Liberation – Page 19

Breaking Away from the Usurious Farm Traders

Published on April 3, 2018 in Mainstream

by Priscilla de Guzman

The road leading to the village was mostly rough and muddy, with a few meters of cemented portion after every few kilometers. Where there was a cemented road, harvested corn crops were spread over it on plastic sheets to dry under the sun.

“You were lucky, kadua (comrade in the Ilokano language),” Ka Efren told me as he expertly maneuvered his motorcycle through the muddy parts of the road. “It has been raining for weeks. The rain stopped only two days ago, he said.

Ka Efren’s community occupies a public land, a forested area, where titling is not allowed by the government. However, some enterprising local government officials and trader-usurers have been able to acquire land titles through sheer bribery. The public lands have been home to most of the farmers, such as Ka Efren, since birth.

As we passed through another batch of harvested corn being dried, Ka Efren muttered how low the prices that the traders pay for their produce. “I don’t know how much I’ll earn this harvest season, our corn harvest was not properly dried because of the rains,” he lamented.

Embracing victory

Ka Jong, the other motorcycle driver, quickly reminded Ka Efren that, just two days ago after the rains had stopped, a farmers’ organization in a Cagayan Valley municipality won its battle against the usurious traders. The good news, he said, had spread like fire in the neighboring communities, towns, and even in other provinces in the region. Ka Efren’s face immediately lit up. Yes, he suddenly remembered.

We arrived at the community where the farmers had gathered as members of a local chapter of the Pambansang Katipunan ng mga Magsasaka or PKM (National Peasants Association), one of the founding member-organizations of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines [NDFP]). They were exultant over the victory of the mass action-cum-dialogue with the traders—a victory won through a militant show of unity in demanding that the traders pay justly for the farmers’ produce and do away with their usurious practices.

The peasant leaders who joined them can understandably claim much of the credit for the triumph. They were fired up in narrating their collective action, what they had gone through before they achieved victory. They took turns in pointing out how they had been exploited by the trader-usurers. The latter had monopoly and control of everything the farmers needed from planting to harvesting. They also dictated the prices of their corn and cassava produce. It had been a full cycle of exploitation.

The peasant organization’s victory of getting a fair shake from the traders meant the following: reduced interest rates on their loans, higher selling prices for corn and cassava crops, reduced prices of the sacks used in packing their produce, and a reprieve from interest payments they had incurred during the super typhoon Lawin that hit the region in 2016.

Monopoly of the traders

For a long time, loans and interest payments had chained the farmers to the trader-usurers. Without capital to buy seedlings of their choice, the farmers were compelled to plant BT-corn and cassava for cash crops used as animal feeds.

The seedlings were sourced as loans from the traders, who also provided them with fertilizers and herbicides as loans. During harvest, these same traders bought the farmers’ produce at a price they practically dictated, based on their own grading and weighing systems—wherein trickery was usually employed. After the harvest, the farmers ended up practically with nothing in their pockets, or worse, with another sheet of paper where their additional loans and interest payments were listed down.

Most atrocious was the trading of sacks used to pack the harvests. The farmers buy the sacks at Php10.00 each from the local traders who bought these for Php5.00. Per harvest, they have to buy 300 sacks costing Php3,000. The farmers use the sacks to bring their produce to the local traders who, in turn, use these when they sell to the buying stations. These sacks were never returned to the farmers. Thus, when another planting-harvest season starts, the farmers would again spend for the sacks.

Cagayan Valley is the country’s top producer of BT-corn, with genetically modified organisms (GMO), and farmers like Ka Ludy and many others in his community had contributed much to its propagation, at their expense.

The Department of Agriculture introduced the BT-corn in the early 2000 but the people widely rejected it. Not long after the trader-usurers were acting as aggressive conduits for its propagation, leaving no choice for the penniless peasants but to accept, as BT-corn was the only available seedling the traders would loan to them.

“It’s as if the traders got to hire planters and laborers without salaries,” said Ka Ludy. There was a time, when there was no available food for them, some farmers tried to eat BT-corn to find out if it was fit for human consumption. Result: they developed allergies.

