Tulad ng inaasahan, ang eleksyon 2013 ay walang pakinabang sa mamamayang Pilipino na naghahangad ng tunay na pagbabago. Ito ay naging paliksahan lamang ng mga magkakalabang paksyon ng mga naghahari sa ating bayan para sa mga pwesto, at paghahanda para sa eleksyon sa pagka-pangulo sa 2016. Walang pagkakaiba sa ‘Administrasyon’ at ‘Oposisyon’: pare-pareho silang mga partido ng mga kapitalista at panginoong may lupa, at pare-pareho ang kanilang mga plataporma at posisyon sa mga isyu ng bayan. Limitado na nga ang espasyo na ibinibigay sa paglahok ng mga progresibong organisasyon, ipinagkait pa ito sa pamamagitan ng kumbinasyon ng pandarahas, paninira, at garapalang pandaraya ng Rehimeng U.S-Aquino.

Hocus PCOS

Walang kredibilidad at puno ng anomalya ang Automated Election System (AES). Eleksyon 2010 pa lang ay nakita ito nung inilabas ng COMELEC na may mahigit 152 milyon rehistradong botante sa Pilipinas, o mahigit 50% na mas marami sa buong populasyon ng ating bansa, bagay na ikinabahala ay magagamit para mag ‘vote padding’ o dagdagan ang podo ng ilang mga kandidato.

Samantala, 16,000 na presinto (mula sa kabuuang 76,000) ay hindi nagpadala ng mga resulta ‘electronically’. Sa madaling salita, 11.2 milyon boto ang ipinadala sa lumang paraan, at maaaring pinalitan at minanipula. Sa 60,000 na natira, may 12,000 (8.4 milyon na boto) na hindi nagpadala ng kumpletong record kaya umasa ang COMELEC sa mga resultang nakasulat sa papel, bagay na madali rin manipulahin.

Sa harap ng mga ganitong anomalya, walang ginawang hakbang ang COMELEC para ayusin ang mga ito. Nagmatigas ito sa pagkakaroon ng ‘source code review’ (pagsusuri sa computer program na nagpapagana sa AES), at pumayag lamang dalawang araw bago ang eleksyon, habang kailangan ng apat o limang buwan para sa kumpletong review. Hindi rin pumayag ang COMELEC sa ‘parallel manual count’ para maikumpara sa bilang ng AES.

Lantad na lantad ang anomalya ng AES noong May 13 mismo, kung saan inilabas ng ‘transparency server’ ng COMELEC na ang #1 na Senador ay nasa mahigit 10 milyon, habang ang nabibilang na mga presinto ay nasa 1,400 lamang. Kung lahat ng mga nabilang na presinto ay nasa pinaka-mataas na posibleng laman na mga botante na 1,000, ang nabilang palang na mga boto noon ay 1.4 milyon.

Bagama’t mabilis na iniba ng mga technician ng SMARTMATIC ang bilang sa ‘transparency server’, nagbubukas ito ng bagong anomalya: walang nakakaalaam kung paano ito binabago ng SMARTMATIC. Sa madaling salita, hawak ng isang dayuhang pribadong korporasyon ang eleksyon ng Pilipinas.

Oplan 12-0

Sa harap ng matinding galit ng publiko laban sa mga trapo at political dynasty, naging matunog ang pangalan ng ilang mga kandidato na labas sa kampo ng parehong administrasyon at nagpapakilalang oposisyon. Para gawing katanggap-tangap sa publiko ang dadayaing resulta ng halalan, bumili ang Administrasyon ng mga sarbey mula sa mga kumpanyang SWS at Pulse Asia na pinapalabas na hindi mananalo ang mga nasabing kandidato.

Panggigipit sa mga Progresibo

Bago pa ang garapalang pandaraya na ginawa laban sa mga progresibong kandidato at partylist, iniipit na sila ng iba’t-ibang galamay ng Rehimeng U.S-Aquino.

Nagsampa ng gawa-gawang kaso ang COMELEC laban sa Kabataan at PISTON Partylist, dalawa sa mga pinaka-matinding kritiko ng administrasyon, at hanggang ngayon ay binabantaan sila ng diskwalipikasyon. Samantala, pinatakbo naman ang maraming mga pekeng partylist, numero uno ang garapalang sipsip kay Noynoy na Akbayan Partylist. Pinalampas rin ang mga partylist at kandidato ng administrasyon na tunay na may mga paglabag sa mga election rules.

Sa banta na makapasok sa Senado si Teddy Casiño at dumami ang mga progresibong partylist sa Kongreso, naglabas ang AFP ng sangkatutak ng paninira laban sa kanila. Sinabayan rin ito ng iba pang porma ng pananakot at pandarahas laban sa kanila.

Hindi Eleksyon ang Solusyon!

Mapait ang karanasan ng karaniwang tao sa halalang 2013: ang pagpili sa mga eleksyon sa Pilipinas ay pagpili lamang sa pagitan ng mga naghaharing grupo sa ating bayan. Ang sino mang kandidato na nagpi-presenta ng isang programa ng tunay na pagbabago, at bagkos ay makakatapak sa interes ng mga naghahari, ay pipigilan manalo sa kahit anong paraan.

Higit sa lungkot at galit na nararamdaman dahil sa garapalang manipulasyon sa halalan, hamon sa mga miyembro at taga-suporta ng mga progresibo tulad ni Casiño at ng Kabataan Partylist na higitan ang mga ito at ipagpatuloy ang pakikibaka para sa tunay na pagbabago.

Hinahamon ang mga progresibo at ang kanilang mga taga-suporta na lumahok sa pambansa demokratikong pakikibaka para sa tunay na kalayaan at demokrasya. Binibigyan-diin ng bulok na eleksyon 2013 na hindi kusang ibibigay ng 1% naghahari sa ating bayan ang pampulitikal na kapangyarihan. Ang kapangyarihan na ito ang ginagamit nila para panatiliin tayong naka-depende sa ibang bansa at nakakonsentra sa iilang kapitalista at panginoong maylupa ang yaman ng Pilipinas.

