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Liberation

Liberation has 105 articles published.

Word War

in Countercurrent

“Doing determines being.” This Marxist maxim means you’re called a teacher if you teach, a business man if you do business, a politician if you engage in politics, a liar if you habitually lie. If you grab lands from those who cleared and tilled it for generations, you’re a landgrabber. If you make the farmers pay rent for tilling that land, you’re called a landlord.

A spade is called a spade. No pretensions, no duplicity, in the meaning of words.

But in war, deception is one of the sharpest weapons. Hence, we must continually remind ourselves from becoming like the victims of the mythical Adarna—lulled by beautiful tunes into a deep sleep only to become vulnerable and helpless.

In the Philippines there is an ongoing civil war, a national democratic war of a new type, a war of national liberation, the first of a two-stage revolution for genuine social change and democracy. It is led by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), and fought on many fronts by the New People’s Army (NPA), and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP). It is waged through armed struggle in the countryside, supported by democratic though unarmed democratic struggles in the cities and urban centers. It carries the aspirations and interests of the Filipinos masses, thus earning mass support through the years.

Taking the leaf from the ‘doing determines being’ maxim, the Philippine government while it calls itself a democracy is in reality a reactionary and puppet government of US imperialist. It is a dictatorship of local big landlords and compradors. It pretends to serve the people when it acts against the people and serves its own reactionary interests.

Similarly, while being the real terrorists, the imperialist US calls it targets and threats as the “terrorists.” Yet, it is the US who has 700 to 800 known military bases in 80 countries, deploying foreign troops and arms across the globe, and leads its imperialist rivals many times over in aggression and interference in other states.

This imperialist power constantly uses words that actually mean the opposite, lying and deceiving the people, twisting and manufacturing truths. These words can enable the killing and maiming of peoples worldwide. The corporate media in other countries do not even dare utter the word “imperialist” when they report on the alliances and arms support being given by the US to the likes of Zionist and settler colonialist Israel state.

The Philippine reactionary troops have founded their ideological moorings from US imperialism. It is no surprise that its “counterinsurgency” guide seeks to misrepresent and repeatedly whitewash themselves as the good guys. Meanwhile, they slander the revolutionaries, the struggling masses and activists, repeatedly hurling negative accusations at them in hopes to isolate them from the masses. Through the years they have even filled up a dictionary of terms with its opposite meaning. They mean to have these accepted and trap the consciousness of the people in their reality-defying language.

A lot of these words camouflage the reactionaries’ sins against the people. These words may seem harmless such as “salvage” (meaning to save) yet, since the Marcos Sr dictatorship it was used to denote extrajudicial killings. More words to follow:

Balikatan—shoulder to shoulder, mutually helping each other. It is used in the context of US-RP war exercises, which is a brazen lie because it runs counter to the warmth and camaraderie that the word evokes. There is no friendship there when a domineering power like the US use our resources and territories to promote their geopolitical agenda, host their forward deployment of troops and arms, and use the local reactionary troops and government to help them entrench the US imperialist rule. Moreover, they get the chance to unload their junked, obsolete materiel for the Philippine military to use against our own people who are struggling for freedom and democracy.

Bayanihan—collective helping out. It is used in “counterinsugency” plans like Oplan, meaning Operation Plan Bayanihan, but which is more accurate to be called bantay-salakay (Bantay means guard; salakay is attack.The word is used to describe treachery). Seemingly, the “Oplan” is packaged as local development efforts with people’s support. In real terms the word bayanihan conceals the “whole-of-nation” approach to “counterinsurgency”. It is an attempt to mobilize the whole reactionary bureaucracy to work with state forces to crush the revolutionary movement. In real terms, after an attack or crackdown against revolutionary forces in the area, what follows is the return of landlords, compradors or capitalists out to plunder the remaining wealth in the area. Also, the attacking troops who are fed by public funds do so to allow the further exploitation of the people they ought to serve.

Kapayapaan—peace. For the Philippine reactionary state, peace actually denotes peace of the grave, or the silence of its adversaries. It is meant to crush the armed and unarmed uprisings of the Filipino people, and henceforth allow the exploiters and oppressors the freedom to exploit and abuse the country’s resources and people. In this environment only the ruling classes have the right and actual voice to speak and live decently—while the rest are just ants or “terrorists” to be red-tagged, bombed, EJK’d, jailed on trumped-up charges etc. True peace must be based on justice.