Breaking away from the traders

Energized by the recent victory of the farmers, the PKM members are more determined to go on with the plans they had laid out during the AgRev (Agrarian Revolution) conference held in the last quarter of 2017. The conference was a joint project by local members of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), the New People’s Army (NPA), and the various revolutionary mass organizations in the guerrilla front.

During the conference, the peasants resolved to vigorously push for the palit tanim (literally, changing plants) campaign. As an initial step, the PKM collectives in the different villages would start planting food crops to ensure food on their tables as they moved to break away from the trader-usurers’ dictates.

“The seedlings were donated to us by friends and we will divide these among the collectives in the different villages,” Ka Ludy explained. With a steady supply of food on their tables, the farmers can then start planting cash crops of their choice, sell directly in the market individually or collectively, and earn what they have worked for.

“In the long run, this will allow us to do away with the seedlings supplied by the traders and gain freedom from their monopoly and exploitation,” he said.

Land distribution and communal farms

The 2017 AgRev conference was the first held in this guerrilla front after more than a decade. In the conference, the revolutionary organizations also lined up plans on maximizing the utilization of idle lands in their communities and those nearby. The local Party and NPA units and the PKM plan to distribute some 50 hectares of land among the 30 poorest peasant families.

“The comrades in the NPA are helping us come up with policies and guidelines in the land distribution, especially on who should be prioritized—those landless and those who lack lands to till,” said Ka Iling, a participant in the AgRev conference.

Aside from the individual effort to plant food crops in their palit tanim campaign, a substantial portion of the land for distribution will be allotted for communal farming and food production for the needs of the revolutionary mass organizations and the NPA units.

“There have been already existing communal lands in different villages, probably for more than 10 years now. But the lands are too small for our needs,” Ka Iling pointed out. “So, aside from these existing communal farms, we could work on a bigger piece of land to augment our needs,” he continued. The members of the Party branches and revolutionary mass organizations, he said, could work together and produce more crops.

Minimum and maximum program of agrarian revolution

The efforts of Ka Ludy, Ka Iling, Ka Efren, Ka Jong and other members of the PKM in this community exemplify the unity of the peasants nationwide to carry out the agrarian revolution led by the Party, the people’s army, and the NDFP.

Already, almost a million PKM members have benefited from the Party and the NPA’s maximum agrarian reform program where more than 44,000 hectares of land were confiscated and redistributed all over the country. Millions of others have benefited from the campaigns for lower land rent, end to usury, just harvest proceeds, increased farm gate prices, and elimination of trickery when produce are weighed and priced.

Only the revolutionary movement led by the CPP-NPA-NDFP can proudly lay claim that, in its almost 50 years of existence, it has slowly but steadily freed the peasants from the hundreds of years of feudal bondage.

Developing the Economy while Safeguarding the Environment

Published on April 1, 2018 in Mainstream

by Marie Johnson

|| Liga ng Agham para sa Bayan (LAB)-National Democratic Front of the Philippines is an organization of scientists, technologists and environmentalist for the people ||

Vinta, Yolanda, Pablo, Sendong, Quiel, Pepeng, Ondoy.

Every year, the list grows longer as the country marks another destructive typhoon that leaves widespread devastation in its wake. Every year also government authorities seem to fail to fully learn the lessons from previous disasters. They fall short of the needed preparations and respond late and inadequately to the new onslaughts. Thus, in many instances, our people in the gravely affected areas are left to face the devastations and endure the prolonged hazards and inconveniences largely on their own.

And almost always the poor and marginalized sectors—the peasants, fisherfolk, national minorities, and the urban poor and their respective communities bear the brunt of these nature-inflicted disasters.

The problem, however, is not merely government neglect or inadequate capability to cope with the disasters.

Plunder of resources = backward economy and ravaged environment

The decades-old export-oriented economic policy/program has opened the country’s natural resources to exploitation by foreign monopoly capitalists, their big comprador bourgeoisie partners and bureaucrat capitalists.