Ang mga organisadong manggagawa, magsasaka, at kabataan sa loob ng mga makabayang samahan ang isa sa mga pinaka-mahalagang sangkap para magtagumpay ang pambansa demokratikong pakikibaka. Kaya naman hinihikayat ang lahat ng mga kabataan na sumapi sa ANAKBAYAN, at tumungo sa hanay ng mga manggagawa, magsasaka, mangingisda, katutubo, maralitang taga-lungsod, atbp., para buuin ang mga sarili nilang organisasyon.

Kinakailangan rin imulat ang higit na mas malaking bilang ng mamamayan sa kabulukan ng estado at ang susi para sa tunay na pagbabago. Kaya naman sa loob, at kahit pati sa labas ng mga nasabing organisasyon, kinakailangan maglunsad ng milyon-milyong mga talakayan, gamit ang iba’t-ibang mga porma, sa mga paaralan, komunidad, pabrika, at sakahan hinggil sa mga paksa tulad ng Lipunan at Rebolusyong Pilipino at Pambansang Demokrasya.

Higit sa lahat, kailangan rin maglunsad ng mga kampanya at pakikibaka ng masa para sa kanilang mga interes, mula sa mga isyung lokal tulad ng tuition increase sa isang paaralan o demolisyon sa isang pamayanan, hanggang sa mga pambansang usapin tulad ng Visiting Forces Agreement at P125 wage increase. Bukod sa pagkakamit ng mga konkretong tagumpay para sa mamamayan, dito higit na napapatalas ang kamulatan nila hinggil sa lipunan.

Reblogged from AES Watch:

By Bernard D’Mello

You are far away from the sterile atmosphere of much of academia with its politically correct but spineless professors.  You are miles away from intellectuals who detest both the Indian state and those who live by the revolutionary ideal.  Just as well to be nowhere near those who run with the hare and hunt with the hounds — say they abhor the status quo but despise those who have embraced the political means necessary to get rid of the existing state of affairs.  You are also insulated from propaganda of the kind that is around every day on the TV news channels.  Their careful placement of the camera keeps the real, wholly different, story from reaching the public.  In sharp contrast, Sanjay Kak’s new film, Red Ant Dream, takes you right to where you’ve been denied access — the political world of “those who live by the revolutionary ideal in India”.

The darkness is illumined by the headlights of heavy vehicles, huge dumper trucks; there’s an industrial complex in the background as two fugitives (our presumption) meet.  The camera moves to the forest where the Maoist guerrillas are on the move in the darkness of night.  With the approach of dawn, they are exercising.  On a well-paved highway, security-force personnel are jogging.  Not too far away, preparations are on for a public meeting; a Hindustani revolutionary song plays in the background.  The All-India Radio (AIR) announces that operations will continue till the Maoists “halt violence and come forward for talks”.

The words of the anti-imperialist, socialist revolutionary, Bhagat Singh (in 1931) appear on screen: “Let us declare that the state of war does exist and shall exist . . . that war shall be incessantly waged.”

The Revolutionary and the Angry Poet

The camera is focussed on an armed squad of Maoist guerrillas on a trail in the forests of the erstwhile Bastar division in southern Chhattisgarh.  Their transistor radio tells them what they very well know — that “the government is more or less prepared for a long-drawn battle with the ultra-leftists”.  The camera then switches its location to Punjab.  There are portraits of Bhagat Singh, just 23 years of age when he was hanged by the British on 23 March 1931, and the Punjabi radical poet, Avtar Singh Pash, 38 when he was assassinated by religious fanatics in 1988, by a strange coincidence, on the very day that Bhagat Singh was killed.

It’s the 23rd of March 2011, the double death anniversary, and people are on the march shouting “Inquilab Zindabad” (Long live the Revolution) and “Death to Imperialism” (Samrajyawad Ka Nash Ho), the very slogans Bhagat Singh and B K Dutt — who while throwing harmless bombs in the central assembly on 8 April 1929 to “make the deaf hear” — first raised.  Revolution has “been a long time coming”, but surely it’s going to be a “long, long time before the dawn” (the lyrics of that Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young song, “Long Time Gone”, seem to cross my senses).  Unlike much of the academic discourse that has made its peace with the status quo, the degenerate, unscrupulous and callous system, Kak’s film doesn’t prevaricate — it’s in solidarity with the Revolution.

Pash, “the angry poet for a generation” who was inspired by “the armed uprising that flared briefly in the village of Naxalbari in far away Bengal”, has harsh words for the security-centric ruling classes, for whom the biggest threat is internal.  As he puts it (recited by the Punjabi revolutionary intellectual, Satnam, author of the Penguin tract, Jangalnama):

If the security of the land
calls for a life without conscience
. . .
then the security of the land
is a threat to us.

“The insurrection in Punjab”, inspired by Naxalbari, “was violently snuffed out”, but the revolutionary spirit can never be extinguished.  The camera follows a procession to Pash’s village, Talwandi Salem, in the district of Jalandhar.  At the venue there are revolutionary songs.  Elsewhere, security forces are on the move; the AIR Kolkata correspondent reminds listeners that “the Prime Minster Manmohan Singh has repeatedly pointed out that the country’s greatest threat to internal security has been from the Maoists”.  The camera is again on the Maoist guerrillas on the move.  The film’s narrator tells us how the Dandakaranya forests emerged as “the centre of what is known as the Maoist insurgency”.  As the camera follows the trail of the Maoist guerrillas, the voice of Azad speaks of established violence, the violence of the oppressors and the terror it has unleashed.  In his view, “self-preservation is possible only through [people's] war”.

No Way Out But To . . .

The guerrillas decide to rest; they are relaxed, smiling and laughing; some of them are telling the interviewer their stories — how their induction began with the coming and going of the Maoist militia, becoming a part of the Bal Sangham (children’s squad), then the Chetna Natya Manch (the cultural front), later the Gram Raksha Dal (village defence militia), and from there, to the pinnacle, with obvious pride, the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA) and participation in an ambush.  A young woman guerrilla, speaking of private vigilante and state repression, says: “I’ve seen all this with my own eyes, the rapes and beatings, jungles being combed by the police.  We realized there’s no way out but to fight, to take up a gun, and fight”.