Peace negotiations—talking peace. The reactionary state and revolutionaries are on opposite poles when coming to the peace negotiations. For the reactionaries this means the surrender of revolutionary forces, the laying down of arms, and subscribing to the Philippine reactionary constitution. The revolutionaries, however, want to talk peace to resolve the age-old reasons for the armed conflict. They want real meaningful changes, as contained in the 12-point program of the NDFP. Time and time again the reactionary state has reneged on signed and/or initialed agreements, delayed or unilaterally terminated the peace negotiations. But the NDFP has persevered and has always been welcoming of peace talks as the revolutionary alliance wants the resolution of the armed conflict, but only if the roots of the armed conflict are resolved.

Democracy—rule of the majority. The bureaucrat capitalists in Malacanang love to bandy the term as if the government is democratic. The fact they come from political dynasties of local big landlords and compradors clearly belie their claim. The minority elite who control the economic and political power in the country definitely lord it over the poor majority. So unlike the seeds of the people’s democratic government being set up by the revolutionary forces in the countryside with direct representation and participation by, of, and for the people. More importantly, democracy to the revolutionary movement means freedom of the peasantry, the majority of the Filipino people, from the shackles of centuries-old feudalism, freedom from feudal and semifeudal exploitation of the landlord class, and freedom to own and enjoy the fruits of the land they till. It is the main content of the national democratic revolution.

Many more words are used by reactionaries to deodorize their rule and then deceptively attack or repress the people. Words like “modernization,” “democratization,” “friendship,” “maximum tolerance,” “development,” carry with them a lot of reactionary baggage. It would do well to find the real meaning behind the words and continue to expose the reactionaries for all their duplicity and deception. As has been said a lie repeated a thousand times becomes the truth. With the people’s vigilance and alertness, there is no way the reactionaries can get away with this. (Pinky Ang) ###

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The imperialist US, not a friend but a foe

in Countercurrent

US leaders from its president to lawmakers and military chiefs call the Philippines its oldest, longest treaty partner in Asia. Before, the oft-repeated descriptions were “special relations” or “friendship.” Much earlier before that, the relationship was said to be between a big brother teaching its little brown brother “civilization.”

For 125 years now, the US has never lacked for altruistic cover for making use of the Philippines’ human and natural resources for its profit. And, for maintaining a strategic territory to carve other territories and markets in Asia especially China. From 1898, the Philippines has indeed become the oldest or longest bastion in Asia, right at the beginning of the US entry into the world stage as an imperialist power. The imperialist US not only kills and harms the Filipino people, it has used its arsenal of brutal suppression and deception of Filipinos and Americans to launch wars in other countries such as Vietnam.

Far from being a friend, the imperialist US is a cruel, sinister enemy of the Filipino people. It has been blocking the people’s path to genuine freedom and development. It has been the enemy of the Filipino masses since it extended its claws here in 1898.

Below in a nutshell is a bird’s eyeview, a timeline of the imperialist US wars of aggression and deception against the Filipino people.

Filipino-American War since 1898: massacres and atrocities to ‘civilize’ Filipinos

When the US in its first imperialist act seized control of the Philippines from the then victorious revolutionaries, it lied to Filipinos and anti-colonialist Americans. At first the US posed as a friend in 1898. But it used the Filipinos to fight the Spaniards until its colonizing troops arrived in the Philippines. It robbed the people of their valiantly fought independence in the Treaty of Paris—where Spain who was already routed by the Filipinos ceded the Philippines to US for a sum of U$ 20 million, plus protection of Spanish colonialist landholdings or businesses. Shortly after, in 1898, under the guise of US President McKinley’s deceptive proclamation of “Benevolent Assimilation”, the US attacked the Filipino people.

On February 4, 1899 American troops fired shots at Filipino soldiers on a bridge in San Juan, Manila, igniting armed hostilities and officially starting the Filipino-American war. In just a couple of years of massacres and atrocities that horrified even American anti-imperialists and critics, the US tried to downgrade the Filipino armed struggle as mere “Philippine insurrection.”

In 1902, US President Theodore Roosevelt declared that the war was over even though resistance continued and guerrillas were widely supported by the people. Then US General Arthur MacArthur was adamant that Filipinos would need “bayonet treatment for at least a decade”. Despite this, imperialist US leaders hastened to “normalize” the situation to placate critics in the US, to gloss over the terrible slaughter being committed by US troops in the Philippines, and to open the Philippines to economic exploitation at the earliest possible time.

