Tungkol sa NPA at Kung Bakit Kinailangang Atakin ang THPAL-SUMITOMO na Minahan

Interview with Prof. Jose Maria Sison, Chief Political Consultant, NDFP Panel in Peace Negotiations with GPH

By Kenji Matsuura
Reporter, Daily Manila Shimbun
December 23, 2011

This is the Daily Manila Shimbun, Japanese newspaper. My name is Kenji Matsuura, Japanese reporter. I would like to ask you about the NPA and THPAL-Sumitomo in Surigao del Norte.

I went to Claver Surigao del Norte from October 4 to 6 and I saw the destroyed environment and low-wage workers in that place. The wages of mining workers I interviewed were about P250 a day. The residents told me that they could not send their children to school because of poverty.

But I still have further questions. I wish to know more. Would you answer the following questions?

Answer: Yes. I will answer your questions as much as I can on the basis of the knowledge that I have as the chief political consultant of the NDF in peace negotiations with the Manila-based reactionary government (GPH).

1.Why was THPAL-Sumitomo attacked by the NPA? Of course I have already read the NDF-Northeast Mindanao statement of October 4. But I wish to know more.

Answer: I think that the October 4 statement of NDF is quite adequate and authoritative in giving the reasons for the NPA punitive action against THPAL-Sumitomo. This huge Tag-anito High-Pressure Acid Leaching Plant (THPAL), owned chiefly by the Sumitomo Mining Corporation, collaborates with the Nickel Asia Corporation which digs up and destroys extensive areas. The rapid extraction and exportation of mineral ores constitute imperialist plunder and deprive the Philippines of future industrial development.

The THPAL is extremely harmful to the health and livelihood of the indigenous people and more people further downstream. It destroys the environment, agriculture and other means of livelihood. It uses massive
quantities of sulfuric acid, which is highly toxic to the people and the environment. It also uses a coal-fired plant that spews out tons upon tons of highly toxic fumes into the atmosphere. It processes millions of
tons of low-grade nickel ore from different mines in four provinces of Caraga, while the high grade nickel ore is immediately exported.

The indiscriminate mining operations are aggravating the deforestation of Mindanao and resulting in massive soil erosion, river siltation and poisoning of the fields. They contribute greatly to the flash floods that are currently devastating large areas of Mindanao, including the death and disappearance of so many people, the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people and the destruction of homes, social infrastructure, agriculture and other means of livelihood.

The mining operations employ only a few local people who are contracted in a series of short-term employment and receive extremely low wages. They extract huge amounts of mineral ore worth many billions of dollars and yet pay only a few million pesos to the reactionary government. The main beneficiaries are the imperialist countries and monopoly firms, the big compradors and the corrupt bureaucrats. After the plunder of the environment, the people are left in more widespread and deeper misery and are deprived of a future in industrial development.

Photo from http://no2mininginpalawan.com/2011/04/08/nickel-asia_corporation-nac-manuel-b-zamora-jr-chairman-have-reached-an-agreement/

2. Is the attack on the THPAL-Sumitomo unrelated to revolutionary taxation?

Answer: The highest levels of leadership in the Communist Party of the Philippines and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines have publicly made clear that logging and mining for export are totally banned and that they are therefore beyond the scope of taxation by the people’s revolutionary government. Thus, NPA offensives are being carried out to dismantle or destroy the mining operations of imperialist and big comprador firms, especially those most destructive to the environment. You can confirm my observation from the most recent public declarations of the CPP and NDFP.

3.Does NPA receive revolutionary tax in general?

Answer: Since the beginning of the revolutionary movement, the NPA has been the tax enforcement agency of the people’s revolutionary government. The tax collected by the NPA and other tax collection agents is for the purpose of financing mainly the economic and social programs of the revolutionary movement (including production, land reform, health care, education and cultural activities) and secondarily for administration and defense.

4.Why do residents or the local people join NPA?

