US Marine charged with killing transgender Filipina–Protests Stop US Navy Visits

Philippine Dept. of Foreign Affairs says 3 US ships canceled port visits

Allan Macatuno, Christine O. Avendaño | Inquirer Central Luzon Philippine Daily Inquirer

Tuesday, November 4th, 2014

Filipina transgender Jeffrey “Jennifer” Laude, left, was allegedly killed by US Marine Sgt. Joseph Scott Pemberton,, right. The ensuing protests over yet another US military person charged with abuse or murder of Filipinas has created a suspension of “normal” US visits to the Philippines

MANILA, Philippines–Three US Navy ships have canceled their scheduled port visits to the country this month for operational reasons, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said on Monday.

“The reconsideration of the port visits is a normal occurrence as US ships are deployed in many areas in the Pacific and are subject to changing operational requirements,” DFA spokesman Charles Jose said at a press briefing, citing a US Embassy diplomatic note.

The Inquirer reported Monday that the Subic Bay Freeport Chamber of Commerce had said that nine US vessels had scrapped scheduled port calls because of “anti-American sentiments” stemming from the slaying of Filipino transgender Jeffrey “Jennifer” Laude on Oct. 11 in an Olongapo City motel.

Filipinos protest US military presence

14 Aug 2013, Bangkok Post Online news

MANILA – The Philippines and the United States on Wednesday opened talks on increased American military presence, amid protests by leftist groups warning against foreign interference.

Filipino activists hold up placards as they stage a lie-in before a police line during a protest against a meeting between Philippine and US officials in Manila on Wednesday. The protesters were opposing the talks over an increase in US military troops in the country. (AFP photo)

Activists picketed the principal military base in Manila, where the first round of negotiations on a “framework on increased rotational presence” was being held.

The demonstrators denounced the talks and called on the Philippine government not to give the US military more access to the country, which shut down American air and naval bases more than two decades ago.

Philippines: “CPP denounces plans to revert Subic to US military use”

Press Release, Information Bureau –October 10, 2012

Communist Party of the Philippines

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) condemned proposals by officials of the Aquino regime to refurbish the military facilities of the former Subic Naval Base in order to accomodate the growing number of visiting US troops involved in various types of US military operations in the Philippines.

At the same time, the CPP denounced the arrival of more than 2,200 American troops purportedly joining the Philippine Amphibious Landing Exercise (PHIBLEX) with 1,600 soldiers of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in various parts of the Philippines from October 8-18. 

“Resist Oplan Bayanihan in South Quezon-Bondoc Peninsula”

source: http://www.philippinerevolution.net, May 21, 2012

A massive and brutal terror campaign is currently ravaging the people of South Qezon-Bondoc Peninsula (SQ-BP) as part of the intensification of the US-Aquino regime’s Oplan Bayanihan war of suppression.

It is marked by one of the most concentrated deployments of fascist forces in the history of the enemy’s suppression and encirclement campaigns. Up to eight strike battalions are positioned in 22 towns, or an average of 200 fascist forces per municipality. They include the entire 74th IB, the 85th IB, the 76th IB and Special Forces Battalion, the 416th and 417th Public Safety Management Companies and three and a half battalions of CAFGU under the 59th IB. This is aside from forces of the Philippine National Police assigned to the various towns of SQ-BP.

The presence of these fascist forces are a major disruption in the normal course of the masses’ lives. They impose martial rule. They utilize their so-called “people-centered” tactics under Oplan Bayanihan but commit wanton violations of human rights.

Squad-size groups of armed soldiers comprising “peace and development teams” stay for long periods in villages. For up to six months, they live like fattened pigs in peasants’ houses in over 50 barrios, spending their days getting drunk, gambling and texting.They also use barangay centers and other public structures are bases. They are a bane to the masses’ livelihood. 

National Democratic Front of the Philippines-Mindanao: Remove all impediments to a just peace!

An impediment to a just peace: The Philippine government has armed warlords to protect foreign monopoly businesses and the ruling class, as well as to suppress the people's opposition. These warlords have been pampered by the government to such an extent that they kill with impunity, as did the Ampatuan warlords in the brutal massacre of 58 civilians, including lawyers and journalists, on 23 November 2009 in Mindanao (above).