Initially, these young guerrillas, men and women, knowing that they are on camera, seem to be making the adjustment, just like any of us would if we were placed in front of a webcam.  But very soon they seem to feel as if they are in control; that metaphorical wall between the maker of the film and the guerrillas seems to have vanished.  The latter are no longer that conscious of the camera.  Their real personalities begin to appear, and from then on one begins to get a feel of the life they are living, the way they are thinking, for they are now no longer self-conscious before the camera.  This was a very precious moment for me, as if I was in the company of those guerrillas and they were feeling comfortable giving me a glimpse of their real selves.  This is really one of the film’s high points, something very precious.  I was particularly touched by the woman’s narrative, her description of ongoing, almost daily, happenings.

The female comrades are touching, indeed, inspiring.  One can imagine what they do, and no less, alongside their male comrades — their bravery, their tenacity, and the unimaginable hardships they willingly undergo and seek to overcome.  Dandakaranya Red Culture seems to be really something that has taken root in these young women and men, shaping their thinking and their conduct.  They have left their families for a new home — they have become a part of the big revolutionary family where there’s warmth, where there’s mutual help, where there’s a spirit of sharing joy and sorrow.  If you were to ask me, I would say that all of this reflects the spirit of a people fighting for what they believe is right.  Marvellous!

The camera switches to Punjab again.  It’s 22 March 2011 and we are in Khatkar Kalan where separately the Congress Party and the Akali Party are holding rallies to commemorate, indeed, “lay claim to the dead socialist revolutionary”, Bhagat Singh.  The Congress has all along used the public memory of the revolutionary martyrs, Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev to gain political ground, yet the fact remains that it unequivocally disowned the political practice of these revolutionaries who are revered for upholding the dignity of the people of India.  Bhagat Singh really hit the nail on the head when he said — and in this, he has proved prophetic — in a communication to young political workers on 2 February 1931, at a time the Congress was contemplating a compromise with the British government:

[W]hat difference does it make to them [workers and peasants] whether Lord Reading is the head of the Indian government or Sir Purshotamdas Thakordas?  What difference for a peasant if Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru replaces Lord Irwin!

The camera quickly leaves the establishment parties’ rallies and comes to a procession and gathering of the Lok Sabhyachar Samiti (People’s Cultural Front) where there are speeches and revolutionary songs.

‘Nature Too Awaits the Revolution!’

We are then taken to the Niyamgiri Hills in Odisha in eastern India in the midst of the Save Niyamgiri Movement against the mining of bauxite over there.  ”This Vedanta [the transnational corporation, Vedanta Resources] . . . [is] going to consume this mountain . . . Niyamgiri is under attack”.  There’s a shot of the company’s industrial installation, presumably the alumina plant with a tall chimney from which a white smoke clouds the green hills.  ”[W]e’re not going to let go.  There’ll be a fight, a fierce one.  Be sure of that!”  There is an attempt to explain with the help of metaphors: “See, what they’ve [Vedanta has] done is put a pot of water to boil.  [Now] they have to put rice [the alumina] in it to cook.  [But] the rice is with us; they only have the pot.  The precious thing inside the Niyamgiri mountain — if we don’t let them have it, they’ll be in a lot of trouble. . . .”

The camera goes to the Gandhamardan Hills, also in Odisha where the company, then government owned, was forced to withdraw.  The anniversary of that people’s movement brings the adivasis of Niyamgiri to Gandhamardan.  One hears the sweet sounds of a stream as the adivasi leader Lingraj Azad of the Niyamgiri Suraksha Samiti (NSS, translated as Save Niyamgiri Committee) pleads: “Learn from history; partake of the present; anticipate the future . . . We have a slogan — If you want to live, be ready to die; at every step be ready to fight.”

The scene shifts to Lakhapadar at the crest of the Niyamgiri Hills.  We are in an adivasi hamlet . . . “that is stubbornly refusing to be displaced.  There’s no guerrilla army over here but war is still being waged”.  A determined, defiant villager, Ladda Sikaka, local leader of the NSS, speaks:

[W]e fought earlier too, with foreigners; we are not afraid of the fight.  If we die our children, our grandchildren will continue the fight.  We’ve survived the ages because Niyamgiri is there, mother-earth is there.  Only if she survives will we survive . . .  This struggle . . . it’s not about our survival, no, it’s about everybody’s survival. . . .

By the side of a road, trees are laden with dust, what with the steady stream of dumper trucks.  It is clear that the authorities and the company have little concern for the preservation of the natural and the socio-cultural environment, no concern for the rights of the people.  We might soon be witness to scarred landscapes, ruined streams, polluted air and deforestation here too — the costs of capitalist progress and development.  India’s new financial aristocracy is callous and rapacious; it’s heavy handed; it insists on operating on its own terms; it wants to make as much profit as possible, grow as rapidly as possible.  Nevertheless, what one is witnessing is not unique — it’s all about capitalism’s unsustainable appropriation of use values from nature and its unsustainable dumping of the resulting “waste” of production and consumption on to nature.  But if we have anything to learn from the morally sensible Ladda Sikaka and his ecological awareness, nature has to be regarded as a subject, like a human being, with rights that have to be respected.  In the words of the Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse: “Nature too awaits the Revolution!”

Bhumkal and the Commune

The camera takes us to Bastar once again.  The celebrations are beginning; witness the song and dance, the drums beating away in rhythm, the blowing of the horn, and drama.  It’s the Bhumkal centenary festivity being organised by the Janatam Sarkar (people’s government) of the Dandakaranya wing of the Communist Party of India (Maoist).  The legacy of Gunda Dhur, the inspirational adivasi hero who had fought against British imperialism (colonialism) as the leader of the Bhumkal Rebellion of 1910, is evoked for inspiration.  This revolt is particularly important for the Gondi Maoists, because the adverse impact of colonial land and forest administration policies on the tribal peasantry of Bastar was its proximate causes.  The zamindars and tribal headmen had then mostly collaborated with the British colonialists for they had gained from the land revenue system that the latter had instituted.  And the transfer of power in 1947 brought almost nothing in terms of recompense for the Gondi peasants.