Their plunder has resulted in a ravaged environment and a backward, underdeveloped economy. The denudation of mountains and destruction of watersheds, through large-scale open-pit mining and logging operations, are primarily accountable for the ferocious flash floods, massive landslides and the incalculable devastations they entail whenever strong typhoons visit our country.

Key tools of such plunder are the neoliberal policies on mining, logging, large-scale plantations, power/energy, and other extractive and destructive industries. Of late this problem, tagged as “development aggression”, has been worsened by the militarization of vast areas of the countryside and upland communities as part of the state’s continually recycled yet unsuccessful counterinsurgency program. Not only has this development aggression been destroying the environment; it also has been displacing peasants, indigenous peoples and national minorities from their lands.

Despite our vast rich agricultural lands, forestry, marine, mineral and energy resources, the nation’s economy remains backward. It has stayed mainly agrarian and increasingly engaged in supplying cheap labor to both developed and developing economies all over the world, while exporting agricultural products and raw extractive minerals. Without a significant Filipino industrial sector, we continue to import needed industrial inputs, capital equipment, finished goods, and agricultural commodities.

National industrialization and agrarian reform keys to development and sound environment

To reduce our poor people’s vulnerability to natural disasters, we need to develop a modern and diversified industrial economy that ensures rapid and sustained growth while securing livelihood and satisfying the basic needs of our people. We need to industrialize and develop our national economy within the constraints of our fragile environment—while scientifically and conscientiously protecting, safeguarding and managing the utilization of its mineral resources and rehabilitating its damaged watersheds and enhancing its flora and fauna bounties.

This entails implementing genuine agrarian reform, rural development, and national industrialization. National industrialization seeks maximum self-sufficiency in the industrial production of both capital and consumer goods. It seeks to mobilize Filipino capital to produce primarily for domestic consumption rather than for export.

The reference book Philippine Society and Revolution highlights the stunted growth of our economy despite our vast natural resources and huge labor force. On the other hand, it also shows the enormous potential of our country to industrialize given that it is among the most mineral-rich countries in the world with many of the basic minerals needed for industrial development.

How would such industrialization look like? And what is the role of environmental protection in such a plan?

National industrialization is the development of key domestic industries to attain self-sufficiency in industrial production of capital goods needed by ancilliary industries, aimed at bringing about economic growth and independence. It also aims to develop intermediate and consumer-goods production capacity for domestic needs based on national potentials and to ensure food security and for all.

This is in contrast to the current pattern of production, investments, and trade that exports agricultural and extractive raw materials, imports surplus finished goods, agricultural commodities and capital and re-exports low value-added reassembled or repackaged imported manufactures.

A new way to look at mining and mineral processing

Mining has been part of the historical development of national economies. In the experience of industrialized nations, a prosperous mining industry is needed to supply the minerals needed for production by industries that would, along with modernized agriculture, provide the basic needs of the people.

The Philippines is a mineral resource-rich country. Despite the abundance of such resources, the country lacks the necessary industries to process the minerals. Instead, the mining sector has been liberalized further by inviting more large-scale and foreign mining corporations.

By judiciously utilizing mineral resources, we can develop a local mining industry for the production of raw materials such as base metals and basic chemicals needed by the basic heavy and medium industries producing steel for construction, engines for various uses, and agricultural tools.

Mining under a national industrialization framework departs from its current character of production, which is primarily dictated by the demands of the international market for raw minerals. Instead we shall base mineral extraction on our actual needs and the demands of industrialization. In this regard, all mining operations shall be strictly regulated to ensure the domestic processing of mineral ores up to the secondary and tertiary stages of industrial production.

We shall endeavor to build an integrated national minerals industry that would also provide employment not only on the extraction side but also in the downstream industries that should be built. These factories will process our own minerals for our own use and enable us independently to produce machinery, tools and consumers goods that we will need. It will also uncouple the mining industry from its dependence on world market prices and exports and directly integrate it to national development needs.

The country lacks intermediate processing capability for base metals since most operations directly export raw or semi-processed ores after extraction. Intermediate processing includes smelting and refining which are pre-requisites to more downstream industries, which produce the end products that factories and consumers use.