From http://www.philippinerevolution.net

Jorge “Ka Oris” Madlos, Spokesperson, National Democratic Front of the Philippines-Mindanao

November 28, 2010

“This vicious systemic exploitation and oppression, which has compelled the Filipino people to rise in revolution, is the root of un-peace. Therefore, true sovereignty from imperialist domination and the attainment of social justice are pre-requisites for a just and lasting peace for the whole country.”

The NDFP-Mindanao is one with all peace advocates and peace-loving Filipino people in the pursuit of a just and lasting peace. We are aware of the call for peace of advocates through the Mindanao Week of Peace. It is, however, imperative to thoroughly understand the nature and context of the social conflict that breed un-peace.

Almost four centuries of Spanish rule and six decades of US tutelage fettered the Philippines to feudal and semi-feudal exploitation. Filipino peasants have been deprived of land; workers, reduced to cheap labour force; and our natural resources and environment, plundered and ravaged. The country became a dumping market for overpriced goods, and a forward base for imperialist hegemony in the Asia-Pacific.

Since the bogus independence of 1946, puppet governments were beholden to US imperialist economic and political interests. Particularly in Mindanao, the Moro warlord ruling elite connived with US imperialists to grab and turn their ancestral lands into export crop production at the expense of both the Moro and non-Moro peasants.

Philippines: New People’s Army releases prisoner of war, demands freedom for all political prisoners

Map of Mindanao in the southern Philippines. The boxed area is where the Moro population is concentrated. As you can see from the inset map, the Philippines occupies a strategic location for US war planning aimed at countering the increasing projection of military power in Asia by the Chinese imperialists.

 

[Some background to this press release and the revolutionary movement in the Philippines: The New People’s Army is the military arm of the Communist Party of the Philippines, which has over 100 guerilla fronts in all of the 11 major islands of the Philippines. The CPP/NPA has established People’s Democratic Governments in many of these fronts.  The Compostela Valley guerilla zone mentioned in this press release is an area in southeast Mindanao, one of the two largest islands in the Philippines. The Moro people are the oppressed Muslim people who live in large parts of Mindanao and the islands south of Mindanao. The AFP is the Armed Forces of the Philippines, which conducts brutal military operations against the NPA and its popular base of support according to US counter-insurgency military doctrine. The AFP receives hundreds of millions of dollars in US military aid annually, conducts regular “joint exercises” with US marines and naval forces, and receives training from US Special Forces units who operate out of a US military base in Zamboanga, Mindanao.

After the US imperialists opened a “second front in the war against terrorism” in the Philippines in 2002, they inserted US forces into the Moro areas of the Philippines in the name of fighting against the Abu-Sayyaf, a small fundamentalist Islamic group that the CIA had armed and supported to fight against Soviet imperialist forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The real targets of the US military forces were the CPP/NPA guerilla fronts  in Mindanao and a Moro organization fighting for independence, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. In order to stop the growth of the CPP/NPA and the MILF, the Arroyo regime and now the Aquino government have ordered the AFP to coordinate its counter-insurgency operations with the US military base at Zamboanga in spite of the Constitution’s prohibition on foreign military bases on Philippines soil.–Frontlines ed]

Rigoberto F. Sanchez, Spokesperson, Merardo Arce Command, Southern Mindanao Regional Operational Command, New People’s Army

From Philippine Revolution (www.philippinerevolution.com),  28 November 2010

The Merardo Arce Command-Southern Mindanao Regional Operations Command of the New People’s Army has ordered the release of Cpl. Daiem Amsali Hadjaie of the 25th Infantry Battalion of the 10th Infantry Division-Armed Forces of the Philippines (Serial No. 813144) after 12 days of captivity as prisoner of war of the Conrado Heredia Command-Front 20 Operations Command-NPA.

The CHC-NPA custodial unit undertakes POW Cpl. Hadjaie’s safe and orderly release today, 28 November, in the guerilla territory in Compostela Valley Province.

The order to release Cpl. Hadjaie is an exercise of the revolutionary forces’ own political authority and based on humanitarian grounds. This is consistent with the revolutionary movement’s long-standing policy of humane and lenient treatment of POWs and its serious adherence to the NDFP [National Democratic Front of the Philippines] Declaration of Undertaking to Apply the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and Protocol 2 of 1977.

Philippines: New ‘terrorist scares’ timed to build support for increased US military intervention

US marines in southern Mindanao allegedly tracking down "terrorists"

 

New wave of “Terror-Scare” an old US imperialist ploy to intensify military intervention for US military basing and economic interest

Jorge “Ka Oris” Madlos 
Spokesperson, NDFP-Mindanao
, 16 November 2010

Open opposition, both locally and abroad, to the US war of aggression is meted out with fascist brutality, such as arrests and prosecution, and even extra-judicial killings. In the US in fact, political activists have been subpoenaed and even arrested by the FBI to silence political groups opposed to imperialist wars.