A poster with a quote from Mao’s Little Red Book reads: “Without a People’s Army the masses will not achieve anything”.  The Maoist insurgency reclaims the history of adivasi revolt against the British and “fashions it into a weapon”.  The birds too seem to be celebrating; they’re chirping as the drums beat away.  Smoke from a chimney of the industrial complex is sucked back into it.

School of Counterinsurgency

It’s time though for the dramatic entry of a counterinsurgency expert.  A trumpet blows.  We are in the Counter-Terrorism and Jungle Warfare College (CTJWC) in Kanker, Chhattisgarh.  As the jungle warriors in the making are being trained, a forceful voice, that of Brigadier B K Ponwar, Ret’d, Director of the CTJWC commands our attention:

[O]ver here in Bastar where almost 10,000-15,000 sq. km of territory across the Indravati River [has been usurped] . . . [where] the Naxalites have been running their own kind of Jan Adalats and . . . other kinds of activity . . . land allotment . . . [they] say “the water, forest, land is ours”. . . .  [U]sage of territory becomes ownership of territory . . . [W]e have to bring order in this disorder . . . the Security Forces [have to lead] the advance because the philosophy of the Naxalites is that “power flows from the barrel of a gun”. . . .  [P]opulation is the centre of gravity.  Whichever side the population tilts [towards], that side wins.

The Brigadier obviously knows Karl von Clausewitz’s On War (1932) well.  Footage of a Maoist video of 23 October 2005 shows the destruction of homes and hearths.  Nothing is spared, not even the traditional musical instrument.  ”[T]he Salwa Judum thugs turn their fury on this too”.

The camera is again in the Counter-Terrorism College.  The jungle warriors to be are being trained in the ambush of a Maoist camp.  But footage from a government propaganda video interrupts the “ideal war” being “fought” in the “clinical neatness” of the training camp.  The video is about the Salwa Judum and it is “meant to underline the spontaneity of this counter-revolt against the Maoists”.  But unfortunately for the government, as Mahendra Karma (the founder of the vigilante group, Salwa Judum) addresses his followers, he lets the cat out of the bag when he says:

You are not alone in this movement.  [The] administration is with us, government is with us. . . . [T]he Militia people . . . if they don’t come, then burn their village. . . .  [I]f they don’t come here, then we will have to kill them.

As Karma talks of the administration, there is a shot of K R Pisda, the District Magistrate of Bijapur, sitting there.  R S Dwivedi of the Chhattisgarh Police is also there and he says:

The Naxalites . . . their strength is the people, [but] if the people are not with them, where will the Naxalites be?

Those Devils of Established Violence

The scene shifts once again to the Maoist guerrillas on the move in the forest.  I must admit, though I’m now a senior citizen, when I watch these guerrillas wandering, it gives me the feeling of freedom from a lot of millstones that tie me down and there’s something romantic about that kind of freedom.  Wish I were there with the guerrillas and the swallows!  Meanwhile comrade Azad, member of the Party’s Politburo and its spokesperson, is being interviewed.  He’s talking about Operation Green Hunt (the Indian state’s latest armed assault on the Maoist movement) and the movement’s resistance to it.  And, there’s some footage of a Maoist video of 20 October 2005 that takes you to Mankeli village in Bijapur block.  The popular Maoist leader Koval has been killed and his wife is describing what happened:

[H]e was unarmed and had my son with him.  They grabbed him too.  They beat up my husband very badly.  Then they attacked him with axes and knives, gouged his eyes out, and ripped his chest open . . . they chopped off all his limbs; the head was badly crushed. . . .

We’re back to the guerrillas being interviewed.  When they got wind of what had happened, they began to pursue those devils of established violence that had by then moved on, burning another village along their way.  ”We followed them . . . surrounded them . . . 24 cops fell in that incident . . . we left after that, taking our injured comrades with us. . . .”

The camera switches to the Chetna Kala Kendra, Barnala, Punjab where a play on the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre of 1919 is on, but soon goes back to Brigadier Ponwar and his training of dogs (assisting the jungle warriors) to fight the guerrillas.  But before long, thankfully, we’re back with the guerrillas and they’re talking about an ambush they set up in which three policemen surrendered.  ”On behalf of the Party we explained to them that you too have come from amongst the poor.  We don’t kill those who surrender. . . .”  Footage of a Maoist video shows a guerrilla interrogating two cops who had surrendered.  ”We’ll let you off . . . you’re not our enemy . . . Where were you hit?  I’m a doctor I’ll treat you. . . .”  The guerrillas do not engage in unnecessary and indiscriminate violence; for them, even the cops are not beyond redemption, this, even as they know what the counterinsurgents do when they capture one of them, for instance, the utter cruelty and callousness with which comrade Koval was killed.

‘Just Kill Him, Is That Clear?’

The camera moves back to the Bhagat Singh anniversary at Rampura Phul.  A leader of the Naujawan Bharat Sabha, Punjab is speaking: “This is not the world Bhagat Singh dreamt of . . . that freedom hasn’t arrived. . . .”  Then at the Deshbhakt Yadgar Hall in Jalandhar, Amolak of the Punjab Lok Sabhyachar Samiti blends the past with the present, Bhagat Singh and his comrades, the Ghadari comrades and the Royal Indian Navy mutiny of 1946, with the people’s resistance of today.  Pash’s “We Shall Fight” is recited by Satnam as the guerrillas are on the move, again in the forests of southern Chhattisgarh.  As they reach a village, there are greetings, the shaking of hands, Red Salutes.  In the company of the villagers, they are explaining the intricacies of a particular ambush they had executed.  Next, they are in Ongnar, a village where five residents have been killed.  The camera shifts to Brigadier Ponwar holding forth on “The Naxal Challenge”, with a PowerPoint presentation, and quoting one of the founding leaders of India’s Maoist movement, Charu Mazumdar.  But soon we hear the voice of Azad again, for the last time, taking about the victims of the so-called development process and making demands that “fall within the ambit of the Indian Constitution” but which he knows the Indian rulers will never accept.  So, in his view, armed resistance with the support of the people is the only way out.

