Philippine Women’s Coalitions Launch 18 Days of Activism against Violence (tags)
On the eve of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (VAW), which marks the start of the 18 Days of Activism Against VAW, women’s groups held a press conference and rally in front of the US Embassy. The coalitions announced today that they unite in focusing on the call for justice for Jennifer Laude during this 18-day campaign period which starts on November 25, and will sustain the campaign until justice is served.
ALLIANCE PHILIPPINES PROTESTS POSSIBLE US BASES RETURN TO SUBIC (tags)
The Alliance Philippines or the AJLPP strongly condemned the high-level visits here by American officials who have raised the prospect of a return of the United States’ military presence in this former naval base in Subic on the wake of disasters that hit Japan, which have delayed the planned US military build-up in Guam. Subic Naval Base was the deepest sea port of the US naval forces in the Philippines. The US naval base closed after the Philippine Senate terminated the US-RP Military Bases Pact in 1991. Only to be reversed later with the passage of the Visiting Forces Agreement during the tenure of Joseph Estrada in 1998.
BUSH SENDS NUCLEAR AIRCRAFT CARRIER TO THE PHILIPPINES (tags)
With the subservience of the Arroyo regime, Bush continues the political-military intervention in the "killing field" of the Philippines, wasting millions of tax-dollars in suppressing the Moro insurgents and Filipino national-democrats, abetting the horrendous extra-judicial killings and enforced disappearances and widespread poverty and oppression, all in the name of the war against "terrorism," a code-word for popular resistance against global capital's greed and inhumane devastation of the planet.
ILITAW SI KASAMANG LEO VELASCO--FQSN (tags)
Mahigit nang anim na buwan mula nang garapalang dukutin ng mga operatibang militar ng rehimeng Arroyo si Kasamang Leo Velasco sa Cagayan de Oro City. Sa harap ng maraming tao, sapilitan siyang isinakay ng mga militar sa kanilang van, kasabay ang pagpapakilala sa sarili bilang mga pwersang panseguridad at pagbabanta sa mga tao sa paligid na "huwag makialam." Aktibista ng FQS si Ka. Leo Bilang mga aktibista ng First Quarter Storm Network sa Amerika, nagpapahayag kami ng marubdob na hangarin at panawagang Ilitaw si Ka. Leo Velasco, aktibista ng UP College of Medicine na sumapi sa Bagong Hukbong Bayan (NPA) noong 1971. Dinakip siya at magpahanggang ngayon ay ayaw ilitaw ng militar. Napakarami nang beterano ng FQS ang patuloy pa ring nakikibka sa iba'tibang antas at nagpapatuloy sa pagsusulong ng demokratikong kilusan apra palayain ang bayang Pilipinas sa pangaaapi ng Imperyalistang dayuhan at kamtin ang pambansang demokrasya.
Women's Day marchers beaten up in Manila (tags)
The Alliance of Progressive Labor (APL) denounces the attempt of the police to brutally disperse the rally of APL-women commemorating International Women's Day.
FIGHT RESURGENT FASCISM, FIGHT ARROYO'S UNDECLARED MARTIAL LAW (tags)
We activist of the First Quarter Storm Network (FQSN)- USA commemorate the thirty-fourth year declaration of martial law in the Philippines that plunged the country into 14 years of dictatorship. Today, on the 34th year commemoration of martial law, we have to struggle against another tyrant who wanted to impose the same dictatorship under another label. We have to fight on! We still have to fight a war to win –the war against forgetting and revisionism. We have to wage a protracted war to remember, relive and reaffirm with our collective memories, our struggle for national democracy and the social liberation of our people.
FILIPINOS IN THE U.S.A. AND AROUND THE WORLD: WHENCE AND WHITHER? (tags)
About ten million Filipinos are now scattered in the U.S. and around the world, chiefly as exploited migrant labor. Meanwhile, 85 million Filipinos--with the exception of a tiny privileged minority--are sufffering and resisting the current repressive regime in a rapidly deteriorating neocolonized social order. The Philippines has one of the most durable and vibrant revolutionary traditions in the whole world--the first Asian people to revolt against Western colonialism. 4.1 million Filipinos died opposing U.S. domination in the Filipino-American War at the turn of the last century. Today Filipinos are engaged in a popular democratic revolutionary process against U.S. imperialism and its local agents. Can overseas Filipinos contribute to the radical transformation of a world afflicted by the atrocities and terrors of global capitalism?
The anniversary of the death of the Philippines' national hero Jose Rizal this Dec. 30 affords us the occasion to reassess his work, particularly in the context of ongoing fierce class war in the Philippines between the oppressed, impoverished majority and the few privileged landlords and politicians bought by global capital. This is taking place at a time when the Philippines is being re-colonized by the U.S. as the world's imperialist hegemon. Would Rizal want the country partitioned to greedy transnational corporations and their national elites in the current terrorist war against peoples of color in particular? These reflections hope to provoke a re-thinking of what it means to be a Filipino with the Philippines in permanent crisis, using Rizal as a point of departure, especially in the light of its citizens becoming an embattled diaspora--more than ten million OFWs as exploited domestics and contract workers around the planet, while the country's rich natural resources, cultures and traditions are wasted by foreign profiteers of globalizing capital supported by local comprador parasites currently headed by the corrupt Arroyo regime. "O where is the hope of the motherland...."?