Hence, the National Democratic Front of the Philippines in Mindanao (NDFP-Mindanao) calls on the Filipino people to expose and oppose whatever machinations the US imperialism carries out to sustain its presence here.

There has been a series of “terror-scare” spreading in the country of late. The National Democratic Front of the Philippines in Mindanao (NDFP-Mindanao) views this chain of events along the following the lines:

1. The United States, being in the throes of a deep recession and trapped in the quagmire of wars of aggression in the Middle East, is looking up to the Philippines as its second front to secure its geo-politics in the Asia-Pacific, protect its economic interest and unhampered US military basing in the country. It had to install a more reliable ally — Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III – through a pre-programmed election and drum up a new wave of terror to justify its intensified military intervention.

1. Reminiscent of its old tactic that led to the terror events in the Philippines after the 9/11 attacks, this scheme is to justify the increasing presence of US troops in the country, and more aggressively launch the US counter insurgency strategy. Recently, some three thousand US soldiers have arrived to participate in joint military trainings in Luzon called CARAT and Phiblex, obvously, in blatant violation of our sovereignty. Hacienda Luisita of the Cojuangco-Aquino clan has even been targeted as the venue for these military exercises.

Inter-imperialist rivalry in Asia heats up between US and China

Obama and Hu Jintao make nice for public consumption

 

[This article provides a useful overview of the current state of economic, political and military contention between the US and China in Asia. However, it does not not identify China as an imperialist power in its own right, and it one-sidely portrays the US imperialists as “encircling” China. This makes it impossible to understand the capitalist/imperialist nature of China’s growing economic investments in Asia, as well as China’s development of military ties with Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. This not a “defensive” reaction to pressure from US imperialism, but is a calculated strategy of a newly emerged imperialist power that is trying to break into the US’ traditional spheres of influence in Asia, and elsewhere in the world.–Frontlines ed]

World Socialist Web Site, 13 November 2010

US diplomatic offensive tightens strategic encirclement of China

Washington’s aggressive diplomatic campaign in Asia over the past two weeks has amounted, in the words of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to “a full court press” against China, with the western Pacific and the Indian Ocean emerging as potential future theatres of war.

President Barack Obama’s visits to India, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan, and Clinton’s trips to Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and Australia, sought to either strengthen existing alliances or create new partnerships for a US-led strategic encirclement of China.

Obama fervently courted India, China’s regional nuclear-armed rival. He urged New Delhi to become a “world power” and backed its bid to become a UN Security Council permanent member. Clinton twice reiterated that Washington could invoke the US-Japan Security Treaty to militarily support Japan against China in the conflict over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands in the East China Sea. Vietnam announced it was ready to hire out its strategic Cam Ranh Bay port in the South China Sea “to naval ships from all countries”—with Washington the most likely client. Canberra agreed to provide greater US access to its military facilities, especially those in northern Australia.

Philippines: US corporations gobbling up farmers’ land in Mindanao

Banana farming in Mindanao

http://www.allvoices.com

Gerry Albert Corpuz

MANILA-The island wide leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP)-led National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) in Mindanao assailed American corporations engaged in agribusiness and production of export crops of gobbling up agricultural lands in the second largest island in the country at the expense of Filipino land tillers.

In a press statement sent to various foreign and local media based in Manila, a copy of which was also sent to www,allvoices.com, NDFP-Mindanao spokesperson Jorge Madlos said Philippine President Benigno Simeon Aquino III has opened the island’s vast expanse of land for agribusiness, plantations, destructive logging and large-scalee mining operations that led to perpetual and intensifying land grabbing across the island.

Madlos said the unbridled land grabbing by US and other foreign companies resulted in the displacement of countless peasants and peasant-workers. “It is no surprise that the US imperialist anointed Aquino as the president in a pre-programmed automated election,” the NDFP-Mindanao official said.

In Southern Mindanao, Madlos revealed capitalist plantations owned by AJMR Sumitumo and Dole, two of the largest in agri-business, are currently expanding operations, rapidly gobbling up land, in collusion with local big landlords Floriendo, Soriano, Dizon, etc., to the very detriment of thousands of peasants.