We now have smelting and refining capabilities only in gold, silver and copper but lack the necessary intermediate processing capabilities for nickel, iron and chromite which are necessary for steelmaking. Among the potential downstream industries of nickel processing are stainless steel, special steel, tool steels and batteries.

Current domestic steel consumption is approximately 7 million metric tons, with around 5 million MT imported. South Korea, now the world’s fourth largest producer of steel, started out production in 1972 by making special efforts to supply iron and steel to domestic companies at below export prices.

Mining, land reform and national industrialization

Industrial metal production should be tied with the needs of land reform and rural development. After free land distribution, agricultural modernization and mechanization would be crucial in the overall development of farm production. Agricultural mechanization pertains to the manufacture, distribution, and utilization of tools, implements, and machines for agricultural production and post-production operations.

Mechanization of farming will increase labor and land productivity. Agricultural machines and equipment help in soil preparation, better irrigation, crop protection and reduce post-harvest losses increasing effective crop yield. Currently most agricultural machinery is imported.

With an integrated minerals industry producing not only raw materials but finished metals for tools and machinery, we can reduce in steps this dependence on imports until we are self-sufficient in the production of farm machineries, tools and infrastructure materials needed by the agriculture sector.

It is not only the metals and steel industry that we should develop but also the extraction of other minerals needed by agriculture, such as fertilizers and other inputs.

Sustainability

As a general rule, since the mining industry is being developed to support and enhance our industrial capacity and to achieve food security, prime agricultural lands and areas that are targeted for food production must not be classified as mineral lands. Mining activity on such lands must be banned. Due care should also be collectively ensured so that off-site effects of mining would not adversely affect adjoining land areas.

The state has a crucial role in overseeing the disposition of our resources and industries in line with the national interest. This involves the determination of available resources; establishing sustainable targets for exploration, mine development and production; procurement and allocation of capital and technology; and management of the domestic mineral market.

The level of extraction and the amount of mineral production should be based on the desired level of industrialization and agricutural modernization. It should be done in consultation with and consent of those in mining-affected communities and should guarantee the right of indigenous peoples and national minorities to self determination and their ancestral domain.

In such mining operations, job security, living wages and safe working conditions must be ensured. Research and development for substitute and new materials, mine rehabilitation and the reduction of waste and pollution should be encouraged. At all stages of mining, environmental protection and development shall be guaranteed.

—
Note: The above discussion on mining and national industrialization has been derived from the section on environmental protection, rehabilitation and compensation of the draft Comprehensive Agreement on Social and Economic Reforms (CASER), produced by the Reciprocal Working Committee of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines peace negotiating panel for the long-running GRP-NDFP peace talks.

The draft was to have been exchanged with that of the GRP panel’s counterpart RWC and hammered out into a unified document, which was expected to be signed by the two parties in the GRP-NDFP fifth round of formal negotiations scheduled in late November last year. But President Duterte abruptly and arbitrarily cancelled the peace talks altogether.

The NDFP CASER version contains these proposals in seven sections. These are: 1) Principles of environmental protection and economic development; 2) Definition of terms; 3) Measures for managing the environment and ensuring resiliency; 4) End environmentally destructive practices; 5) Regulation of mining and marine wealth extraction; 6) Ban on alienation of natural resources and patent control; and 7) Implementing provisions.

The document recognizes that “environmental protection, conservation and wise use of natural resources are necessary components of socioeconomic development policies and that ecological balance is integral to national development”. Such economic development must make judicious use of the country’s renewable and non-renewable resources, balancing ecological concerns with economic targets and involve rational planning and zoning to alleviate congestion and pollution. It reserves the country’s lands, minerals, waters, flora and fauna, and other natural resources for utilization by the Filipino people.

The NDFP seeks to guarantee democratic consultation, consent, and participation of the affected communities in the use of our natural resources.

The proposal seeks to rehabilitate and protect watershed and other critical areas and to promote the use of renewable energy and the institution of programs to reduce waste. It also seeks compensation for people and communities affected by disasters, by massive pollution and contamination from logging, mining, energy, agro-chemical corporations, by military operations, and the like.