The camera moves to a seminar hall in Delhi on 3 August 2010 where a public meeting is demanding a judicial inquiry into the assassination of Cherukuri Rajkumar, alias Azad, 58.   Satnam is speaking: “I knew that when they lay their hands on someone like him, they will not let him go”.  And, there’s Satnam again, this time reading Pash’s poem “The Constitution”:

[D]on’t read it
Its words exude the chill of death
. . . If you read this book now
you’ll become an animal –
a sleeping animal.

“A seditious poet he certainly was, Satnam adds.  What follows is an audio of a “Police Wireless”.  A cop in the field is receiving instructions from his headquarters: “[J]ust be on high alert and if any journalists come by to cover the Naxalites, just get them killed [my emphasis].  Is that clear?”

Guerrillas among the People

We are in the Niyamgiri Hills.  Water from a stream gently flows by.  The drums beat away, there’s dancing, and singing.  But Vedanta’s demand for “a million tonnes of alumina in a year, that’s an appetite that can level a mountain top in a few years”.  Guerrillas are on the move once more.  They are at the village where a memorial to the martyrs of Ongnar is set up.  People are paying their respects with flowers . . . with tears.  A female guerrilla is remembering the martyrs, their good deeds.  Onward to Punjab where Amolak is talking about Pash’s recounting of Bhagat Singh reading Lenin’s State and Revolution in his cell at the time when his hanging was due — “one revolutionary is in dialogue with another”.  Revolutionaries killed in police “encounters” (cold-blooded murders) in Punjab in 1970 are being remembered.  The voice of Gudsa Usendi, the Maoist spokesperson in Dandakaranya, is announcing a major victory of the PLGA over the police forces in Gadchiroli district.  The guerrillas and the people are dancing, celebrating into the night. . .  It’s dark . . . a torchlight is illuminating the pictures of the martyrs.  Elsewhere, Brigadier Ponwar’s jungle warfare training is in progress.  But, not to worry, the guerrillas are among the people. . . .

In Solidarity with the Revolution

There’s no resolution, so to say, at the end of the film.  One can almost recognize the loose ends.  Perhaps the way the film ended, that’s how it should have ended, for frankly, there is not going to be any near-term resolution of the major contradictions that plague Indian society.  If I were to be pinned down into deducing the politics of this film, I would no doubt say that it is in solidarity with the Revolution.  The film, when the camera is in Bastar and in the Niyamgiri Hills, brings to us the culture of vitality over there, a way of life that is rooted in nature and in the struggles of the adivasis who are closest to nature, this culture blending with that of the Maoists who have brought to the adivasis memory and dreams of “far away insurrections and revolutions — Naxalbari, China, Russia, even the Paris Commune of 1871″.  These struggles, as the film makes clear, are about survival and about creating new worlds.  From Bhagat Singh to Azad, it’s truly been a long march without end.  And, it’s going to be “a long, long time before the dawn”.

By Edel Garcellano

This summer
is a repetition:
boys with books
upraised to hide their pimples;
girls with sunglasses
perched on noses like Hepburn.
But they will not say anything
so anti-climactic, so dangerous:
they subscribe to time-worn protocol,
& pretend everything’s damned cool.
There is no need for arguments,
they destabilize novatos & systems.
Diploma is all
to gain a market hold –
Why deconstruct the world
of capitalism & recession
when all that’s needed
are wit & power dudes?
They enter the room
without expectation.
They leave it without remorse.
Which is just as well
in a country that recycles its doom.

Reblogged from STALIN'S MOUSTACHE:

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

More for my study called Saint Joseph: The Man of Steel and Religion:

In the city of Yakutsk, a sub-arctic city, major port on the Lena River, and capital of the Sakha Republic in Russia, a new statue of Stalin has been unveiled. Despite opposition from those dreadful anti-Stalinists, the local and very popular branch of the Communist Party…

Read more… 36 more words

Reblogged from :

they forgot drunks, depressives, narcissists...

Read more… 3 more words

The Roman jurists knew perfectly well what it meant to “profane:’ Sacred or religious were the things that in some way belonged to the gods. As such, they were removed from the free use and commerce of men; they could benefit neither sold nor held in lien, neither given for usufruct nor burdened by servitude. Any act that violated or transgressed this special unavailability, which reserved these things exclusively for the celestial gods (in which case they were properly called “sacred”) or for the gods of the underworld (in which case they were simply called “religious”), was sacrilegious. And if “to consecrate” (sacrare) was the term that indicated the removal of things from the sphere of human law,”to profane” meant, conversely, to return them to the free use of men… If to profane means to return to common use that which has been removed to the sphere of the sacred, the capitalist religion in its extreme phase aims at creating something absolutely unprofanable… The profanation of the unprofanable is the political task of the coming generation.

Giorgio Agamben,
Profanations

Reblogged from The Funambulist:

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Israeli settlement of Rimmonim on the road from Ramallah to Jericho

I am not quite sure to know the reasons that made me take so much time to write this article, three years after my last trip in Palestine; better late than never as one says so here it is: a majority of the photographs (see below) I took when I was there of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Read more… 549 more words

Teddy Casiño was here in Iloilo last May 1 to speak during the town fiesta opening program in Dumanggas upon the invitation of Mayor Onal Golez. He flew back to Manila the next day for a media conference with showbiz endorsers but returned to Iloilo in the afternoon to be present in the miting de avanse of Mayor Jed Mabilog’s Iloilo City slate.

That same day #TeddyDay trended on Twitter and became viral. Unfortunately, I was not able to participate in this online event organized in support of Teddy’s senatorial bid. Which is quite lame because I’m supposed to be coordinating Teddy’s volunteers and supporters here in Iloilo since March of this year.

The front line of the 5,000-strong International Labor Day march in Iloilo City last May 1, 2013.

It is 127 years after the Hay Market massacre of workers pushing for an 8-hour work day in Chicago that sparked indignation from workers all over the world and later became institutionalized as International Workers Day.