Answer: The residents or local people join the NPA because they regard it as their own army, defending them against the reactionary government and its military and police forces and against the foreign and domestic exploiters, organizing and mobilizing the people to defend their own rights and interests and assisting them in every possible way. The best sons and daughters of the people join the NPA because they consider it as the main weapon of the people for carrying out the new democratic revolution through protracted people’s war.

5.How do NPA recruit residents for the revolutionary mass movement and for the NPA in particular?

Answer: First, the NPA does social investigation in order to apply the general line of people’s democratic revolution on the concrete local conditions of the people. Second, it conducts grievance meetings for the people to express themselves against the oppressors and exploiters. Third, it builds the local organs of political power and the mass organizations of peasants, workers, youth, women, children and cultural activists. Fourth, it recruits the best sons and daughters of the people for the full-time units of the NPA as well trains as its reserve and auxiliary forces the people’s militia and the self-defense units of the mass organizations.

6.What do NPA do usually everyday?

Answer: The NPA engages in the politico-military training of its own full-time units, the people’s militia and the self-defense units. It engages in mass work, especially building the local organs of political power and the mass organizations of various types. It undertakes production for its own needs and for the needs of others. It carries out health work, educational and cultural activities for the people. It discovers and creates the conditions for launching tactical offensives against its enemy in order to get more arms and build more NPA units.

7.How many NPA members are in the Philippines now?

Answer: The revolutionary leadership and the NPA national operational command do not issue figures about the number of Red fighters. But many people try to extrapolate figures from the publicly known number of guerrilla fronts, which is 120, by multiplying this with 50 to 120 Red fighters, depending on the estimated level of development of the
guerrilla front.

Add caption

Thus, guesstimates have ranged from a minimum of 6000 to a maximum of 14,400.

Certainly, the reactionary armed forces and police are wrong in claiming that they have chopped down the NPA from 25,000 in 1986 to only 4,000 in 2011. In fact, the automatic rifle strength of the NPA was only 6,100 in 1986. But of course, in the past and at present, the strength of the full-time NPA units has been augmented by tens of thousands in the people’s miliitia and hundreds of thousands in the self-defense units of the mass organizations.

8.How many NPA members are in Surigao del Norte now?

Answer: I do not know the exact number. They keep on increasing. Everytime the military and police forces of their enemy unleash campaigns of military suppression, with such signboards as “peace and development operations” under Oplan Bayanihan, the NPA commands and units of Surigao del Norte and the whole Caraga region seize the initiative by flexibly using guerrilla tactics and launch their own tactical offensives to annihilate the enemy and increase their weapons.

9.Are NPA members in Surigao del Norte a lot, compared to other provinces?

Answer: Based on their well-known tactical offensives and victories, I estimate that the NPA Red commanders and fighters in Surigao del Norte are relatively big in number and are a major part of the NPA on a nationwide scale. The scale of operations against the three big mining companies last October indicates the strength of the NPA in the province.

But of course the armed strength of the NPA is also augmented by the people’s militia, self-defense units and the people in general.###

 (Reposted with permission from Mr. Joma Sison)

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Source:


Sison, Jose Maria. ABOUT THE NEW PEOPLE’S ARMY AND THPAL-SUMITOMO. http://www.josemariasison.org/?p=9281

Additional Photo credit:

http://www.ipsdi.org/?m=201004

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Condemning the 'Indefinite Detention & Torture' NDAA Law

by Jose Maria Sison

Chairperson
International League of Peoples’ Struggle

Photo from AFP  / Karen Bleier via RT.com

WE, the International League of Peoples’ Struggle, condemn US President Barack Obama for signing into law last December 31 the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), with its so-called Homeland Battlefield provisions, which allow the US military to arrest and detain indefinitely US citizens without due process.

This reprehensible anti-democratic law is a further step in the fascisation of the US ruling system. It further develops the legal infrastructure for fascism, as earlier laid down by the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 in apparent reaction to 9/11. The US monopoly bourgeoisie and its chief political agents, from Bush to Obama, have generated the anti-terrorist hysteria to justify imperialist plunder and war and the suppression of civil liberties in the US and abroad.

