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Effigy of Benigno Aquino burns Manila May 1 2014
Articles From


Philippines


Massacre in Maguindanao
Warlords, Clan Wars and Capitalist Rule in Philippines
On November 23, some 57 people including women and journalists were massacred in the province of Maguindanao on the southern Philippines island of Mindanao, as a result of a feud between two rival political clans that run neighboring states. Both are supporters of Philippine president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The horrific massacre sent shock waves through the islands. It was the biggest election-related massacre in the history of the Philippines as well as the largest number of journalists (18) killed in a single event. Ascontroversy wouldn’t die down, on December 5 Arroyo placed the province under martial law. Soldiers discovered an arms cache with enough weapons for a military brigade. It was well-known that the military armed local clan militias to back up its brutal offensive against the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). The Philippine army is accompanied in the area by a 600-soldier U.S. counterinsurgency force. The League for the Fourth International calls on the workers movement to demand the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. forces and agents from the Philippines, to oppose the martial law imposed in Maguindanao province, to demand the withdrawal of the Philippine armed forces from the contested southern areas, and to defend the Bangsamoro people and their right to self-determination. Warlords, Clan Wars and Capitalist Rule in Philippines (December 2009)
(Pilipino) Warlord, Clan Wars at Kapitalistang Paghahari sa Pilipinas (Disyembre 2009)
 Mobilize Workers’ Action to Defend Bangsamoro Peoples’ Struggle!
Drive Out All U.S. Imperialist Troops and Agencies!
Philippine Government Launches New War on Muslim Groups
War officially came to southern Philippines again as the government of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo unilaterally put an end to eleven years of negotiations with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) September 3. A month early the government abruptly broke off talks with the MILF on the eve of signing an autonomy pact. There are numerous reports of U.S. Special Forces accompanying Philippines Army units on their deadly sweeps in the Bangsamoro (land of the Moro people) region. More than 100 people have been killed so far and half a million refugees have fled from the fighting. Bourgeois liberals and the petty-bourgeois left lamely call on the government to resume the “peace process,” which in any case was only intended to wear down the insurgents. Revolutionaries instead seek to mobilize Philippine workers to drive out all U.S. forces, whatever their legal status; to force the withdrawal of the AFP from the contested southern areas; and to defend the Bangsamoro people and their right to self-determination. Philippine Government Launches New War on Muslim Groups  (13 September 2008)

Philippines Crackdown: Fight Arroyo with Workers’ Power!
 Not Another EDSA "People's Power" Fraud, Fight for Workers Revolution!
Build the Nucleus of a Philippine Trotskyist Party!
Once again the Philippine political landscape reverberated from the noise of police banging up their shields and tanks rumbling through the streets, reminiscent of the martial law years of the 1970s. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo proclaimed a state of emergency on February 24, then lifted it a week later. But the crackdown continues as the Philippines is undergoing “with “people power” – i.e., for mass mobilization behind the civilian/military bourgeois opposition such as brought down the dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986. The League for the Fourth International warns that this is a program for defeat of the working people. The LFI calls to drive the U.S. out of Iraq and Palestine, and to sweep away the Arroyo regime with workers power. 

Not Another EDSA "People's Power" Fraud
Fight for Workers Revolution!
 Presidential Crisis in the Philippines
From the moment a government intelligence chief presented a tape containing dozens of calls from President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to election officials during the count of the 2004 vote, the Philippines has been wracked by sometmes daily anti-government demonstrations. The left is mobilizing with talk of another “People Power” uprising, yet the driving force behind this upsurge has come from elements in the armed forces and Arroyo’s rivals among the bourgeois politicians, who are every bit as rotten as the current president. This is the third time in two decades that a Philippines president may be brought down amid popular mobilization, yet the bourgeoisie has landed on top, and it threatens to do so again. The left is supplying foot soldiers for the campaign whose figurehead leader is the widow of Arroyo’s main opponent in 2004. While the Stalinist and social-democratic reformists chain the workers to their class enemy through a nationalist“popular front”, the Trotskyists fight for international socialist revolution.  Presidential Crisis in the Philippines  (31 July 2005) 

For a Revolutionary Workers Party!
Arroyo Impeachment Dead, “People Power”, Pop Front Goes On
 Impeachment Dead, People Power Pop Front Goes On (6 September 2005)


Over a Dozen Hacienda Luisita Strikers and Children Killed
Massacre of Sugar Plantation Workers in the Philippines
In the afternoon of November 16, Filipino police and army units carried out a brutal massacre of striking sugar plantation workers at Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac province north of Manila. Some 14 people were reported killed, over 200 injured and 133 arrested. It was the worst slaughter of Filipino workers in recent years. The reformist Stalinists and social democrats with their competing popular fronts call on the Philippine Congress, that capitalist den of corruption, for an “independent and impartial investigation” of the imperialists. In contrast, Trotskyists call to mobilize the Filipino working class in solidarity strike action, from the sugar plantations of Negros to Metro Manila.  Massacre of Sugar Plantation Workers in the Philippines (7 December 2004)  

(Pilipino) Matapos ang Hacienda Luisita Masaker  (5 Disyembro 2004) 

WORKERS: STRIKE AGAINST THE WAR!
When Filipino worker Angelo dela Cruz was kidnapped in Iraq and held hostage, there were numerous demonstrations in the Philippines demanding that the government withdraw its troops from Iraq. When President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo agreed to pull out the Philippines contingent, securing the release of dela Cruz, the government launched a flood of media propaganda claiming to defend the interests of Filipino workers. What was needed was for workers to undertake strike action against the Iraq war, the Arroyo regime’s anti-worker economic policies and the joint U.S.-AFP (Armed Forces of Philippines) offensive against rebels in the south.  Workers: Strike Against the War! (26 July 2004)

