PHILIPPINES; A CAPITALIST CALAMITY (tags)
Filipinos now see more clearly the calamitous state of the system.In the morning of Sept. 26, tropical storm Ondoy (international codename: Ketsana) pounded Metro Manila and the surrounding regions, dumping a month’s worth of rain in just six hours and causing the most massive flooding seen in the last 40 years. A week later, super typhoon Pepeng (Parma) hit Northern Luzon, inundating farmland and causing mudslides in the mountainous mining region of Benguet, including Baguio City, a U.S.-designed community.
CORRUPTION, DEFPRETRATION. LANDSLIDES. DEATH AND MEA CULPA (tags)
“The reasons for the degradation of our forests are corruption and our own shortcomings,” admitted Secretary Lito Atienza of Department of the Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) in a New Year message to his department personnel. A common knowledge among Filipinos, Atienza's admonishment, hardly created a ripple in Manila were ordinary citizens had almost but accepted corruption is an integral part of governance in the island nation.
NDF-EV condemns virtual martial rule in troop deployment to Tacloban City (tags)
The National Democratic Front-Eastern Visayas today condemned the virtual martial rule in the deployment by the 8th Infantry Division of soldiers to the northern barangays of Tacloban City and the outright role of the military in rigging the elections to favor the Arroyo regime. "The military psywar blabberers blatantly lie that the 8th ID is sending troops to the northern barangays of Tacloban City because of the alleged presence of the New People's Army," said NDF-EV spokesperson Fr. Santiago Salas. "What the military really aims after the elections is to forestall mass protests by heightening the psywar campaign against the people's organizations and party-list groups, whom they frame as part of the NPA to justify attacking and killing off their leaders and members. In the elections, various reports from Samar and Leyte also describe soldiers as terrorizing the people against voting for the progressive party-list. But the people have democratically defied the military and the Arroyo regime in the elections: Despite the barefaced use of fraud and military terrorism against them, the progressive party-list groups are clearly headed for Congress. The people have spoken, but in retaliating by sending troops against them, the military goes on with its script of mayhem and murder."