Once more the dictum is proven that no country is free that oppresses other countries and peoples. The US monopoly bourgeoisie is driven to stifle the basic rights and freedoms of the American people in order to suppress their growing protests and demands against the escalating rapacity and cruelty of the capitalist system in crisis and to allow imperialist plunder and wars of aggression to run rampant with impunity.

The US has maliciously used the nearly 3000 killed in the 9-11 attacks as pretext for the imperialist wars of aggression since 2001 and in the process caused the violent death of thousands of its own troops and hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths in Afghanistan, at least 1.5 million in Iraq and more than 100,000 in Libya. Thus, 9-11 has been compared to the Reichstag fire, especially because of the long-time links of the CIA and the Al Qaeda masterminds.

The NDAA signed into law by Obama provides the hefty amount of USD 662 billion for the US military. It also pushes strong sanctions against Iran and its Central Bank , particularly for impeding oil exports and payments, under the pretext of hampering the nuclear research program of Iran. In fact, the sanctions aim to make war provocations as part of a US-Israel scheme to overthrow regimes, like Syria and Iran, which are staunch supporters of the just cause of the Palestinian people.

In view of the relentless worsening crisis of the US and world capitalist system and the fascisation of the US ruling system, we the ILPS anticipate greater troubles ahead in terms of imperialist plunder and war and the further rise of state terrorism on a global scale. We therefore urge the peoples of the world to raise the level of their fighting unity and militancy along the anti-imperialist and democratic line and struggle ever more vigorously for greater freedom, democracy, development, social justice and world peace.###

(Reprinted with permission from Prof. Joma Sison)

Source:

Sison, Joma. ILPS CONDEMNS LAW AUTHORIZING US MILITARY TO ARREST AND DETAIN CIVILIANS WITHOUT DUE PROCESS. l3 January 2012. http://www.josemariasison.org/?p=9379


Image credits:

RT.com
http://www.extremumspiritum.com/images/2012/01/rip_bill_rights.jpg


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RT.com news about the anti-Bill-of-Rights National Defense Authorization Act or NDAA in the imperialist Bald Eagle nation....



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Ika-200 Taon ng Kapanganakan ni MELCHORA AQUINO o "TANDANG SORA"

Updated January 6, 2010


BICENTENNIAL/Ika-200 Taon ng Kapanganakan ni MELCHORA AQUINO, ang "Ina ng Katipunan."

Sa Biyernes, Enero 6, 2012 na ang ika-200 taon ng kapanganakan ng ating bayaning si Melchora Aquino, kilala rin bilang "TANDANG SORA."

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Ililipat mula Himlayang Pilipino ang labi ni Melchora Aquino papunta sa lugar ng kanyang kapanganakan sa Banlat Road sa Tandang Sora, Quezon City. Ang mga seremonya na maguumpisa sa Enero 5 ay bahagi ng Ika-200 Taong Paggunita sa Kapanganakan ng bayani. Ang 2012 ay deklaradong Taon ni Tandang Sora sa Siyudad ng Quezon.

Sa Enero 5 ay dadalhin muna sa Quezon City Hall ang kanyang mga labi sa isang funeral procession. Kinabukasan, Enero 6, sa mismo kapanganakan, ay magkakaroon ng ikalawang funeral procession kung saan ilalagak na sa permanenteng hantugan ang mga labi ng matandang bayani sa Tandang Sora Shrine.

Brief Biography:

On August 29, 1896, on the day Katipuneros started the general uprising of the Himagsikan against the colonial Spanish Government, Melchora Aquino is arrested by the Guardia Civil for giving aid to the Filipino revolutionaries--risking her life giving shelter and food to the Katipuneros. Tandang Sora, the Grand Old Lady of the Katipunan, was incarcerated at the Bilibid Prisons and later deported to Guam.