Nevertheless, parts of the country were still turned into a “howling wilderness”, following a series of successful, mass-supported guerrilla attacks against US invaders. In retaliation, US troops shipped to the US the famous Balangiga bell, which was used by Filipino revolutionaries as a signal and a symbol of the concerted defense of the motherland. The Balangiga bell was returned decades later amid Filipino insistence, and despite years of colonial control and miseducation.

Long before the Vietnam war, US troops had resorted to inhuman forms of torture including “water-boarding,” executions, massacres and burning of men, women and children, Filipino fighters tied to and being dragged by horses, plundering of captured and killed revolutionaries and communities, and hamletting or forcing communites into concentration camps. Up to a million died (in a population of six to eight million) as a result of the US war of suppression in the Philippines from 1899 to 1910s.

This brutal war of suppression of Filipinos in 1899 “signaled the start of its [US] global conquest through war and terror,” said the Communist Party of the Philippines in a statement last February marking the 125th year since the American troops first fired shots at Filipino soldiers.

“Benevolent Assimilation” since 1898

Essentially the Philippine-American War has remained, albeit, using not just superior arms but manifold lies, double-dealing and deception. US brutality and plunder has been continuously whitewashed at every step. Though colonial history has presented Fil-Am war as just a short one, it extended to a decade of constant uprising even after Emilio Aguinaldo and his elite clique capitulated to US in 1901.

Fact is, from an armed struggle to overthrow the Spaniards to an armed struggle to counter a new imperialist power, the ilustrado or elite leadership proved vacillating, capitulationist, and only looking out for the selfish interests of its landlord, local ruling class. They surrendered the struggle for independence but the masses did not.

As soon as the US invaded and ruled the Philippines, it molded the country’s economy to its needs–raw materials, market of surplus, gateway to Asia especially China. It imposed its colonial miseducation system. It created and trained the reactionary armed forces and constabulary (same as “Vietnamization” during the Vietnam war). It honored and awarded collaborators, led by the capitulationist and elite “leaders” or dealers of Katipunan and 1898 revolution, through lucrative positions in puppet government and business deals in the new colonial economy.

The local collaborators were used to suppress the resistance of the masses and American criticisms of the war. They misrepresented the intent of the US to exploit and invade through its programs (e.g. road building to reach mines and plantations, to bring troops faster to insurgent areas, teach English as mode of instruction to develop new tastes, colonial culture and market) as examples of “altruism” from a colonial ruler. And, for so-called normalcy and peace and order, they also brutally and insidiously suppressed the resistance of the people.

They used methods such as banning the display of Philippine flag (Flag Law 1907-1919), imposing death penalty to advocates of independence even by peaceful means (Sedition Law 1901), jailing nationalist writers and critics such as Aurelio Tolentino who staged a play depicting a victorious group of armed guerillas, and misrepresenting or vilifying guerilla resistance (Brigandage Act 1902).

Today’s red-tagging was preceded by the US branding of Filipino revolutionaries in 1900s as “bandits or tulisanes.” US forces cemented alliances with local elite by giving them power to execute “hamletting” to capture guerillas (Reconcentration Act 1903), resulting in jampacked jails and high mortality rate of prisoners.

The laid down policies, profits and experiences earned by US imperialists in its first colonization and expansion propelled it to greater imperial reach, hegemonic status and more wars of aggression. The strategic importance of US aggression in the Philippines resulted to the eventual rise to US presidency of William Howard Taft, the former Secretary of War and governor general who steered the imperialist acquisition of the Philippines.

Dragging, abandoning Filipinos to inter-imperialist war, then coming back [“I shall return”] as a neo-colonizer

World War II wreaked heavy losses on the Filipino people. It was an inter-imperialist war where the Philippines, a US colony, was targeted and colonized by Japan. The US retreated using Filipino soldiers as meat shields in escaping via Bataan in Central Luzon. In their absence, it was the Hukbo ng Bayan laban sa Hapon or Hukbalahap who waged a fierce guerrilla warfare against the Japanese.

When the imperialist US returned “as promised,” and to bring Japanese power to its knees, it rained much too much bombs, destroying infrastructure and further bankrupting the country. As the Philippines was heavily damaged, the US secured an opening to remain as its neocolonial master. At the end of World War 2, the imperialists settled a redivision of territories, but contending with another victorious Communist Party in China that succeeded in its people’s war to liberate China from foreign and capitalist oppressors.