Philippines: Scrap the 1944 Leyte landing commemoration for fostering the historical lie of “liberation” by the US

US imperialism reconquers the Philippines in 1944

October 20, 2010

The National Democratic Front-Eastern Visayas today said the October 20 yearly commemoration of the landing of US troops in Leyte in 1944 should be ended. “No nation can be genuinely sovereign when it accepts the myth of liberation by another nation,” said NDF-EV spokesperson Fr. Santiago Salas. “The Leyte Landing commemoration celebrates the invasion and reoccupation of the Philippines by US imperialist troops from Japanese imperialist troops. This is not liberation at all but the imposition of a foreign power on the sovereign will of the people. Since 1944, the US has cultivated such colonial mentality supporting its continuing interests and interference in the Philippines.”

Fr. Salas added Eastern Visayas remains one of the poorest regions in the country because of unequal relations between the Philippines and the US. “While posturing as liberator and friend, the US in reality dominates the Philippines in the economy, politics, culture and military. The Philippine economy is tied to imperialist globalization, through whose policies the US and other rich countries extract superprofits from neocolonies that are kept underdeveloped, backward-agricultural and pre-industrial.

“The Philippine government is a servant to US patronage and foreign policy. Culture in the Philippines is also heavily influenced by the US that keeps it colonial, feudal and anti-people. The Philippine military meanwhile relies not only on weapons from the US, but also on indoctrination such as the US Counterinsurgency Guide, and is thus used to suppress the people’s patriotic and democratic aspirations.”

US military presence in the Philippines under fire from various quarters

Nuns lead march against US troops in the Philippines

Asia Times, October 19, 2010

Filipinos aim to give US army the boot

Al Labita

MANILA – Some 3,000 United States Marines are currently in the Philippines for joint training exercises with their Filipino counterparts amid mounting opposition calls to scrap a controversial bilateral military pact.

Held in key parts of Luzon, the country’s largest island, the two-week maneuvers are meant to enhance the “inter-operability” between the armed forces of the allies as part of a Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA).

The training sorties, code-named Carat and Phiblex, also seek to bolster the Philippines’ territorial defenses, including its claims to part of the Spratly Islands, now the focus of an intensifying row between Washington and Beijing, the latter insisting on its historic rights over the potentially oil and mineral-rich islands.

Despite the VFA’s strategic importance in the wake of conflicting territorial claims over the strategic islands, Manila’s opposition groups still want the decade-old deal scrapped for legal and nationalistic reasons.

Opposition lawmakers in both houses of the Philippine Congress filed a joint resolution calling for the immediate abrogation of the VFA. The call is in sharp contrast to newly elected President Benigno Aquino’s position, which favors only a review or fine-tuning of the agreement.

History of US armed intervention in the Philippines

American soldiers carry out orders to kill all men and boys over the age of 10 on the island of Samar during the Philippine-American war

Ang Bayan, Special Issue, September 20, 2010

Armed intervention in the Philippines was massive and brutal as the US colonized the country in 1899. The US poured and directly unleashed its military forces in counterguerrilla operations against the revolutionary forces fighting foreign occupation. It was one of the most violent of all of the US’ wars of aggression.

More than one million Filipinos were killed from 1899 up to the early years of the 20th century. The US tried to assuage the people’s widespread and intense anger against armed suppression through the succeeding “pacification” campaign and spread of pro-US culture. The combination of killings and sugar-coated bullets formed the first US COIN [counter-insurgency] program in the Philippines.

Since the establishment of the neocolonial republic in 1946, the US counterrevolutionary war in the Philippines has been enforced through puppet governments. US officials and troops have strongly intervened in military campaigns of suppression by training, supervising and providing advice to AFP officers and designing, monitoring and outrightly directing COIN plans and campaigns.

Lt. Col Edward Lansdale became the first implementor of the US counterguerrilla war in the Philippines, using the Joint US Military Assistance Group (JUSMAG) in the later part of the 1940s until his transfer to Vietnam in 1953. A former member of the OSS (now the Central Intelligence Agency), Lansdale served as the closest adviser of Ramon Magsaysay who was then Quirino’s Defense Secretary before succeeding him as the new puppet president. The operation against the HMB (Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan) pushed by Lansdale in the local puppet armed forces and dubbed the “Black War” was marked by the killing of suspected guerrillas and their supporters, and the conduct of the most brutal psywar operations against the masses.