Who is Tandang Sora? Excepts from the article of  artist and former National Historical Commission researcher Tony Donato:

Si “Tandang Sora"...ay ipinanganak sa maranyang pamilya ng magsasaka na sina Juan Aquino at Valentina de Aquino, noong Enero 6, 1812, sa barrio Banlat, Caloocan, Rizal (na ngayon ay Balintawak). Melchora, sa kaniya’y ipinagalan, ugma sa araw ng kaniyang kapanganakan, isa sa mga tatlong haring (Melchor, Gaspar at Baltazar) naghandog parangal sa pagsilang ni Hesus Kristo.

May katangiang ganda si Melchora at kaya naman siya ay laging napipiling maging Reyna Elena pag sapit nang Santacruzan. Kay ganda rin ng kaniyang tinig tuloy laging naiimbitahang umawit sa mga “pabasa” pag sapit ng mahal na araw, ng “Pasyong Mahal”. Kaya naman kay daming kalalakihang naakit at lumigaw sa dalaga, at sa wakas ang nakabihag ng kaniyang puso ay si Fulgencio Ramos na naging isang “cabeza de barangay”. Sila’y nagkaroon ng anim na supling: Juan, Simon, Estefania, Juana, Romualdo at Saturnina. Maagang binawian ng buhay ang kabiyak ni Melchora, at sapilitang ginampanan niya ang maging ama at ina ng kaniyang mga anak. Siya rin ang nagpatuloy sa pamamahala nang taniman na naiwan ng kaniyang kabiyak.

Isang araw, 23 ng Agosto, 1896, mga Katipunerong sugatan, gutom, pagod sa pakikidigma, bigla na lang kumatok sa kaniyang pintuan at humingi ng tulong sa pamumuno ni Andres Bonifacio. Kaniya namang pinatuloy, ginamot ang mga sugatan, pinakain at pinagpalipas nang gabi sa kaniyang tahanan. Kinaumagahan kaniyang pinagkalooban pa ang mga Katipunero nang 100 caban na bigas, 10 kalabaw, mga gamot, damit at ano-ano pang mga pangagailangan. Patuloy ang pagdalaw sa kaniya ng mga Katipunero at patuloy din ang kaniyang walang sawang pagtulong...

Sa pakiusap ni Bonifacio, si Tandang Sora kasama ang kaniyang mga anak ay nagsipagtago sa Novaliches sa dahilang pagkalat nang balitang pagtulong niya ng puspusan, patuloy na pagkubli sa bukirin niya, paggagamot sa sugatan at maysakit, na mga Katipunero. Agosto 29, 1869, sa inaasahang pangyayari, siya ay natuntunan at nadakip ng mga “Guardia Civil” sa Pasong Putik, Novaliches. Sa bahay ng “cabesa de barangay” siya ay pansamantalang piniit. Kinabukasan siya ay nilipat sa piitan ng Bilibid, Maynila at dito’y siya ay pinahirapan at ininteroga upang mabatid ng mga Kastila ang pinagkukutahan nila Bonifacio at Katipunan. Gaano man ang pagpapahirap at pagwalang galang sa kaniyang pagkatao ay hindi niya pinagkanulo si Bonifacio at ang ginagalang niyang Katipunan. Nang magsawa na ang mga Kastila sa pagpapahirap at walang makuhang impormasyon kay Tandang Sora, sa kautusan ni Gobernador Heneral Ramon Blanco, ang matandang Sora kasama ang maraming rebolusiyonariyong Pilipino ay pinatapon sa Agana, Guam.

Pinagkunan: Sino ang Nakakatanda kay Tandang Sora?

Gaano kabait si Tandang Sora at paano siya pumanaw sa mundong ito? Ayon sa website ng Tagalog Lang:

Kung si Gat Bonifacio ay nabubuhay at makapagsásalitâ ng náúukol kay tandáng Sora, disin ay nakábasa tayo ng isáng magandáng halimbawà sa kanyáng iuulat na dîsapalà ay pawang papuri sa babaing itó na siyáng tunay na "Iná ng mga Katipunan."