In Iloilo City, over 5,000 workers, peasants, farm workers, urban poor residents, women, youth, church people, and professionals marched in the streets to oppose the Noynoy Aquino regime’s anti-people policies and to advance the Filipino people’s democratic rights and interests.

The endeavor to make Teddy win a seat in senate is part and parcel of the struggle for higher wages, lower prices of basic goods, an end to unemployment, genuine land reform, national industrialization, and a government that genuinely serves the people.

The Philippine government has long been dominated by traditional politicians coming from political dynasties that uphold the interests of despotic landlords, big compradors, and foreign banks and corporations. This domination runs from the lowest to the highest official posts.

This is part of a social system wherein the wealth is concentrated in the hands of the domestic elite and foreign capital by exploiting and oppressing the toiling masses. It is a political setup that reinforces a rotten and unjust ruling order wherein 76% of the country’s so-called GDP growth is in the hands of the country’s 40 richest individuals.

The entry of progressive party-lists under the Makabayan Coalition in the House of Representatives in the past four elections prove the strength and broad support enjoyed by the legal mass movement for national liberation and genuine democracy.

The people’s demands for social change not only echo in the “parliament of the streets” but now also reverberate in the halls of Congress. An arena dominated by the elite few to perpetuate their power is utilized to raise the ability of the people to assert their demands.

This May 13, the progressive movement is raising the ante by winning a seat in Senate with the candidacy of Teddy Casiño.

All the previous attempts to do this from the Partido ng Bayan stint in 1987 to Satur Ocampo and Liza Maza’s try in 2010 did not gain enough momentum to secure even just one Senate seat. Although the odds are against Teddy with his campaign’s lack of resources, dearth of TV and radio ads, and no official backing from any of the major traditional parties, the possibility of making it this time around is present.

That’s me carrying a Teddy Casino placard during the Labor Day march.

Teddy’s campaign has a dedicated and creative critical mass of supporters from people’s organizations, it enjoys support from masses of the ordinary people, it benefits from the lessons of history, and it is buoyed by Teddy’s own track record as a principled and vocal mass leader and people’s legislator.

Teddy’s campaign has successfully maximized the use of social media to get around the advantage of traditional politicians and parties in terms of resources. Teddy has consistently topped online surveys and ratings.

This groundswell of support can be felt on the ground by our campaigners in both urban and rural communities here in Iloilo where he is well received because of his concrete platform for the downtrodden and his reputation as a defender of their interests.

Many who’ve seen him on a flier or poster for the first time or recall seeing him on the news also comment about being charmed by Teddy’s boyish looks.

This Thursday we will be in Kalibo, Aklan for Teddy’s miting de avanse here in Panay Island. I encourage everyone not just to vote for Teddy but to campaign for him. Dare to struggle, dare to win. It’s time to bring change in the Senate. Teddy Casiño for Senator. Number 6 on the ballot.

Nguyen Van Thieu had constructed himself a worthy Presidential Palace set in the middle of a great park in the center of Saigon, with a vast ballroom, a swimming pool, game salons, a cinema, and a complex of halls for appropriate occasions. His furnishing it with plush and rich textiles, marble, and rare woods, with polished and heavily carpeted interiors, with lacquer panels and overstuffed couches, created a mood he thought essential. His own office was a vast chamber with a throne-like chair behind a huge desk. His private apartment was installed around a lush garden set deep into the interior of this massive edifice. For all practical purposes, on the morning of April 30 the palace was the symbol of all that was left of the American effort that had begun twenty years earlier and consumed the lives and commitments, emotions and existences, of millions of people. South of Saigon, in the Mekong Delta, the remnants of the Republic of Vietnam’s armies were surrendering and disintegrating to local National Liberation Front units, sometimes several guerillas capturing hundreds of superbly equipped soldiers. At 10:15 [Duong Van] Minh broadcast a cease-fire to his own forces, urging them also to remain in their positions and asking the Communists to do the same until there was a discussion of the orderly transfer of power. It was a surrender, but scarcely an unconditional one which acknowledged the reality of the battlefield. Minh and his cabinet then repaired to Thieu’s palace and waited.

Thieu was in Taiwan; the Americans were on aircraft carriers heading toward the Philippines. As the first units of the People’s Army of Vietnam entered the city, they confronted sporadic shooting and wiped out a few pockets of resistance, and a team of three tanks went straight to the palace Thieu had built. By this time the entire nation knew the end was imminent. The radios had ceased to operate, and for several hours the city was suspended between the old order and the new. The tanks reached the place, which was undefended, and, after smashing through the huge iron grill protecting it, sped up the vast lawn to the broad stairs. A soldier with a Provisional Revolutionary Government flag ran to a balcony, euphorically waving it back and forth, and then raised it up a flagpole at about 11:30 AM. He and a comrade next searched the rooms and quickly found Minh and his cabinet seated around a table, silent. No one moved. One soldier stood guard while the other ran to find his officers. When a political cadre arrived, Minh declared, “We have been waiting for you so that we could turn over the government.” “You have nothing left to turn over,” he retorted, “You can only surrender unconditionally.” Minh immediately went to the radio station and did so.

The Vietnam War had ended.

Gabriel Kolko,
The Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the United States, and the Modern Historical Experience

Mangoes from Guimaras are celebrated as one of the sweetest in the world.

Situated between Panay and Negros in Western Visayas, the small island of Guimaras is said to possess unique soil qualities that make its mangoes luscious and sweeter.

It thus comes as no surprise for the local government of Guimaras to commemorate the island’s establishment as a province through the holding of the Manggahan Festival.

Guimaras was a sub-province of Iloilo before it was turned into a separate province last May 22, 1992. The mango fruit is called mangga in Filipino or paho in Hiligaynon which is the dominant language in Guimaras and the rest of Western Visayas.

Since its first holding in 1993, the Manggahan Festival has become an annual celebration every summer season that serves to promote the island’s burgeoning mango industry and attract tourists.

This year the festival was held last April 15-21, the last day being the peak of the festivities with a street dancing contest at the provincial capitol grounds in Jordan, Guimaras.

