclear-powered ship, the Varyag – which would eventually become the Shi Lang – was scaled back to a 65,000-ton ship that lacked the steam catapults used on American carriers to fling aircraft into flight; instead, the Soviet-era carrier uses a ski jump type flight deck. 

It is not nuclear powered.

The 323 meter (1,000 foot) long ship was meant to regularly carry 36 Su-33 airplanes and sixteen helicopters, with a crew size of 3,000 complementing the full aircraft load. The ship carries 2,500 tons of aviation fuel, allowing it to complete 500 to 1,000 aircraft and helicopter sorties. 

Among the Shi Lang’s armaments is a ten-barreled Gatling gun Close-In Weapon System (CIWS)which is based on China’s older, seven-barreled, Type 730 system capable of firing 5,800 rounds per minute.

In comparison, the U.S. Navy’s Phalanx CIWS gun —like the one on the BRP Gregorio del Pilar— has only six barrels. — TJD, GMA News

Sunday, December 18, 2011


SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Kim Jong IlNorth Korea's mercurial and enigmatic leader whose iron rule and nuclear ambitions dominated world security fears for more than a decade, has died. He was 69.
Kim's death 17 years after he inherited power from his father was announced Monday by the state television from the North Koreancapital, Pyongyang. The country's "Dear Leader" — reputed to have had a taste for cigars, cognac and gourmet cuisine — was believed to have had diabetes and heart disease.
North Korea has been grooming Kim's third son to take over power from his father in the impoverished nation that celebrates the ruling family with an intense cult of personality.
South Korea put its military on "high alert" and President Lee Myung-bak convened a national security council meeting after the news of Kim's death.
In a "special broadcast" Monday, state media said Kim died of a heart ailment on a train due to a "great mental and physical strain" on Saturday during a "high intensity field inspection."
Kim is believed to have suffered a stroke in 2008 but he had appeared relatively vigorous in photos and video from recent trips to China and Russia and in numerous trips around the country carefully documented by state media.
Kim Jong Il inherited power after his father, revered North Korean founder Kim Il Sung, died in 1994. He had been groomed for 20 years to lead the communist nation founded by his guerrilla fighter-turned-politician father and built according to the principle of "juche," or self-reliance.
In September 2010, Kim Jong Il unveiled his third son, the twenty-something Kim Jong Un, as his successor, putting him in high-ranking posts.
Even with a successor, there had been some fear among North Korean observers of a behind-the-scenes power struggle or nuclear instability upon the elder Kim's death.
Few firm facts are available when it comes to North Korea, one of the most isolated countries in the world, and not much is clear about the man known as the "Dear Leader."
North Korean legend has it that Kim was born on Mount Paekdu, one of Korea's most cherished sites, in 1942, a birth heralded in the heavens by a pair of rainbows and a brilliant new star.
Soviet records, however, indicate he was born in Siberia, in 1941.
Kim Il Sung, who for years fought for independence from Korea's colonial ruler, Japan, from a base in Russia, emerged as a communist leader after returning to Korea in 1945 after Japan was defeated in World War II.
With the peninsula divided between the Soviet-administered north and the U.S.-administered south, Kim rose to power as North Korea's first leader in 1948 while Syngman Rhee became South Korea's first president.
The North invaded the South in 1950, sparking a war that would last three years, kill millions of civilians and leave the peninsula divided by a Demilitarized Zone that today remains one of the world's most heavily fortified.
In the North, Kim Il Sung meshed Stalinist ideology with a cult of personality that encompassed him and his son. Their portraits hang in every building in North Korea and on the lapels of every dutiful North Korean.
Kim Jong Il, a graduate of Pyongyang's Kim Il Sung University, was 33 when his father anointed him his eventual successor.
Even before he took over as leader, there were signs the younger Kim would maintain — and perhaps exceed — his father's hard-line stance.
South Korea has accused Kim of masterminding a 1983 bombing that killed 17 South Korean officials visiting Burma, now known as Myanmar. In 1987, the bombing of a Korean Air Flight killed all 115 people on board; a North Korean agent who confessed to planting the device said Kim ordered the downing of the plane himself.
Kim Jong Il took over after his father died in 1994, eventually taking the posts of chairman of the National Defense Commission, commander of the Korean People's Army and head of the ruling Worker's Party while his father remained as North Korea's "eternal president."
