Here is what the commie groups Gabriela and the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) should have advised the farmers in Kidapawan when they decided to air their grievances through a rally last Friday, the 1st of April. “Let’s organise a protest and attract attention to our cause. The police will come. If they disperse us, stand your ground but don’t attempt to physically assault a police officer. Let them carry you out if necessary.”
Unfortunately, that is not what happened nor was there any evidence that such a peaceful outcome was planned by the rally organisers from the onset. Former Bayan Muna congressman Teddy Casino recounted in a tweet how “farmers retaliated by picking up stones by the road and hurling [them] at the cops.”
Even more disturbing is the possibility that some elements of the protesters were armed. In the video provided below, there seems to be evidence of shots being fired at the police. Footage between 1:01 and 1:07 of the video shows what looks like bullets hitting the ground next to firetrucks and police officers at the scene…
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One wonders, indeed, why there was a contingent of what look like police Special Action Force (SAF) troopers deployed to the scene. The inclusion of a heavily-armed and well-trained unit of the PNP could indicate that they had been prepared to face possibility of armed elements being amongst the protesting mob. Interestingly enough, GMA News Online reports that a commander of the New People’s Army (NPA), the terrorist arm of the Communist Party of the Philippines “was among those arrested after the violent dispersal of protesting farmers”. And a PNP Scene of Crime Operations (SOCO) report released today revealed evidence that some of the rallyists may have discharged firearms…
One of the dead rallyist yielded positive results during the paraffin test. The SOCO team also recovered 2 empty shells of calibre .45 at the area previously occupied by the rallyists and a deformed slug of calibre .38 at a makeshift station previously occupied by our police.
A police officer takes cover as shots are fired during efforts to disperse rallying farmers in Kidapawan.
Indeed, the SOCO report also showed that 99 PNP personnel were injured during the melee. That a PNP contingent supposedly (as many observers have insisted) far more fit, better-protected, and better-armed than the rallyists they faced would sustain such a large number of casualties says something about the ferocity of the rallyists’ assault against them.
Considering then that the rally was organised by supposedly experienced “progressive” groups like the KMU and Gabriela who, if the objective was to send a message across and not foment unrest, should have known better than to encourage rallyists to assault police officers, the violent behaviour of the rallyists could be considered quite baffling.
Heavily-armed Philippine Police officers regroup after rallying farmers are forcibly dispersed in Kidapawan.
Then again, Kidapawan City is located in North Cotabato, a recognised stronghold of the NPA and, as such, it is hardly surprising that police and army units stationed there tend to be on a high state of alert. Back in 2014, the NPA detonated a roadside bomb that injured two Philippine Army personnel in Barangay Balite, Magpet. This was shortly followed by the burning of heavy equipment of a construction company near Mt Apo. Police also reportedly tagged the NPA as the perpetrators of this crime…
About 12 heavily armed rebels arrived in Mua-an, and then poured gasoline and torched the equipment used in the construction of a road network connecting Mua-an and Barangay Ilomavis. The equipment had been parked near the village hall.
The rebels then fired their weapons and left, chanting, “We are NPA.”
Kidapawan Councilor Francis Palmones, chair of the committee on peace and order, condemned the attack and urged the police to file charges over what he described as “terrorist act.”
“They (NPA) sow terror in our city. I condemn the act and considered it as barbaric as it caused panic and fear among constituents in Barangay Mua-an,” Palmones said as he appealed to the rebels to spare the city and its people.
The NPA’s mission is to carry out that infamous “armed struggle” that has been the trademark of every communist movement around the world. Chairman Mao Tse-tung wrote about this “armed struggle” in 1939 (text formatted in boldface for emphasis)…
What is guerrilla warfare? It is the indispensable and therefore the best form of struggle for the people’s armed forces to employ over a long period in a backward country, a large semi-colonial country, in order to inflict defeats on the armed enemy and build up their own bases. So far both our political line and our Party building have been closely linked with this form of struggle. It is impossible to have a good understanding of our political line and, consequently, of our Party building in isolation from armed struggle, from guerrilla warfare. Armed struggle is an important component of our political line. For eighteen years our Party has gradually learned to wage armed struggle and has persisted in it. We have learned that without armed struggle neither the proletariat, nor the people, nor the Communist Party would have any standing at all in China and that it would be impossible for the revolution to triumph. In these years the development, consolidation and bolshevization of our Party have proceeded in the midst of revolutionary wars; without armed struggle the Communist Party would assuredly not be what it is today. Comrades throughout the Party must never forget this experience for which we have paid in blood.