US feared the communist influence and intensifying liberation movements around the globe. In the Philippines the cry for independence remained and to placate the Filipino people, the US favored neocolonialism than direct colonialism. The Philippines was granted “independence” but the US maintained its stranglehold through unequal treaties such as the Mutual Defense Treaty and Military Bases Agreement.

That independence was a hard-won victory by the Filipino people who had first succeeded but were robbed of it 50 years earlier. This time, the imperialist US can only “respect” that independence by keeping up with appearances. In reality, it continued slapping all its imperialist demands on the country’s people and resources via its trained and controlled armed forces and puppet government.

Using Ph as second front of the US-led “war on terrror”

Following the shocking attacks on the World Trade Center in New York in 2001, imperialist US latched on to a new justification for continuing its wars of aggression and intervention in other countries.

Because it couldn’t continue hyping an anti-communist hysteria after former communist China joined the ranks of capitalists and had trade and investment deals with the US, the latter demonized as “terrorists” and “rouges” its targets among its rivals and other independent nations it wished to control for resources and geopolitical reasons.

In the mold of communist hysteria whipped up during the 50s to galvanize support for US wars of aggression and Cold War against the then communist states of China and Russia, the “war on terror” relied on tagging and demonizing US targets. It didn’t stop even in the face of protests from the United Nations nor persistent demands of the people for proven basis and evidences for launching wars.

The war on terror led the rulers of other countries in enacting anti-terror laws with very broad definition of terrorism, in effect maligning and targeting the democratic protesters, critics, liberation movements, and revolutionary forces.

The Philippines was designated as the “second front” in the US-led “war on terror.” This war was supported by puppet Philippine presidents from Gloria Arroyo to present. They tried to enact an Anti-Terror Law and succeeded only under the Aquino 2 regime, but they were dissatisfied with the safeguards for human rights in the law that under the US-Duterte regime, they railroaded a more sinister Anti-Terror Act during the lockdowns of COVID-19 pandemic.

The imperialist US-led “war on terror” is unleashed also in the Philippines. The reactionary puppet governments from Arroyo to Marcos 2 have used the language of “war on terror” to whitewash their brutal, dirty war against the Filipino people and the national democratic revolutionaries. True to the brutal heavy-handed pattern of war laid down by imperialist US at its first foray in the Philippines, the war called “counter-insurgency” by its puppet regimes have meant bombings and artillery shelling of rural communities, “focused military operations” that do not distinguish between civilian and combatant targets, killings of armed revolutionaries, hors d combats and unarmed activists to create a false picture that their “war on terror” is winning. On the contrary the masses are seeing them more clearly as, in fact, the actual terrorists and enemies of the people.

Dragging Ph into the looming proxy war between US and China

By dint of the people’s clamor, the puppet Philippine government would sometimes be prodded to take action to defend Philippine sovereignty on its territories in the South China Sea. This included the case it filed under the United Nations Convention in the Laws of the Seas (UNCLOS) that succeeded in establishing the country’s territorial maritime claims.

The tensions in the West Philippine Sea have been the latest justification by imperialist US and puppet Philippine presidents in welcoming more US troops and building US military bases and facilities despite its own reactionary Constitution’s ban on it. The US not only bound the Philippines as a so-called “treaty ally” (under Mutual Defense Treaty of 1950s) but also included the Philippines in the 18 countries it designated as a “major non-NATO ally”. By US definition, such an ally, though not a part of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), has a deep strategic and security partnership with US. Such an ally can get loans of materials and equipment for research, development and testing, enter formal agreement with the US defense department to carry out such research and development projects, even purchase depleted uranium ammunition. In short, it reads like what a US extended territory is good for. Worse for the Filipino people, the US can place their war reserve stockpiles on countries it designated as major non-NATO ally.

Yet, for all its crows over defending the allies and Philippine sovereignty, over the years the fisherfolk have been raising the alarm over China’s massive reclamation and eventual military base-building on waters and islets within the Philippine territory.

Still, the Philippine reactionary military and navy have only used this to justify calls for more budget to finance the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ “modernization,” and under Marcos 2, to increase the number of “agreed locations” of US military bases. Amid push from the people to actually defend the territory, the reactionary AFP has been responding only with promises to patrol, to increase the patrolling and patrol for what it calls as “minimum credible defense posture.”

Recently though, as the US-China collusion and competition grow sharper, the US has become more driven on expanding the reach of its war machines and aggression in Asia. With its increasingly frequent and larger war games and bases in the Philippines, it is further grooming its puppet government and controlled reactionary troops to be in position for US use should it launch war against China in Taiwan.

