Topic: Philippines

Pacific Eagle appears to be a major escalation of U.S. intervention in the Philippines at a time when tensions in the Korean Peninsula are becoming explosive and when China is transitioning from a regional to a global power. And just as in Plan Colombia, there is both the regional and the internal dimension.

It is the joke of a shameless traitor who keeps on making fun of the national sovereignty of the Filipino people and Philippine territorial integrity and who is actually giving up the exclusive economic zone and extended continental shelf in the West Philippine Sea in exchange for overpriced infrastructure projects and high interest loans as well as commissions and low-level contracts for him and his shady clique.

It is unbelievable that Duterte has abdicated his role as political leader and commander-in-chief and has become the subordinate of his military subordinates on the crucial question of peace negotiations. He is probably insinuating that Lorenzana can overrule him anytime because his DND secretary takes orders directly from the US.

Duterte thinks that he can play off the US and China and get advantages for himself both ways. He gets Operation Pacific Eagle-Philippines from Trump to assure him of military assistance for killing Filipino revolutionaries and Bangsamoro rebels. And he gets from China pledges of infrastructure projects and loans for the purpose.

For mass murder, the criminal braggart Duterte is the best witness against himself on audio-visual record and in print. Before and during the rampages of mass murder under Oplan Tokhang and Oplan Double Barrel, he has made clear incitements to frame up and kill drug suspects and suppress evidence as well as clear inducements, such as presidential guarantees of pardon and impunity and rewards in cash and promotions.

Duterte boasts of being a strong man and ever ready to kill Filipinos without due process and with impunity. He is obsessed with acquiring unlimited power as a fascist dictator and intimidating the people with martial rule and highly centralized powers in a pseudo-federal form of government.

It is unfair and unjust for DND Secretary Delfin Lorenzana to accuse me of having prompted his boss Duterte to incite civilians and AFP officers and men to kill 5 NPA suspects everyday and induce them with the reward of 25,000 pesos per victim. It is entirely the responsibility of his commander-in-chief Duterte to make the incitements and inducements to murder people in violation of human rights and international humanitarian law.

Stressing the rebels were “always willing to negotiate peace” with Duterte or someone else, Sison, who is now chief political consultant of the NDFP, said: “It takes two sides in the current civil war in the Philippines to agree to negotiate with each other and arrive at comprehensive agreements on social, economic and political reforms to lay the basis of a just and lasting peace.”

He deliberately reneged on his promise to amnesty and release all political prisoners. He kept on terminating the peace negotiations (three times!) by raising to the press complaints which he should have submitted through his panel to the Joint Monitoring Committee in the same manner that the NDFP had submitted to this body bigger and more serious complaints against the continuance of AFP, PNP and CAFGU offensives during periods of ceasefire. The NDFP complaints involved AFP bombing of communities and mass murder of children, women and elderly people.

There will be a bigger civil war in the Philippines if Duterte succeeds in concentrating powers in his hands as a fascist dictator on top of an overexpensive layer of regional governments run by corrupt bureaucrats, big compradors, landlords, dynasties and warlords.