Communists, it seems will always be at fundamental odds with any incumbent government. As such, they will likely only accept its absolute and complete destruction and, thus, makes any attempt on their part to participate “legitimately” in the institutionalised political processes of any incumbent government — such as its elections — plain and simple suspect.
Some people are quick to dismiss the linking to communists of leftist personalities like Casiño who are engaged in some sort of “legal” participation in legitimate Philippine politics as a decades-long “black propaganda” effort mounted by one government after another against left-leaning polticians. The question this raises, however, is quite simple: Why does the perception that leftists are linked to the NPA stubbornly persist? It seems no convincing argument to support the contrary has been put forth.
The common denominator in all this is former Congressman Saturnino “Satur” Ocampo who chairs the Bayan Muna partylist in which Casiño is a member. Notably, Satur Ocampo is a co-founder of the National Democratic Front (NDF) which is widely-believed to be one of the key front orgnisations of the CPP-NPA. According to its Wikipedia entry the NDF lists as one in its 12 point program of “national liberation and democracy” an aim to “unite the people for the task of overthrowing the semicolonial and semifeudal system through a people’s war and completing the national democratic revolution.” This of course may be interpreted in various ways, but it remains consistent with the overall Maoist ideology that Philippine communists subscribe to.
Protesters in Kidawpawan throw rocks at police officers sent to disperse them. 99 officers were reportedly injured in the melee.
The history of Philippine communists’ “legitimate participation” in mainstream Philippine politics could possibly be traced back to the rise to power of the late Corazon “Cory” Aquino, mother of current president Benigno Simeon “BS” Aquino III. A GlobalSecurity.org report suggests that the popularity of the Cory Aquino government with the people forced the NDF-CPP-NPA brass to re-evaluate its approach to “revolution”…
As a result of the world-wide known “People Power” revolution in the Philippines, the National Democratic Front (NDF) made a comprehensive analysis on the new situation in the Philippines. The new government was viewed as a fragile coalition of the right and bourgeoise liberals. However, the Aquino government has a broader power base than the Marcos regime. As such, it adopted a critical collaboration stance with the present government fielding some of its members to fill some some post in government. With this style they could penetrate the bureaucracy while waiting for the Aquino government to weaken so the NDF goal can be fulfilled.
…which brings us to the present and what looks like a cadre of “ex”-communists who appear to have dropped their AK-47s in favour of peaceful and “productive” partaking in mainstream politics.
So the question remains: Are these “leftists” in Philippine Congress really ex-communists? Or are they merely dormant ones for the time being — waiting for the right moment to strike in the same manner that “sleepers” blend into the mainstream of a society they ultimately plan to destroy someday?
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
?Can I also talk about ENDO here as another context to Kidapawan?
“ENDO” has been the most effective Union Busting Tool afforded by the Yellow governments to Management. ENDO has become a byword among workers because it is what most of them experience twice a year. It simply means end of employment contract. Labor is not afforded stability by allowing it only a six month employment contract at any one time. But, feudal lords and warlords need slaves.
ENDO is an EXTREME way to bust labor unions. But, the Yellow government is worse than a reformed whore. Many of them came from the ranks sympathetic in varying degrees to the ideologies of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong; their icons, Ninoy and Cory, being good friends to JoeMa Sison and Ka Dante of the CPP/NPA.
Some of them were labor leaders during the Martial Law years, and we know what the labor unions were then; they were not interested in the well-being of Labor, they were just interested in the collapse of the economy, and hopefully, the collapse of the Marcos government. So, there was violent and disruptive strikes left and right in the manufacturing sector most of the time.
They got their wish. Towards the end of Martial Law, the economy was in a very precarious situation. It was also the start of the mass exodus of multinational corporations. It seems now ages ago when the Philippines used to be the hub of multinationals and manufacturing in Asia. Thus, it looks so ridiculous from a historical perspective that the Yellow government is now so boastful of a program to attract said investments back as if they were not responsible for kicking them out in the first place. But, how can they? Somewhere, somehow, multinationals must still be nursing some hurt; efficient companies don’t forget so easily.
Anyway, since the Yellows are now the Establishment, they don’t want to see the unions and strikes that they used to encourage with all conviction. Like reformed whores, they tend towards the extreme, the wild swing of a pendulum towards the other side, and thus, the ENDO.
Of course, the #NeverAgain will never look at Martial Law from this angle for it makes them complicit to that era, if not the rationale. After the collapse of the Berlin Wall, nobody would want to be called a Communist, or ex-Communist, or be seen as a wacko, even if they still have a hard time purging their mind of such an ideology. They want to be seen now in the worst possible way as capitalists.
They are perpetuating a state that photocopies the Gothic ignorance and mess of a 13th, 14th, 15th century feudal Europe, minus, of course, the medieval knights and chivalry. We now have feudal lords and warlords in our LGUs and the national government.