I went out with some friends from Iloilo last Sunday, April 21, to experience the Manggahan Festival and its brand of mango mania first hand.

We set out around seven in the morning. The port, usually bustling with people residing in Guimaras crossing over to Iloilo City for work or schooling, was busier than on normal days with a line of a few dozen forming on the ticket booth.

Many of our fellow passengers in the boat were tourists from other parts of the country as well as the typical Koreans and other foreigners who were apparently also going to the Manggahan Festival.

Near the end of the 15-minute boat ride from the Iloilo City Ortiz port to Guimaras we read a streamer hung at the side of the wharf in Jordan, Guimaras that warns against the bringing or importing any mango and the fruit’s derivative products that are not from the island.

It is good to know that the province is highly protective of its mangoes, around which has formed an industry that produces the 1995 Guinness Book of World Record’s “The World’s Sweetest Fruit.”

After setting foot on the island, we took a jeepney ride from the wharf to the staging area at the heart of Jordan’s commercial district in San Miguel where banderitas and green and yellow flags signal that we have arrived.

Along the way, we passed by stalls selling mangoes and mango-related delicacies and products, including dried mangoes, mango tart, mango jam, mango juice, mango butterscotch, among others.

But the main hub of activity is in the provincial capitol grounds where the festival’s culminating program and mango stalls are overflowing with crowds of people. The mangoes here were sold from P50 to P90 per kilo, depending on the quality and the variety.

Of course, the main highlight for our group of friends was the Mango Eat All You Can contest which ran during the entire length of the week-long Manggahan Festival.

You pay P100 to consume as many ripe mangoes, ibus rice cake, and native sara coffee as you can. You pay P90 for ripe mangoes only and P50 if you want green or unripe mangoes with salt and bagoong (fish paste). And you are then given 30 minutes to finish all the mangoes you can manage to devour.

Usually mangoes are eaten by slicing them lengthwise with a kitchen knife to produce three flat pieces. The middle slice contains the large seed while the outer slices contain the mango’s flesh which you then scoop out with a spoon.

But given the time constraints and the pressure to make the best deal out of the P100 many make a messy dash to eat each mango with their bare hands.

I myself did this but found it hard to stomach all the sweetness in one seating. I surrendered after the fifth fruit. I was full already.

But according to the organizers, one Frenchman who joined the contest ate more than 20 mangoes. They actually set aside about 10 tons of mangoes for the entire activity.

Of course, all the mango mania in the Manggahan Festival is reflective of the way “food has acquired full status as a tourist attraction.” [1] In this particular case, Guimaras is projected in the popular imagination as the destination where mangoes can be enjoyed the best.

While this has primarily been defined by an international division of labor that keeps countries like ours perpetually dependent on foreign capital and oriented towards raw product export, it nonetheless offers a potential counterpoint to the “globalization of hamburgers, the dictatorship of fast food.”[2]

Promoting the development of national industries like local mango growers in Guimaras may prove to be a potent antidote to the way global corporate fast-food chains has colonized palates by selling dishes that are practically the same everywhere in the world.

We did not eat lunch anymore after eating all those mangoes. Or rather, those mangoes served as our lunch. Still, it did not prevent us from buying more mangoes before heading home around noontime.

Apart from mangoes, Guimaras is also famous as a summer destination for its white sand beaches, picturesque nature scenes, and a quiet, rustic countryside.

All this perfectly fits the construction of the Guimaras identity around the mango fruit.

Reblogged from The Funambulist:

As I mentioned in one the most recent articles,  I was feeling odd never to have dedicated a full article to the fascinating machine invented by Franz Kafka in his short story In the Penal Colony (1919). This machine is probably the most famous torturing apparatus of the history of literature; even Le Marquis de Sade does not seem to have created such an elaborated piece of equipment (see…

Read more… 1,618 more words

Seemingly out of nowhere, motorists travelling along the Iloilo-Antique National Highway pass by a striking concrete monument in Barangay Cabanbanan, Municipality of Oton.

The signage beside the road reads: “Mag-ingat sa mandurukot. Dito dinukot ng mga militar si Nilo Arado at Maria Luisa Posa-Dominado.”

The sculpted marker consists of 3 poles that are about 3 meters tall and 50 centimetres wide. These are shaped like torches rising above the ground with the flames taking the form of faces and raised fists painted in fiery red and orange.

The sculpture stands on the spot where the two progressive leaders were abducted by alleged military agents about 8 kilometres from Iloilo City.

The faces evoke pain and rage while slogans carved on the monument echo the calls to have the desaparecidos surfaced and reunited with their relatives and comrades.

Just below the faces, the names of 202 activists abducted under the 9-year rule of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo are etched on the body of the poles which are coated in yellow paint.

Last April 12, the family, friends, and colleagues of Arado, Dominado, and other missing activists held a program beside the marker to remember their abduction in 2007.

The families, friends and colleagues of the missing activists carry this torch as a symbol of the continuing struggle for justice and freedom passed on to them by their missing loved ones.

They paid for the construction of the monument which was unveiled to the public last August 30 alongside the International Day of the Disappeared.

They also commissioned Oton-based sculptor Gregorio “Boy” Masculino to conceptualize and erect the shrine which was then completed in two weeks with the help of seven craftsmen.

An Act of Courage

For the German literary critic Walter Benjamin, artworks in the ancient and medieval eras were mainly embedded in the fabric of traditional rites.

The purpose of artistic production began to assume a different form with the advent of capitalism when artworks inevitably became commodities for exchange in the market.

The value of a work of art to a specific history and location, its authenticity which had its basis in ritual, and consequently its aura began to fade.

But artworks like the desaparecidos monument in Oton, Iloilo resist this logic of capital and instead move in the opposite direction.

It has an aura that radiates “its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.” [1]

“As an artist, I put myself in the position of the families to understand how they feel,” said Masculino, explaining his creation’s belongingness to history.

Not only is the marker firmly rooted in social reality, it also unflinchingly resists the forgetting of the missing activists and the struggles they fought for.

The erecting of the monument is an act of courage.