He faithfully carried out his father's policy of "military first," devoting much of the country's scarce resources to its troops — even as his people suffered from a prolonged famine — and built the world's fifth-largest military.
Kim also sought to build up the country's nuclear arms arsenal, which culminated in North Korea's first nuclear test explosion, an underground blast conducted in October 2006. Another test came in 2009.
Alarmed, regional leaders negotiated a disarmament-for-aid pact that the North signed in 2007 and began implementing later that year.
However, the process continues to be stalled, even as diplomats work to restart negotiations.
North Korea, long hampered by sanctions and unable to feed its own people, is desperate for aid. Flooding in the 1990s that destroyed the largely mountainous country's arable land left millions hungry.
Following the famine, the number of North Koreans fleeing the country through China rose dramatically, with many telling tales of hunger, political persecution and rights abuses that officials in Pyongyang emphatically denied.
Kim often blamed the U.S. for his country's troubles and his regime routinely derides Washington-allied South Korea as a "puppet" of the Western superpower.
U.S. President George W. Bush, taking office in 2002, denounced North Korea as a member of an "axis of evil" that also included Iran and Iraq. He later described Kim as a "tyrant" who starved his people so he could build nuclear weapons.
"Look, Kim Jong Il is a dangerous person. He's a man who starves his people. He's got huge concentration camps. And ... there is concern about his capacity to deliver a nuclear weapon," Bush said in 2005.
Kim was an enigmatic leader. But defectors from North Korea describe him as an eloquent and tireless orator, primarily to the military units that form the base of his support.
The world's best glimpse of the man was in 2000, when the liberal South Korean government's conciliatory "sunshine" policy toward the North culminated in the first-ever summit between the two Koreas and followed with unprecedented inter-Korean cooperation.
A second summit was held in 2007 with South Korea's Roh Moo-hyun.
But the thaw in relations drew to a halt in early 2008 when conservative President Lee Myung-bak took office in Seoul pledging to come down hard on communist North Korea.
Disputing accounts that Kim was "peculiar," former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright characterized Kim as intelligent and well-informed, saying the two had wide-ranging discussions during her visits to Pyongyang when Bill Clinton was U.S. president.
"I found him very much on top of his brief," she said.
Kim cut a distinctive, if oft ridiculed, figure. Short and pudgy at 5-foot-3, he wore platform shoes and sported a permed bouffant. His trademark attire of jumpsuits and sunglasses was mocked in such films as "Team America: World Police," a movie populated by puppets that was released in 2004.
Kim was said to have cultivated wide interests, including professional basketball, cars and foreign films. He reportedly produced several North Korean films as well, mostly historical epics with an ideological tinge.
A South Korean film director claimed Kim even kidnapped him and his movie star wife in the late 1970s, spiriting them back to North Korea to make movies for him for a decade before they managed to escape from their North Korean agents during a trip to Austria.
Kim rarely traveled abroad and then only by train because of an alleged fear of flying, once heading all the way by luxury rail car to Moscow, indulging in his taste for fine food along the way.
One account of Kim's lavish lifestyle came from Konstantin Pulikovsky, a former Russian presidential envoy who wrote the book "The Orient Express" about Kim's train trip through Russia in July and August 2001.
Pulikovsky, who accompanied the North Korean leader, said Kim's 16-car private train was stocked with crates of French wine. Live lobsters were delivered in advance to stations.
A Japanese cook later claimed he was Kim's personal sushi chef for a decade, writing that Kim had a wine cellar stocked with 10,000 bottles, and that, in addition to sushi, Kim ate shark's fin soup — a rare delicacy — weekly.
"His banquets often started at midnight and lasted until morning. The longest lasted for four days," the chef, who goes by the pseudonym Kenji Fujimoto, was quoted as saying.
Kim is believed to have curbed his indulgent ways in recent years and looked slimmer in more recent video footage aired by North Korea's state-run broadcaster.
Kim's marital status wasn't clear but he is believed to have married once and had at least three other companions. He had at least three sons with two women, as well as a daughter by a third.
His eldest son, Kim Jong Nam, 38, is believed to have fallen out of favor with his father after he was caught trying to enter Japan on a fake passport in 2001 saying he wanted to visit Disney's Tokyo resort.
His two other sons by another woman, Kim Jong Chul and Kim Jong Un, are in their 20s. Their mother reportedly died several years ago.