This is a war at the expense of the Filipino people because not only will it drag the nation to a war because of the US, the US has been more strenuously pushing and propping the local reactionary Armed Forces of the Philippines to crush the forces of the Philippine national democratic revolution. At present, it is the national democratic forces who are the biggest stumbling block to the imperialist US and its puppet government in freely exploiting the people and resources of the Philippines. If it wants to use the AFP for a proxy war with China in Taiwan, it wants to maintain the Philippines as its territory, through its puppet, and as such, it seeks the more vicious “counterinsurgency” operations against the revolutionaries to remove the forces calling for genuine liberation and sovereignty of the Philippines. For this, the imperialist US is utterly not a friend but a vicious enemy of the Filipino people.

These are some flashpoints in Philippine history where the US starkly showed that it is very very far from being a friend or an ally of the Filipino people. On the contrary, in every flashpoint, the US worked to disadvantage the people. It robbed the victories the people won in their struggle. It used the Filipinos and their resources for their narrow ends, unleashing disasters, poverty, persistent hunger and crises. The Filipino people have every reason to dissociate from and repel the imperialist US, starting with its puppet government and reactionary troops. The Filipino people has every reason and right to cherish, establish, and expand their genuine democratic government in the countryside, through their continuing support of the New People’s Army that is continuing the national democratic revolution began by their ancestors in Katipunan of 1890s. ### (Pinky Ang)

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What patriotic Filipinos need to know after US-PH Balikatan 2024 wargames

in Countercurrent

1. US-China is now nearly approaching actual armed conflict

Following the US-PH Balikatan wargames, it is evidently not just a series of exchanges of fiery words nor saber rattling in the uneasy partnership and rivalry of US and China. It is no secret that US regards China as a rival, and that it has been targetting China for years since declaring the “pivot” or “rebalancing of forces” to Asia a decade ago. Between the hundred-plus year old imperialist US and newly minted imperialist China, their uneasy yet profitable partnership and competition is now shooting red hot sparks in the Asia-Pacific that may ignite into actual armed conflict real soon, but through proxies namely Taiwan and the Philippines.

It doesn’t help that in November 2024 the US presidential elections is taking place. The contenders to the imperialist chief’s seat, including incumbent US President Joseph Biden, direly need a showcase “achievement” in their huge business of war. But their war machineries are troubled in Eurasia, they are more and more being isolated and reviled for supporting the genocide and colonialist occupation of Zionist Israel, and their imperialist encroachment are being resisted through more armed engagements in the Middle East.

The candidates for heading the imperialist US especially Biden are hyping their narrative of fictitious defense of a small underdog ally such as the Philippines against a bully in the name of their partner and rival China. Imperialist US wants to hold on to their self-appointed duty of being a global cop, while in truth it is merely trying hard to maintain if not expand its imperialist stranglehold on territories, resources and trade routes.

During the largest Balikatan 2024 exercises, disregarding the denials and nonsense spouted by US and PH military representatives about supposedly not targeting China (after all, the specific target is Taiwan as proxy for China), the events they mounted obviously pointed to war preparations against US rival China.

Below are some events in the “largest” Balikatan targeting US rival China but using the Philippines as staging area and some Filipino troops.

– Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters in flying missions in Fort Magsaysay, Cagayan and Batanes group of islands near Taiwan;

– Air assaults practice of American and Filipino troops in Batanes, south of 70-mile wide Bashi Channel between Philippines and Taiwan;

– Wargames targetting would-be invaders in Cagayan, firing howitzers, machine guns, javelin anti-tank missiles in La Paz sand dunes in Laoag (practice in island raids);

– Wargames using amphibious combat vehicles in Ulugan or Osyter Bay, Palawan facing the Spratlys (water-borne gunnery live fire training in Palawan) ;

– Marine Corps Ospreys (drones) flying over Calayan Island;

– Using Filipino patriotic sentiments against Chinese incursions, use of water cannon on fishermen, research vessels and tourists to justify US intervention while attacking the patriotic sentiments of Filipinos against both the Chinese incursions and the presence of tens of thousands of US troops using howitzers, amphibious combat vehicles, war choppers, among others;

– “Successfully” sinking a decommissioned PH navy ship (made in China, they said) as practice in Laoag, Ilocos;

– Scuttling joint exploration deals in the South China Sea or West Philippine Sea likely entered into by Chinese leaders and bureaucrat capitalists in the Philippines.