Thus, the massacres in Mendiola, H Luisita, etc and now Kidapawan.
The yellow is the new RED my friend. We all know that his grandfather was a Japanese collaborator during World War 2 and his father, Ninoy is one of the founding members of CPP-NPA in the late 60s. But that’s strange, since communism is a pro-masses, socialist & anti-capitalist ideology, then why the Aquinos are rich, powerful & pro-capitalist family? Curiosity & lies are stranger than fiction.
Yellow is not read and has never been. During the Marcos era they just formed a yellow-red alliance to topple Marcos. In fact the Aquinos have the same neo-feudalistic attitude as the Marcos clan.
I wonder how you two (and the author of the article) are privy to all this apparently “factual, inside information” of the Reds? You could only be one of these three things:
a. an ex-commie yourself
b. paid by right-wing politicians to propagandize against the Reds
c. an ignorant poseur and contrarian
The author of the article likes fascism. In past articles he has clearly shown that.
As a Hungarian who was born and raised in a communist country I can honestly say that you are full of shit. Commie sympathizer Filipinos are just a bunch of idiots making the Philippines even a bigger failure.
Attila the Hun…speaks the Truth!!! communism is a Failed Ideology…Eastern Europe countries were freed from this stupid ideology…
And then there are those who resort to Credentialism to attack and discredit the messenger by harping on the target’s “lack of credentials” as an “indicator” that they are somehow not qualified to comment.
And while you are discussing this, the poor farmers and their families are wasting away after months and months of hunger and empty promises… but carry on! Figuring out if the protest was done to advance the Left’s sinister agenda is obviously so much more important than wondering about what could’ve and should’ve been done to help those farmers.
Maybe you, for one, should get real.
>> And while you are discussing this, the poor farmers and their families are wasting away after months and months of hunger and empty promises.
No, they’re wasting away after months of sitting on their behinds waiting for the government to fix all their problems.
It’s unlikely the protesters were actually farmers. The farmers I know are busy looking after their farms. They don’t have time for this sort of nonsense.
On the other hand, I also know plenty of bone-idle, unpleasant people from my area who would be happy to spend a day throwing rocks and blaming all their problems on others, instead of accepting the truth: they are responsible for their own misery. They’d be easily manipulated by troublemaking groups. It doesn’t matter whether you want to call them “communists”, “rebels”, or whatever. They’re just assholes.
Technically the government classes those people as farmers because they own land (which was given to them as part of CARP and is now being deforested, burned, or neglected). In no civilized country does the mere fact of owning land classify you as a farmer. In the US, for example, you’re a farmer if you derive a certain level of profit from farming. Since 70-80% of “farmers” in the Philippines are engaged in a loss-making activity, they’re not farmers.
There are four kinds of people in this country of SOBs: cretins, fools, morons, and lunatics
Cretins don’t even talk; they sort of slobber and stumble.
Fools are in great demand, especially on social occasions. They embarrass everyone but provide material for conversation.
Fools don’t claim that cats bark, but they talk about cats when everyone else is talking about dogs. They offend all the rules of conversation, and when they really offend, they’re magnificent.
Morons never do the wrong thing. They get their reasoning wrong. Like the fellow who says that all dogs are pets and all dogs bark, and cats are pets, too, therefore cats bark.
Morons will occasionally say something that’s right, but they say it for the wrong reason.
A lunatic is easily recognized. He is a moron who doesn’t know the ropes.
The moron proves his thesis; he has logic, however twisted it may be.
The lunatic on the other hand, doesn’t concern himself at all with logic; he works by short circuits. For him, everything proves everything else.
The lunatic is all idée fixe, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Commies.
There are lunatics who don’t bring up the commies, but those who do are the most insidious. At first they seem normal, then all of a sudden…
Well, get the facts about history. Marx was not a communist by himself. He was a philosopher who predicted the rise of communism. Leaders of the 19th century labor movement tried to turn his predictions into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Lenin amended the philosophy of Marx and introduced the “Party of the Working Class.” This party should take over the leadership in the revolution. Stalin brought the country under an iron fist. Mao tried to copy this. But neither of them introduced a family dynasty like the Marcos or Aquinos. And neither of them as ever attempted to archive communism. The Kims in North Korea have introduced family dynasty to a socialist system and now North Korea is a mix of socialism and feudalism.
this article takes the piss. the author got his head so far up his ass, he choked on his own bollocks!
I’m surprised that the writer referred to an old NPA attack but not the recent NPA attack that happened a night before the dispersal also in Cotabato wherein a child died and two minors are injured.
