Starting today, I will open every Observer column with a section called “First Read.”

It will feature and highlight stories and issues that demand urgent commentary and publication. In style, it will be like the front-page “Good Morning” column that I used to write for a now defunct newspaper (Philippine Daily Globe), and which some readers apparently miss. So here goes:
The following story, not the state-of-the-nation address of President Duterte, made me cry (to use the lachrymose words of Communications Secretary Martin Andanar).
It concerns the discovery and revelation that while the country was howling about China’s forced takeover of the Scarborough Shoal and its land reclamations and infrastructure buildup in the South China Sea, China, with the evident consent of the Aquino administration and the collusion of local executives, bought two entire mountains in the province of Zambales to generate soil for its land reclamations in the disputed waters.
Exposed by online media
An online website and news portal, called the Maharlikan, first exposed what had happened in a report posted on November 8, 2015.
The report was headlined, “Chinese Mining Firms in the Philippines are smuggling soil to build Chinese Islands.”
The report opened with these ominous words: “Inside sources from the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency (NICA) have found out that some Chinese mining firms are smuggling soil and rocks to help build a chain of Chinese islands in the West Philippine Sea. NICA agents were baffled to find out that besides the Ore and Nickel that these mining firms are exporting to China, a large amount of soil and rocks are secretly smuggled then ends up directly in one of the Chinese reclamation islands. The smuggling operation usually happens during the heat of the day so as to hide the operation as an ordinary day in the mining area.

http://www.manilatimes.net/ph-soil-for-chinas-reclamations-treason-with-government-consent/277380/