2. US increasing combat strength vs rival China in the Asia-Pacific

The imperialist US displays a cunning use of neocolonies and “allies” through expanded basing and upgraded treaty partnerships with the Philippines and other allies in the Asia-Pacific. They seek to intensify power projection with costs being shared or shouldered by allies and neocolonies.

Toward this projection the Balikatan 2024 showcased the use of these facilities by troops of the imperialist US. It also revealed further building the US troops require to operate its war machines and house their troops.

The US is building or expanding military facilities inside Philippine military bases, PR-promoting the free and opportunistic use of Philippine territory and troops as for “improving” those facilities and upgrading their skills and interoperability. But, the point of “improving” these is for their use of it to project power in Asia and deter rivals such as China. At the same time, US provides information (intelligence), arms, training and other aid to the AFP, using these US military facilities and troops, to interfere in the civil war between the reactionary AFP and revolutionary New People’s Army.

In the latest “largest” Balikatan, US troops operated from EDCA bases in Luzon, such as in Fort Magsaysay, Cagayan, and Palawan.These bases hosted US troops, supplies, weapons, ammunitions and equipment, and when the bases aren’t enough during the Balikatan, they use the surrounding clearing.

Protests that the “rotational” has become permanent presence of US troops in the Philippines have forcibly been muted by EDCA. In this Balikatan 2024, for example, US troops from one of its infantry brigades have been in the Philippines much earlier, having participated in another “largest” Salaknib war exercise, and they are said to leave only in June even though Balikatan 2024 ends May 10.

A combat aviation brigade commander (Col. Matt Scher) who visited the aviators encamped at the clearing beside Lal-lo Airport during the Balikatan 2024 was quoted as saying his brigade has been coming to the Philippines regularly since 2014. Their missions in the war exercises are parts of a series of exercises to test their units’ ability to deploy forces across the (Asia-Pacific) region.

With the ever expanding “largest” Balikatan, the US is seeing the use of its nearly doubled number of “agreed” bases. In November 2023, following last year’s “largest” Balikatan, they reopened with puppet Philippine leaders a 10,000-foot runway north of Manila at Cesar Basa Air Base. Philippine Inquirer report that month said the US paid a total of $66M for Basa projects, including a warehouse and fuel storage tanks. This year, the U.S. Defense Department has earmarked another $35 million to build a parking apron for transient aircraft there.

3. US freely made use of Philippine military camps, clearings, flying and fishing zones as military staging ground for testing warships, warplanes and other equipment

Imperialist US used the Philippines as staging ground for showcasing and testing various war vehicles, weapons and equipment. These inlude even those with dangerous history while being developed, the amphibious combat vehicles used at the Balikatan 2024 in Oyster Bay, Palawan on May 4.

Mishaps in using the said ACVs had reportedly killed and injured US marines. In Palawan, Philippines, these ACVs, the newest armored asset of US Marines Corp, saw its maiden deployment. According to a news release on its first deployment, the ACVs were organized into assault sections and participated in a live-fire gunnery drill in Oyster Bay, shooting at shore-based targets with their remotely controlled automatic grenade launchers.

During the Balikatan 2024 the Philippines was freely used by the imperialist US troops and allies to fire howitzers, missiles, machine guns, fly drones and helicopters, sink a decommissioned ship, regardless of the cost in destruction of marine life in Palawan, Ilocos Norte, Cagayan and Batanes. Balikatan even turned an international airport in Cagayan into an exclusive airport for its use during the week it was flying warplanes and helicopters between the province, Fort Magsaysay and Batanes.

Rent-free, the US freely used not just the AFP camps in EDCA “agreed locations” but also its surrounding lands, such as the clearing outside Lal-lo Airport in Cagayan which is the size of several football fields.

4. Looming US-China war not for the benefit of Filipinos

Under the US-Marcos2, the Philippines has agreed to almost double the agreed locations of US military facilities, and to continue hosting “largest” Balikatan war exercises.

Since the signing of EDCA in 2014 up to the doubling of agreed bases under Marcos 2, the US has used Chinese intrusions as justification. But the US presence, no, dominance, over the Philippine military and government has historically never shown any benefit to Filipinos. On the contrary. The US has continued to arm and support its puppet government and reactionary troops to brutally prevent the new national democratic revolutionaries from winning.