This must be pointed out in the context of its standing up against the reign of state terror that fully blossomed under Martial Law but failed to wither away even after the ouster of Marcos in 1986.

The marker also resists the way discourse is fashioned in such a way that the loss of some lives is recognized while the public mourning of others are discouraged.

We are now familiar with the way mass media trains its lenses on the passing away of the rich and famous or how losses of state forces are sanctified in public ceremonies and obituaries.

While victims like Arado and Dominado inevitably become reduced into mere statistics, thus reinforcing particular conceptions of what deaths are counted as worthy or undeserving of public grief.

All too often, activists victimized by state violence are regarded as eyesores that must be hidden from view and excluded from legitimate representation in spaces for public dialogue.

The sculpture goes against what cultural theorist Judith Butler points out as a “differential allocation of grief serving the aims of military violence.” [2]

Basis for Hope

Opposition to anti-people government policies that foster injustice, inequality, and poverty is neutralized through systematic and brutal campaigns of repression.

Arado was a peasant leader and the regional chairperson of the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan-Panay. Dominado was the regional spokesperson of Selda, an organization of former political detainees. She survived being thrown to prison four times under the Marcos regime.

It is not without a touch of irony that the two disappeared two decades after the fall of the dictator, after the supposed restoration of “democratic space.”

Under the Arroyo regime’s Oplan Bantay Laya 1 and 2 and the present Aquino regime’s own Oplan Bayanihan counterinsurgency programs, civilian activists are targets of state terror including extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances.

The families of the disappeared suffer all the more because they do not know if their loved ones are already dead or if they will ever come back.

The Oton marker also embodies this ambiguity.

“It serves as a permanent mark of our loss, of sorrow, of pain. But at the same time it is also a constant reminder of our continuing search for justice and truth,” said May Wan who is the eldest daughter of Maria Luisa Posa-Dominado.

The monument’s production follows the Algerian radical intellectual Frantz Fanon’s injunction “to use the past with the intention of opening the future, as an invitation to action and a basis for hope.” [3]

For in the end, not all who offered their lives for the greater cause of serving the people are remembered in monuments. Many remain nameless and faceless.

Only in the collective struggle of a people united for social justice and national liberation can the lives of the disappeared and all the victims of human rights violation be completely redeemed.

Reblogged from biblioklept:

Lurking everywhere in Under the Frangipani are the shadows of the Mozambique war of national liberation against Portuguese repression and its traumatic realities.

A genuine revolution is supposed to be waged for the people. It seeks to institute radical social changes to empower the greater majority of peasants and workers. But what if it fails to pursue its original aims after completing the seizure of power from the oppressors?

The question of what happens to guerrilla leaders who lose their ideological bearings is one of the dilemmas described in Couto’s novel. After all, the danger of mobilizing for war but without the adequate political and ideological education tends to breed a one-sided military mentality that fails to consider the political equation.

And all the worse if the struggle for national liberation takes the capitalist road after overthrowing the yoke of colonialism instead of pursuing a socialist perspective.

“Vatsome felt betrayed. He had given the best years of his life to the revolution. What was there left of that utopia?” With the idealism and enthusiasm of the revolutionary experience gone and without a thorough program for social transformation being undertaken, all that is left for Vatsome is money-making, power lust, and cynicism.

But we know all of this only by the end of the novel. Steeped in African oral tradition and deploying that folksy storytelling style familiar to all cultures, the novel is in the main about the life of Vatsome Excellency and his murder as uncovered by the investigation conducted by a police detective.

No ordinary detective spiel, the narrative is seen from a different vantage point. This point of view is that of the spirit of the dead man Ermelindo Mucanga, a martyr of the revolutionary war residing Under the Frangipani, who decides to reside in the body of the police investigator who examines the case of Vatsome’s murder.

Under the frangipani in the terrace of the former Portuguese tradepost is where the dead soul of the narrator resided. This is where we get glimpses of the soul’s past life intruding into the narrative of the present. This colonial fort turned jail for Mozambique revolutionaries turned sanotarium for the elderly after the war and of which Vatsome is director is the setting of the novel.

Of course, the spirit of Ermelindo Mucanga knows ahead that the investigator of Vatsome’s death will also die after six days. However, we learn of the details according to this marked man’s own pace.

Interspersed in the narrative are chapters that unravel the tales of the confessors, residents of the sanotarium who all claim that they killed Excellency Vatsome:

The first, Navaia, an old man-child claimed that he killed Vatsome with a knife because the director physically abused the old men performing a traditional ritual in the refuge.

The second, the old Portuguese expatriate Domingos Mourao, confessed to felling a large stone on Vatsome because the director allegedly abused his own wife Ernestina.

The third, Old Gaffer, said that he smashed Excellency’s face on the stonework and smothered him with a blanket because the director hurt the refuge’s nurse Marta.

The fourth, the “witch” Little Miss No, declared that she was the one who poisoned Excellency after the director hit her breast and raped her.

But it is in the letter of Excellency’s wife Ernestina that we actually begin to understand the seemingly senseless violence imposed by Excellency upon the old residents of the refuge, a brutality that arouses their hate and thirst for revenge:

“I was told that Vatsome showed no mercy on the field of battle, behaving just like the enemy he called devils. I listened to reports of massacres as if they had taken place in an another world.”

The testimony of the nurse Marta who at the beginning of this mystery seemed uncooperative to the investigator also sheds light to this question:

“The culprit you seek, my dear Izidine, isn’t a person. It’s war. The war’s to blame for everything. The war killed Vatsome… War creates another cycle of time. Our lives are no longer measured by years or seasons. Or by harvests, famine or floods. War establishes the cycle of flood… War swallows up the dead and devours its survivors.”

The novel clearly succeeds in subverting the conventions of the mystery genre. But like any other mystery, everything is still revealed in the end.

Nevertheless, this heavily textured novel requires effort to untangle all its threads and nuances. Under the Frangipani‘s deceptively small number of pages conceal a complexity that draws on Mozambique’s mystical world alongside its historical experience of colonization, poverty, and war. A must read.