Ang mga salitáng "kumain ka na ba kapatid" at isáng ngitíng namamalayláy sa kanyáng mga labì ay tila nákikinitá ko pa hanggang ngayón. Ang mga salitáng yaón ay siyá niyáng bati at panalubong sa waláng patláng na mga katipunang sa maghapon halos at sa loób ng mahigit na dalawáng buwán ay kanyáng kinailangang parang mga tunay na anák.

Tinawag sa sinapupunan ni Bathalà niyaóng iká 2 ng Marzo ng taóng 1919 [sa panahon ng imperyalistang Amerikano] sa gulang na isáng daan at pitóng taón.

Ang kanyáng bankáy ay iniwi ng mga "Labí ng Hímagsíkan" na siyáng nangasiwà sa paghahatíd sa kanyáng hulíng táhanan."

 Pinagkunan: Melchora Aquino (Tandang Sora)

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Details of the Bicentennial celebration according to the Quezon City website:

In commemoration of the bicentennial year of her birth, Melchora "Tandang Sora" Aquino's remains will be officially transferred to the Tandang Sora shrine at Banlat Road.

On January 5 [2012], Tandang Sora's remains will be exhumed and placed in a flag-draped casket that will be carried by a horse-drawn carriage during a funeral procession from the Himlayang Pilipino to Quezon City Hall.

Military and police personnel will provide escort assistance during the funeral procession.

At QC Hall, there will be a funeral ceremony where people will have the opportunity to offer their final respects to Tandang Sora, who has been recognized for her exceptional heroic contributions in the struggle for Philippine Independence and Liberation despite her advanced age.

"City hall officials will be joined by descendants of Tandang Sora, especially officers and members of the "Mga Apo ni Melchora (Tandang Sora) Aquino Association Inc., in welcoming the heroine's remains.

An overnight vigil will also be held at QC Hall hosted by the cultural and tourism affairs office, office for senior citizens affairs, scholarship and youth development program, general services department and the Liga ng mga Barangay.

On January 6 [2012], the 200th birthday of Tandang Sora, a memorial mass in honor of heroine will be held at the QC Hall before her remains will be finally transferred to the Tandang Sora shrine for re-interment.

Tandang Sora's remains will also be carried by a horse-drawn carriage during a funeral procession, this time, from QC Hall to the Tandang Sora shrine.

His Excellency President Benigno S. Aquino III will be the guest honor and speaker of the re-interment ceremonies at the Tandang Sora shrine. Mayor Herbert Bautista, Vice Mayor Joy Belmonte and Quezon City government officials will be on hand for the ceremonies.

These activities are being done by the Quezon city government in cooperation with the National historical Commission of the Philippines.

The year 2012 has also been declared as Tandang Sora Year by the QC government through Ordinance No. SP-2092, S-2011.

Source: http://www.quezoncity.gov.ph/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=515%3Atandang-sora-bicentennial&catid=69&Itemid=366

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Iba pang mga Batis:

http://mb.com.ph/node/332366/tandang-

http://www.nhi.gov.ph/index.php?option=com_today_in_history&th_days=29&th_month=8&Itemid=1&thAction=thDetailView&th_id=1243

http://www.nhi.gov.ph/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=658&Itemid=3

Raw photo credits:
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQLz8sQUsoeNnlOJsYk9my7FFtIxDdelBC9iStV9spkMGvZ9OhyphenhyphencJEKy315pzmdJj2C0OnThr_6NVJaEXNIJudA-3boibqmYK16UdwibXcpXsiS3w7qzybQRPGvd59G-OBcBeKvObb2QBi/s1600/melchora+aquino.jpg

http://www.quezoncity.gov.ph/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=515:tandang-sora-bicentennial&catid=69&Itemid=366



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