Now the US is clearly dragging the Philippines into a looming US proxy war against China. They are using the Philippines as staging ground for its warships and warplanes, and the reactionary Filipino troops as part of their attack forces. While Filipinos also staunchly defend their territories against China, it does not mean their patriotism is reserved only against the newly minted imperialist China. Even more so, it should be turned against the imperialist US who has been trying hard to deceive and throttle Philippine sovereignty since the US-Fil war in 1899. (Pinky Ang)###

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Word War

“Doing determines being.” This Marxist maxim means you’re called a teacher if you teach, a business man if you do

Imperialism means war, imperialism means terrorism

in Countercurrent

Before they underwent massive PR makeovers in Hollywood movies, the vampires are some of the best graphic tools used to explain the secret of capitalist accumulation. In Das Kapital, Karl Marx describes capital as “dead labor, that, vampire-like, only lives sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.”

In other words, capitalists gain and expand their capital by sucking their laborers’ values, just as the mythical vampires drain their victims’ blood and lifesource for them to survive and become stronger. But while capitalism lives and grows stronger by sucking the blood of its victims, in doing so it encounters existential crises as its bloodsucking ultimately leads to scantier volume of blood to suck.

In Karl Marx’s summary: capitalism digs its own grave.

Today, as capitalism has globally spread its dominance, what monstrous vampire has capitalism become? Capitalism has reached its highest historical stage of development, described as monopoly capitalism or capitalist imperialism, since the early 20th century.

At the time, Russian proletarian leader Vladimir Lenin said in the preface of the German and French edition of his popular outline, Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism:

“Capitalism has grown into a world system of colonial oppression and of the financial strangulation of the overwhelming majority of the people of the world by a handful of ‘advanced’countries.”

At the time, the “three powerful world marauders armed to the teeth”—America, Great Britain, and Japan—involved the whole world in their war over the sharing of their booty.”

True to its vampiric likeness, when capitalist imperialism made its global debut, its bloody, merciless party was the first world war. It was a war between rival monopoly capitalists or imperialists, for the purpose of deciding who among the rival financial marauders was to receive the lion’s share of control over the economies of the world.

From the first to the second world war, to the “cold war” and today’s so-called “war on terrorism”, all are wars launched by imperialists to seize control of resources, territories, trade routes, and spheres of power. In the latter cases of “cold war” and “war on terrorism”, it is no longer just a war among imperialist rivals. It has become also a war between imperialists and states or parties waging proletariat revolution, national liberation, or struggles for self-determination away from capitalist rule.

Below is a brief review of imperialism’s systemic compulsion to launch war, mainly to remind ourselves that over the years, this breed of vampire has not only become more merciless, rapacious and gluttonous when it reached its imperialist stage of development. It has also become more duplicitous and insidious. The fact that the dominant media hardly mention the word imperialism when it reports about the wars that are supported, armed and directly or covertly being waged by imperialist states is one of the biggest indications of its insidiousness.

Imperialism 101

Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the successful Russian proletariat revolution in 1917, previously listed the general features that distinguished imperialism from its early stages of capitalism. A cursory look at world events today shows that these distinguishing features remain true, even if the names and modes by which these happen may have varied over the years:

  • the highest and final stage of capitalism, imperialism, is the thoroughly parasitic and decaying stage of capitalism. The capitalists do not contribute at all to social production, yet they amass for themselves profits by extracting and appropriating surplus values through their ownership of capital, stocks, bonds, securities, derivatives or other ways they have devised to own, monopolize and maximize capital;
  • the ruling capitalists have become finance oligarchs, after industrial and finance capital merged: so now they jointly reap profits not just from exporting surplus manufactures but also surplus capital by way of foreign investments and loans;
  • monopoly firms of every imperialist state protect their own interests, but for these, they also combine and compete with monopoly firms of other imperialist states, seeking control of “spheres of influence” or territories to secure resources, low-cost labor, captive markets and supply routes;
  • imperialist states advance the interests of their monopoly capitalists and the international groupings they have formed or joined, maintaining a power structure between imperialists and “client-states” to install an economic structure where the imperialists can exploit the proletariat, oppress nations and peoples;
  • to keep its cycles of production and profit-taking running and profitable, competition between imperialist states for territories and “spheres of influence” is never-ending; and
  • imperialism breeds war, as every imperialist power or alliance is driven to redivide the world to feed their growing economic and military power.