Moreover, the proposal prohibits ecologically destructive practices and the entry of hazardous waste and dangerous munitions.

With regard to mining, it ensures that mining shall only be undertaken when and where there are sufficient provisions for protecting and recovering the environment and that mineral production and development shall help develop local industry and modernize agriculture.

As regards our people’s vulnerability to nature-inflicted disasters, this is not only due to hydrometeorological hazards such as rainfall, typhoon winds or those from earthquakes and volcano eruptions. It is more so a function of the economic capacity of the communities exposed to these hazards. The reduction of this vulnerability will directly result from the availability of jobs that pay living wages— jobs that will result from industries that create domestic employment and serve the local market, and from agricultural modernization and land reform.

Duterte and the Philippine Mass Media

Published on March 30, 2018 in Countercurrent

by Leon Castro

Since the dark days of the Marcos dictatorship, freedom of the press and freedom of expression in the Philippines have never been threatened as viciously as these are today.

As an important part of the struggle to oust the Marcos dictatorship, the 1987 Constitution of the reactionary Philippine Republic includes provisions to safeguard the mass media from attacks by succeeding regimes. Section 4 of the Bill of Rights eloquently states, “No law shall be passed abridging the freedom of speech, of expression, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances.”

Alas, such eloquence and grandness of purpose may prove no match to Rodrigo Duterte’s vindictiveness and viciousness against those he perceives to have an axe to grind against him.

Duterte’s attacks against the mass media apparently stemmed from a perceived slight. He has accused giant media conglomerate ABS-CBN of taking money but refused to run his campaign advertisements during the anomalous 2016 presidential polls. He also accused the Philippine Daily Inquirer of consistently running stories pointing out his bloody human rights record as Davao City mayor to ruin his candidacy. For these and other perceived slights, Duterte embarked on a vicious campaign and direct attacks against Philippine mass media.

A regime propped by trolls

Duterte started out by deploying his army of trolls and bloggers, led by a former broadcaster who himself had a checkered career before parlaying his political connections to land a job as presidential communication secretary. The regime hired and pays expensive social media influencers who have no qualms in putting out outright lies and disinformation to undermine the credibility of critical media outlets. The lies of the likes of Mocha Uson, RJ Nieto, Sass Sassot and other highly-paid bloggers have been consistently exposed, yet they blithely keep at it as they enjoy Duterte’s unwavering support and encouragement. They have replaced the likes of Jim Paredes, Leah Navarro, Cynthia Patag, among others, of the notorious Yellow Brigade of the past Benigno Aquino regime.

Paid online trolls under the direction of the regime’s black propaganda operators work round the clock to undermine reports of highly-regarded outfits such as Vera Files and Reuters and cyber-bash respected journalists like Ed Lingao, Raissa Robles, Inday Espina-Varona and many others with pre-formulated “comments” they did not even bother to change even as they were blasted on the same threads one after the other. Many other journalists have reported threats and harassment by either trolls or known Duterte supporters.

All too willingly Duterte does his part in undermining mass media and the journalists’ credibility in the eyes of the people. His arsenal of attacks was not limited to a steady stream of invectives but include outright false accusations as he did with Inquirer’s Karlos Manlupig. He also catcalled female journalist Mariz Umali of GMA 7 on live television. Woefully, his tirades are often met with laughter and approving applause by his blinded supporters. Duterte himself is his regime’s worst troll.

Attacks against media outfits

But Duterte’s growing tyranny has gone beyond verbal assaults. His regime is making good his threats against his perceived enemies in the mass media. Duterte’s threats to punish the owners of Philippine Daily Inquirer forced them to negotiate a sale with San Miguel Corporation tycoon Ramon Ang who is known to be friendly with the tyrant. There are rumors that notorious attack dog Rigoberto Tiglao would be appointed as the newspaper’s new editor in chief once the sale papers have been signed.