Friday, December 16, 2011

A DAVID GOLIATH STORY (CHINA VS PHILIPPINES)


A DAVID GOLIATH STORY (Some say's its only in Biblical stories)



The Philippines relaunched an old U.S. Coast Guard cutter Dec. 14 as its biggest and most modern warship to guard potentially oil-rich waters that are at the center of a dispute with China.


Courtesy of www.yahoo.com






Philippine President Benigno Aquino III, center on red carpet, troops the line during commissioning ceremony of the the country's newly-acquired Hamilton class warship BRP Gregorio Del Pilar (PF15) Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2011 at the Manila South Harbor in Manila, Philippines. The country's biggest and most modern warship will be deployed to the volatile South China Sea, according to Aquino. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)
BY PURCHASING THE SHIP BOOSTED IT'S RANK FROM 31st TO 23rd..


Philippines Military Strength

Philippines Military Strength Detail by the numbers.Record Last Updated: 7/5/2011
Map of Philippines
 PERSONNEL

 Total Population: 101,833,938 [2011]
 Available Manpower: 50,649,196 [2011]
 Fit for Service: 41,570,732 [2011]
 Of Military Age: 2,081,388 [2011]
 Active Military: 120,000 [2011]
 Active Reserve: 130,000 [2011]


 LAND ARMY

 Total Land Weapons: 2,379
 Tanks: 41 [2011]
 APCs / IFVs: 559 [2011]
 Towed Artillery: 309 [2011]
 SPGs: 0 [2011]
 MLRSs: 0 [2011]
 Mortars: 1,070 [2011]
 AT Weapons: 400 [2011]
 AA Weapons: 200 [2011]
 Logistical Vehicles: 8,438

 AIR POWER

 Total Aircraft: 289 [2011]
 Helicopters: 159 [2011]
 Serviceable Airports: 254 [2011]


 RESOURCES

 Oil Production: 9,671 bbl/Day [2011]
 Oil Consumption: 307,200 bbl/Day[2011]
 Proven Reserves: 168,000,000 bbl/Day [2011]

LOGISTICAL

 Labor Force: 38,900,000 [2011]
 Roadway Coverage: 213,151 km
 Railway Coverage: 995 km

 FINANCIAL (USD)

 Defense Budget: $2,439,510,000[2011]
 Reserves of Foreign Exchange & Gold: $62,370,000,000 [2011]
 Purchasing Power:$351,400,000,000 [2011]

 GEOGRAPHIC

 Waterways: 3,219 km
 Coastline: 36,289 km
 Square Land Area: 300,000 km
 Shared Border: 0 km


 NAVAL POWER

 Total Navy Ships: 120
 Merchant Marine Strength: 428[2011]
 Major Ports & Terminals: 6
 Aircraft Carriers: 0 [2011]
 Destroyers: 0 [2011]
 Submarines: 0 [2011]
 Frigates: 2 [2011]
 Patrol Craft: 128 [2011]
 Mine Warfare Craft: 0 [2011]
 Amphibious Assault Craft: 10 [2011