An Analysis of the US Counterinsurgency Guide 2009

US Special Forces training Philippine army

Ang Bayan, Special Issue, September 20, 2010

US Counterinsurgency Guide 2009: Guide to imperialist intervention and aggression and counterrevolutionary war

Executive Committee-Central Committee,
 Communist Party of the Philippines

The US COIN Guide was issued by the US government in January 2009. It presents US imperialism’s current official doctrine in fighting revolutionary armed struggle in colonial and semicolonial countries.

It is allegedly the product of summed-up experiences in implementing “counterinsurgency” in various parts of the globe for the past 40 years and was the result of collaborative efforts of nine US government agencies and/or offices led by the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, Department of State.

The agencies involved in writing the US COIN Guide 2009 are the Department of State, Department of Defense, Department of Justice, Department of The Treasury, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Agriculture, Department of Transportation, Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the US Agency for International Development.

Through the document, the US government speaks as a sole superpower and self-appointed international policeman. It unabashedly presents the various types and levels of interference and intervention, which are undertaken with or without the permission of the targeted subject of ‘assistance’ or client government, in the name of fighting “insurgency.”

US imperialism estimates that it is armed revolutions that pose major and growing threats to the US’ international power in the 21st century. With the crash of the international capitalist system in the Long Depression since 2008, the US anticipates the explosion of widespread people’s dissent, armed revolutions and upheavals. US planners also anticipate only a remote possibility that the US will be embroiled in a thoroughly conventional war against other governments in the immediate future.

US Role in Philippine Counter-insurgency Operations

Nuns lead march against US troops in the Philippines

By BENJIE OLIVEROS Bulatlat.com

September 26, 2010

In a speech during a Peace and Security forum held at the Mandarin Hotel last April 22, 2010, then presidential candidate Benigno Aquino III outlined his National Security Policy, which he said focuses on four key elements:

Governance – “The government must be present and accountable to its citizens especially those living in the poorest and most remote areas.”

(An effective political strategy focuses on strengthening the government’s capability and capacity to respond—and be seen to be responding—to the needs of its people.)

Delivery of basic services – “To alleviate the plight of innocent civilians caught in the conflict, we must renew government programs that build access roads, school buildings for basic and adult education, provide potable water and sanitation facilities, basic health care, electricity, assist in shelter reconstruction, and provide temporary livelihood interventions.”

Economic Reconstruction and Sustainable Development – the national government, in partnership with international donor organizations, must assist the new ARMM regional government in building a capable bureaucracy with streamlined and transparent procedures to increase the region’s absorptive capacity for development projects that will come its way.

Philippines: US road building grant aimed at stepping up counter-inusrgency operations

MCC grant for Samar is funding for war in line with the US Counter-insurgency Guide

September 29, 2010

http://www.philippinerevolution.net

The National Democratic Front-Eastern Visayas today described the $434 million granted by the US to the Aquino government as “war funds” in line with the US Counter-insurgency Guide. Of the grant facilitated by the Millenium Challenge Corporation headed by US State Secretary Hillary Clinton, $214.4 million will go to the rehabilitation of the Samar Road while the rest are earmarked for other construction projects and improvement of tax collection.

But according to NDF-EV spokesperson Fr. Santiago Salas, “The MCC grant is another addition to the long history of US aggression and intervention in Samar, dating back to the 1901 Balangiga Uprising we commemorated last Sept. 28. It is really US assistance for the Aquino government’s counter-insurgency program in lieu of Oplan Bantay Laya, where the whole island of Samar remains a priority area. Such a program is copied from the 2009 US Counter-insurgency Guide, which comprehensively pushes “counter-insurgency” by emphasizing massive psywar propaganda in tandem with brute military force.”

Fr. Salas noted that no fundamental changes are being undertaken by the Aquino government, while it actively hews to US political and economic interests. “President Benigno Aquino III is no different from Arroyo and other predecessors in being a puppet of US imperialism. It is even laughable for the MCC to give the grant as a gesture of support for Aquino’s supposed anti-corruption.

But not even a hundred days into his office, the people can see through Aquino’s emperor’s new clothes into his own corruption, puppetry and fascism. He has neglected bringing Gloria Arroyo to account for massive corruption and human rights violations. His government is riddled with cronyism through the Kamag-anak Inc. and Kaklase Inc. He is beholden to the interests of big landlords, big business, and US imperialism. He has not resumed peace talks with the NDFP but seems inclined to all-out war coupled with cosmetic reforms.”