“Supermajority” minions in Congress are heroically aiding the tyrant in his attacks against the mass media. They have refused to table the bill granting a 25-year extension to Catholic Media Network’s broadcast franchise which operates 54 radio stations nationwide. In a statement, international media group Reporters Without Borders expressed concern that the “refusal” of lawmakers to renew the franchise appeared to be “politically motivated,” given the Church’s critical stance on President Duterte’s bloody campaign against illegal drugs. The Protestant group National Council of Churches of the Philippines, which consistently denounces human rights violations by the Duterte regime, is facing similar problems with its broadcast franchise extension. It too operates several radio stations nationwide.

On January 9, 2017, the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) suffered a denial of service on its website, www.nujp.org. Prior to the attack, the group released a statement against President Duterte’s declaration that he was “playing” with the media. Duterte said in a CNN Philippines interview on 29 December 2016, “Nilalaro ko kayo. Mahilig talaga ako (sa) gan’un. Alam ng team ninyo mahilig ako magbitaw ng kalokohan.” The NUJP statement was flooded with hate comments from Duterte supporters.

In January this year, the Securities and Exchange Commission, acting upon direct orders from Duterte, declared Rappler’s license as violative of the Constitutional provision on foreign ownership of mass media organizations. Despite the government’s legalese and vigorous denials by its mouthpieces, it could not be denied that Duterte wanted to punish the online news outfit for its reportage of human rights violations in the country.

In February, alternative media outfit Kodao Productions’ website www.kodao.org was hacked with a code injection attack that prevents its webmasters from logging in and its growing number of readers from accessing the site. Kodao said online forensic investigations it conducted lead them to believe the attack could only be the handiwork of top-tier hackers, such as those employed by governments and intelligence agencies. As the media outfit that most comprehensively reports on the peace process between the National Democratic Front of the Philippines and the Government of the Republic of the Philippines as well as other social justice issues, the temporary loss of Kodao’s website denies the public of a chance to weigh in on the peace agenda.

Media killings continue

Much like when he was Davao City mayor, Duterte’s presidency is littered with the dead and wounded bodies of working journalists. A joint statement by the NUJP, Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR), and the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) last November 23, 2017, on the 8th anniversary of the Ampatuan Massacre, said six journalists have been killed under the Duterte regime while eight have survived slay attempts and received death threats.

The situation can turn for the worse with the likes of blogger Nieto encouraging his fellow Duterte blogger to confront photojournalist Jes Aznar once he leaves Marawi City or trolls threatening Al Jazeera reporter Jamela Alindogan and Malacañang beat reporter Pia Rañada with rape. Just recently, Rañada was also banned from covering Malacañang simply because she is from Rappler.

Three libel cases have been filed against journalists under Duterte and four old cases have led to the arrest of the accused.
NUJP, CMFR and PCIJ have also complained that the Duterte regime puts journalists’ lives in danger by compelling them to participate in so-called raids that all too often end up in the killing of poor drug suspects. In addition, the police tries to influence how Duterte’s drug war is being reported. “Against their will, media personnel are sometimes compelled by police officers to sign on as witnesses in police anti-drug operations, supposedly as mandated by the law. Media team members are asked to sign on to the police’s inventory reports on the items that had been seized during police operations, in the form and manner that the police had prepared these,” the group said. This practice exposes media personnel to serious legal implications and real conflict of interest, they added.

On Sept. 13, 2017, the Philippine National Police, through its spokesperson Supt. Dionardo Carlos, ordered that spot reports would not be released to reporters unless the “head of office, his duly [designated] representative, his PIO (public information officer) or his spokesperson” determined that such release would not affect an investigation. Carlos reportedly said that the directive restricting journalists from obtaining spot reports was issued as early as Feb. 18, 2014. This goes against the very grain of another of Duterte’s campaign promise, that of freedom of information.

NUJP, CMFR and PCIJ said that the Duterte regime’s flow of official information has been mired in apparent propaganda. “Although a Freedom of Information policy has directed all offices in the executive branch to respond to requests for information, far too many exceptions and denied requests have rendered the supposed policy of openness a farce,” the groups said. They also complained of a remarkable scarcity of substance of the information fed them in official press briefings during milestone events, such as the most recent ASEAN Summit or during the war in Marawi. They complain of Duterte’s communication team’s cavalier stance in throwing around facts out of context, and dishing out partial truths, and even fabricated stories and photographs.