Sources: Central Intelligence Agency via Global Firepower




IN THE MEANTIME.. SOMEWHERE IN CHINA






























DENVER (AP) — A commercial U.S. satellite company said it has captured a photo of China's first aircraft carrier in the Yellow Sea off the Chinese coast.
DigitalGlobe Inc. said Wednesday one of its satellites photographed the carrier Dec. 8. A DigitalGlobe analyst found the image Tuesday while searching through photos.
Stephen Wood, director of DigitalGlobe's analysis center, said he's confident the ship is the Chinese carrier because of the location and date of the photo. The carrier was on a sea trial at the time.
DigitalGlobe, based in Longmont, Colo., sells satellite imagery and analysis to clients that include the U.S. military, emergency response agencies and private companies. DigitalGlobe has three orbiting satellites and a fourth is under construction.
The aircraft carrier has generated intense international interest because of what it might portend about China's intentions as a military power.
The former Soviet Union started building the carrier, which it called the Varyag, but never finished it. When the Soviet Union collapsed, it ended up in the hands of Ukraine, a former Soviet republic.
China bought the ship from Ukraine in 1998 and spent years refurbishing it. It had no engines, weaponry or navigation systems when China acquired it.
China has said the carrier is intended for research and training, which has led to speculation that it plans to build future copies.
China initially said little about its plans for the carrier but has been more open in recent years, said Bonnie S. Glaser, a China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"It wasn't until the Chinese actually announced they were sending it out on a trial run they admitted, 'Yes, we are actually launching a carrier,'" she said.
China publicly announced two sea trials for the carrier that occurred this year, she said.
The carrier's progress is in line with the U.S. military's expectations, said Cmdr. Leslie Hull-Ryde, a Defense Department spokeswoman.
A Defense Department report to Congress this year said the carrier could become operationally available to the Chinese navy by the end of next year but without aircraft.
"From that point, it will take several additional years before the carrier has an operationally viable air group," Hull-Ryde said in an email.
She declined to comment on the DigitalGlobe photo, saying it was an intelligence matter.



China Military Strength

China Military Strength Detail by the numbers.
3
Record Last Updated: 6/30/2011 
Map of China
 PERSONNEL

 Total Population: 1,336,718,015 [2011]
 Available Manpower: 749,610,775[2011]
 Fit for Service: 618,588,627 [2011]
 Of Military Age: 19,538,534 [2011]
 Active Military: 2,285,000 [2011]
 Active Reserve: 800,000 [2011]


 LAND ARMY

 Total Land Weapons: 22,795
 Tanks: 7,470 [2011]
 APCs / IFVs: 5,000 [2011]
 Towed Artillery: 2,950 [2011]
 SPGs: 2,475 [2011]
 MLRSs: 2,600 [2011]
 Mortars: 1,050 [2011]
 AT Weapons: 1,250 [2011]
 AA Weapons: 750 [2011]
 Logistical Vehicles: 5,850

 AIR POWER

 Total Aircraft: 4,092 [2011]
 Helicopters: 1,389 [2011]
 Serviceable Airports: 502 [2011]


 RESOURCES

 Oil Production: 3,991,000 bbl/Day[2011]
 Oil Consumption: 8,200,000 bbl/Day[2011]
 Proven Reserves: 20,350,000,000 bbl/Day [2011]

Sources: US Library of Congress; Central Intelligence Agency; Fighting Forces (Barron's)
 LOGISTICAL

 Labor Force: 780,000,000 [2011]
 Roadway Coverage: 3,860,800 km
 Railway Coverage: 86,000 km

 FINANCIAL (USD)

 Defense Budget: $100,000,000,000[2011]
 Reserves of Foreign Exchange & Gold: $2,662,000,000,000 [2011]
 Purchasing Power:$10,090,000,000,000 [2011]

 GEOGRAPHIC

 Waterways: 110,000 km
 Coastline: 14,500 km
 Square Land Area: 9,596,961 km
 Shared Border: 22,117 km


 NAVAL POWER

 Total Navy Ships: 562
 Merchant Marine Strength: 2,010[2011]
 Major Ports & Terminals: 8
 Aircraft Carriers: 0 [2011]
 Destroyers: 26 [2011]
 Submarines: 55 [2011]
 Frigates: 58 [2011]
 Patrol Craft: 937 [2011]
 Mine Warfare Craft: 391 [2011]
 Amphibious Assault Craft: 544