This is an NPA instigated protest (organizers are spoiling for a violent confrontation) and the real farmers are not fully aware of the plans. This trouble is to divert attention away from the NPA that killed a child and wounded two minors.
But I do agree the farmers have valid grievances and the dispersal was poorly planned. I would also raise the question, Where does the peoples right to organize and protest peacefully ends?
What are these fucking commies calling for??? Whoever sits in power, they tear down as a “tuta ng Kano”??? Who is NOT a “tuta” of the Yanks???
I’d rather be Uncle Sam’s bitch than Kim Jong-Il’s….
What kind of commie-nism do these nutjobs subscribe to??? Even the Party guys in Beijing are toning down on the Red shit just to appease all that foreign investment knocking at their door…same thing in Vietnam
The Yellow apologists seem to be spreading the line that if farmers let the Reds run them, they deserve to be shot too. Unfortunately, that’s corrupt and wrong. It’s an excuse to do unwarranted violence.
And all this goes back to what the Aquino government has always been doing which let all these things happen in the first place – Noynoying.
To tell you frankly: they are part of the “sleeper cells”, that the Aquinos, collaborated and financed. When the Philippine government, will be no longer capable. They will launch an all out armed struggle.
Actually, communism is a failed ideology. If you are not familiar, with this ideology; you can fall into it. China was backward in its communist years. Now, China became a capitalist country; and is progressive.
The same as the Soviet Union. It was not a progressive country. Until, it adopted capitalism.
Equality, which those “commies” , tell their recruits, is never possible in our Planet Earth. There will be always smarter and dumber, people than you. I don’t like rationing of basic necessities, under a communist rule.
Look at Cuba and North Korea. Both countries are ruled by communist political family dynasties. And the rulers, were “absolute rulers”…they rule like monarchies. At least, our political family dynasties, are not “absolute rulers”…
Maybe, these farmers are being used as “pawns” by these “commies, to gain sympathies
and to further their causes.
The problem here is not the ideology. It is the extremism of political ideology, that is the problem. Either, you go to the further “lEFT” or, go to the farther , “Right”…
Like religious extremism…you become a religious radical. You end up, as a Bigot or an ISIS recruit.
I was watching on YouTube an account of a certain Ka Aris of his past as a ranking NPA member. He talked about how they would take advantage of occasions like this to foment discontent among the people. The Kidapawan incident seems to jibe with his story. Government slowness in responding to the crisis made it a perfect laboratory for the communists.
But this Yellow government is caught in a quandary. After all, the Left has always been a useful ally when it comes to demonizing its all-time favorite whipping boy, Ferdinand Marcos, lionizing them as freedom fighters or human rights victims since 1986. Indeed, the movement is probably deriving encouragement from such a recognition, plus of course the prospect of collecting billions of dollars from compensation from the Marcos estate… The Yellows could not afford to alienate them now what with the prospect of losing power in the next election. Out of power, the LP tend to seek alliance with the Reds.
Oh yes, another Abnoy blunder. He obviously ordered the killings. What? Filipinos in a bloodbath in Sydney. Yup, Abnoy. You disagree? You must be a Yellowtard.
Were it not for EDSA, we could’ve been the next Singapore. Shame on you who drove Marcoses to exile. You guys are stupid starstruck ignoramuses who love to watch mind-numbing shows like Eat Bulaga and AlDub and whip yourselves during Easter. That’s why the country’s poor. That’s proven by science.
Go Marcos!
Maybe People Power works only in EDSA – where there’s “Cory magic.”
CPP should get a new name – the biggest communist party (China) runs one of the biggest, most successful capitalist enterprises; communism as an ideology is dead and using the it as a misnomer front for something else is a misleading.
They should call themselves “People Power Party” instead, and change their motif from red to yellow. They can take in PNOy as their new leader after he steps down from his post – because he’ll surely need to hide well in some remote jungle when DU30’s commandos go hunting for corrupt officials.
Right on brother!!! By that time he doesn’t need to wear yellow anymore since he will be practically all yellow – the universal colour of cowardice
Obviously this writer is very naive! His suggestions are easier said than done and obviously he has no idea what these people have been through. When you are desperate and hungry you can’t think straight. It is normal to get very ANGRY when you see the police trying to silence your voice from being heard. The problem had been raised for months but government did nothing! So if I was desperate I too would cling on to anyone ~ Communist, Gabriela, Bayan or whoever (who cares) ~ that might just give a helping hand. I myself would have brought a gun to make sure I am heard. This happens all over the world! Look what happened during the French Revolution. They were fed up and fought back and killed a lot of people. When you drive poor people to their limits and ignore their demands expect a revolution!