Weaponizing fake news

As the regime attacks journalists who publish critical reports, it also unleashes fake news to supplant legitimate media outfits to mislead the people from Duterte’s human rights violations, corruption, foreign subservience and other inanities. As armies of trolls bombard websites and social media platforms with lies and threats, pro-Duterte websites abound, publishing fake news that twist facts in all incredible manners.

This compelled the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines to issue a list of fake news sites in January 2017, followed by a pastoral letter June of last year. After the list’s publication, some of these websites have been “killed” or their urls changed. Still, a good number of these remain.

The NUJP, in cooperation with an advertising agency, also launched in 2017 an advocacy website called Fakeblok that red-flags websites publishing fake news. This earned for the organization and the ad agency multiple national awards for confronting the fake news phenomenon that is being used with abandon by the Duterte regime.

But fake news is not confined to online platforms. Fake news is in fact wielded as a black propaganda weapon by the Duterte regime that not only victimizes netizens, it also abets the regime’s killing spree. The Philippine National Police (PNP) use these fake news sites to blame extrajudicial killings victims for being illegal drug peddlers and criminals.

But nothing beats the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in its mastery of news fakery. It starts from consistently issuing news releases filled with lies and conducting press conferences that twists facts like no other. The mercenary forces of the reactionary state use fake news to cover up both its many battlefield losses and its atrocities against civilians and their communities. This is never been more blatant in its handling of Filipino journalists covering the Marawi siege for six long months. Never was a news coverage been so managed as Marawi that very few reports actually described why an entire city has to be totally destroyed and hundreds of civilians killed just to flush out a handful of gunmen.

Thankfully, these fake news sites and its entire machinery under the Duterte regime is being exposed and the people are already starting to dismiss them as nothing more than lies, albeit dangerous.

Militating the press

Duterte is making the same mistakes his idol Marcos did during his dictatorship. He is not only alienating the mass media, he is making them his enemies. His toxic mix of tyrannical power and violence and public censure against legitimate mass media, on one hand, and lies and misinformation peddled by his trolls and paid hacks, on the other, will likelly revive the phenomenon called the “mosquito press” which contributed to Marcos’s downfall.

Responding to attacks against media outfits and reporters, journalists from all over the country are bonding together—organizing forums and rallies to condemn attacks against press freedom. More and more journalists are publishing articles reporting on the regime’s corruption, subservience to foreign powers, human rights violations and even the Duterte family’s incredible and tasteless sense of entitlement.

All these would only help bring the current Malacanang tyrant to his knees and help cause his eventual and inevitable downfall.

REVOLUTIONARIES NOT TERRORISTS: Terrorist-tagging is old hat

Published on March 29, 2018 in Mainstream

by Vida Gracias

In early December, days after he terminated the peace talks with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte formally declared as “terrorists” the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the New People’s Army (NPA).

But for those who have grown with the revolution in the country for almost 50 years, the demonization of the CPP-NPA started way back since Marcos’ martial-law dictatorship. In fact the reactionary military—then and now—never stopped using the tag “Communist Terrorists” against real, suspected or imagined revolutionaries.

The terrorist tagging has resulted in an all-out war waged against not only the CPP-NPA but against the entire Filipino people—a war that has combined all the worst features of past and present counter-insurgency programs.

People in the countryside have been inured to seeing slogans on billboards, streamers on walls of houses and trees pointing to the NPA, and even to legal organizations, as “terrorists”. The media, including social media, has been utilized extensively to malign the CPP-NPA. But no matter how zealous current and past regimes have been in such demonization campaign, they have failed to make the tag stick on the CPP-NPA.

Why so? Because the CPP-NPA as a revolutionary force is a far cry from terrorists, who employ armed violence and brutality in wantonly killing people and destroying public facilities and private property to foment widespread fear among the populace. The CPP-NPA uses armed force in a revolutionary war against the reactionary state to seize political power and bring about fundamental social, economic and political changes beneficial to the people that would lead to attaining just and lasting peace.