System-generated compulsion to war

When imperialism is described as the most decaying stage of capitalism it means that as a system, it no longer has positive developments—efforts spent to evade or withstand its chronic crises of overproduction destroy rather than uplift its productive forces. It can no longer march history to unprecedented heights.

Organic in the DNA of the capitalist system is its drive for profits—even if the means to achieve it would eventually destroy its golden goose, like its own workers and markets, its “own” domestic industries, the environment, the relations of peoples and nations, and culture. In short, by default its operations lead to crisis of overproduction that it cannot resolve.

But no capitalist or imperialist will let that happen without a fight. To imperialists the recourse left to maintain itself is to wrest control of markets and territories from rival imperialists. And, prevent socialist states from wresting away their territories and ideological sway.

Imperialists in the business of war

Today we are bombarded by wars and pestered by saber-rattling. There are wars raging in the Ukraine, in Israel, in the Red Sea between Yemen, Iran and US “allies” and the West. Much destruction has been wreaked on “rogue” states previously targeted by the US-led imperialist “allies” who previously brought war to Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and before that, in the Korean peninsula, Vietnam, and where wars for national liberation and right to self-determination are being fought, like in the Philippines and Colombia.

As we write this, war threatens to break out in the Indo-Pacific region over Taiwan. Like in the war in Ukraine which is a war between imperialist US with imperialist European allies in NATO against Russia, the looming war in Taiwan will be a proxy war between the US and its regional allies against their rival China.

To counter China, the US is itching to use “treaty allies” such as the Philippines in the Indo-Pacific. To keep its foothold and expand against China in the Indo-Pacific region, the US has recently been ratcheting its stockpiling of weapons and positioning of forces in its military bases in Japan, South Korea, and in the Philippines—where its military “facilities” are inside Philippine bases by virtue of the 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA).

In the Philippines, the US is building more military bases and installations, and is continuously and more frequently holding joint wargames and exercises with Filipino reactionary troops to better train them in using US and its military allies’ weapons and ammunitions, warships and warplanes. They call it enhancing interoperability.

In the Indo-Pacific, specifically in the South China Sea/West Philippine Sea. the US claims the war provocations are for ensuring “freedom of navigation”. In all the ongoing and prospective theaters of war, the imperialists claim they are fighting “terrorism” and/or defending “democracy” (or what some Western media define as Western-style democracy). The latter simply means holding regular elections in which the people could vent their frustrations by choosing and voting candidates for public office from a pool of supposed traditional leaders, who are in fact stooges or representatives of the imperialists. Against China and Russia, the US and European imperialists even invoke “human rights” when they indiscriminately bomb cities, including hospitals and public service facilities.

All the above are just some of the latest examples of imperialists, particularly the US imperialists, who are currently at war in various countries and regions or itching for war in certain “hot spots”, and the justifications they concoct feed the dominant media reports about their aggression. The truth is, the imperialist needs war and is compelled to go to war that kill and maim millions of people because they have military-industrial enclaves whose thirst for profits couldn’t be quenched.

More importantly, as Lenin observed in his meticulous study of capitalist imperialism:

“(T)he characteristic feature of imperialism is precisely that it strives to annex not only agricultural regions, but even highly industrialised regions because the fact that the world is already divided up (between imperialist states) obliges those contemplating a new division to reach out for any kind of territory, and because an essential feature of imperialism is the rivalry between a number of great powers in the striving for hegemony…”

This is particularly stark as imperialist US, for example, maintains its support of Israel in the latter’s genocidal war against the Palestinians. The US uses Israel as a base for encroaching into the Middle East (or West Asia). The US has similar intentions in keeping the Korean peninsula divided between North and South and also to counter China.

In the Philippines, a strategic archipelago for projecting military power in the Indo-Pacific region, the imperialist US has maintained its seven-decade “iron-clad” mutual defense treaty with its former colony and puppet-government partner. Nowadays, they are building more military bases and talking about nuclear power.

Amid all these imperialist scheming, the Filipino people (and the people everywhere else) are justified in opposing militarization and imperialist wars of aggression. They are justified in opposing huge increases in the national budget allocations for highly-destructive arms purchases; the presence of foreign military bases, troops, facilities, and war materiel stockpiles; all military alliances and agreements with imperialist US and its allies; and the saber-rattling and calling for proxy war in Taiwan against China.

Moreover, the Filipino people and people everywhere who are seeking and fighting for national liberation are justified in continuing to resist and to overthrow their local and foreign oppressors.(Pinky Ang)###

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