(Pilipino) Mga manggagawa: Mag-strike laban sa digmaan! (5 Disyembro 2004)

U.S./Army Candidate Arroyo Leads, 120 Killed
 Philippines Elections: Bread and Circuses, Minus the Bread
On May 10, voters in the Philippines trooped to the polls in a “democratic” ritual that supposedly picks the president and legislators who are to govern the country. After the show biz hoopla, “exit polls” and “quick counts” proclaimed incumbent president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo the winner. Meanwhile, more than 120 have been killed in election violence, many of them leftists gunned down by police, paramilitary and military assassins. Arroyo has unreservedly supported Washington’s terrorist “war on terror,” bringing more than 1,200 U.S. military “advisors” to the Philippines on a “training” mission as well as dispatching a squad of troops to Iraq along with several thousand Filipino contract workers on U.S. army bases. Various left groups participated in the elections through “progressive” party lists, all of them amounting to miniature popular fronts which tied the workers to one or another bourgeois politicians. The Rebolusyonaryong Grupo ng mga Komunista (RGK) issued a call on the Filipino working masses not to support any of the bourgeois slates in these counterinsurgency elections, but to fight instead to defeat the imperialist war, from Iraq and Afghanistan to Southeast Asia, and to forge the nucleus of a revolutionary workers party. Philippine Elections: Bread and Circuses, Minus the Bread (May 2004) 

Filipino Workers:
For Class Protest Against Visit of Imperialist Chief!
Defeat U.S.-Arroyo-AFP War on Moro Peoples!
Defeat the Colonial Occupiers of Iraq!
The recent visit of U.S. imperialist president George W. Bush to the Philippines was met with demonstrations by virtually the entire Filipino left. While thousands came into the streets to protest the warmonger, the marches were dominated by popular-front politics, seeking an alliance with the corrupt bourgeois opposition. In contrast, the Revolutionary Communist Group (RGK) called in a leaflet for Filipino workers to mobilize their class power against the imperial visit, the colonial occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and the increasing intervention of U.S. imperialism in the Philippines and in South East Asia. The RGK also called to defend North Korea, China, Vietnam and Cuba against imperialist threats.

(English) Filipino workers: For class protest against visit ofimperialist chief   (13 October 2003)  
(Pilipino)  Manggagawang Pilipino: Para sa mga Maka-Uring Protesta Laban sa Pagbisita ng Imperyalistang Pinuno!  (13 October 2003)

Soap Opera“Coup Attempt” in the Philippines
Perplexities of the July 27 Incident  
On July 27, some 200 officers and soldiers of the Philippine armed forces took over a luxury hotel in downtown Manila. The bourgeois press treated this as a coup attempt and mutiny, although the mutineers made no attempt to move on the government of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Because they wore armbands with the symbol of the bourgeois revolutionaries who fought against the U.S. colonial invaders in 1898, much of the left came out in support of the mutiny. Yet the nationalist-posturing officers were complaining that the corruption of the army tops was undercutting the war on leftist and Muslim insurgents. The Revolutionary Communist Group in the Philippines warns that the “mutineers” are first and foremost anti-Communist and anti-Moro. The Stalinists and social democrats are so wedded to popular-front class collaboration that they even ally with such bonapartist military hardliners. The RGK insists that the road to victory of the working class is through the Trotskyist program of permanent revolution – the program of the Russian October Revolution of 1917.

(English) Perplexities of the July 27 Incident  (20 September 2003) 
(Pilipino) Ang mga alituhan sa Insidente ng Hulyo 27  20 Setyembre 2003)

The Class War In Southeast Asia
 Oppressed Peoples, Deformed Workers States Under the Imperialist Gun
After the destruction of Iraq by the number one terrorist in the whole world, United States imperialism, and the eventual carving up of the country by companies that are close to the gangster Bush and his cronies, the U.S. is now focusing its attention on Southeast and East Asia. From Aceh and Irian Jaya (West Papua) in Indonesia, to Mindanao in the Philippines, to North Korea and China, the working class and the different peoples in this region are facing a long and bloody war of aggression. The the Revolutionary Communist Group (RGK) of the Philippines the League for the Fourth International unconditionally defends China, North Korea and all the remaining deformed workers states from imperialist strangulation, as well as defending the numerous oppressed peoples and nationalities from attacks by the local bourgeois states in Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia and the Philippines. This document of the RGK analyzes the national question and the strategy for proletarian revolution in the region. The Class War in Southeast Asia (September 2003)
 
Break From The Popular Front of the Fake Left!
For Class War Centered on Proletarian Actions Against U.S./British Imperialist Occupation of Iraq and Aggression by U.S. and Philippine Bourgeoisie Against the Working People! 
Declaration of the Rebolusyonaryong Grupo ng mga Komunista (Philippines) 
he Rebolusyonaryong Grupo ng mga Komunista, along with the League for the Fourth International/Internationalist Group, calls on the working class in the Philippines and the whole world to combat the imperialist occupation of Iraq by the U.S. and Britain and the imperialist aggression of U.S. military troops in the Philippines. A genuine revolutionary party of the working class must be built patterned on the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Trotsky – that led the victory of the first workers state created through workers revolution in 1917. Such a party will fight consistently to ensure that the struggle of the class and the working masses is directed not only against the imperialist war but also in leading the working class in the struggle to break from all variants of “popular fronts,” a struggle for political independence and for workers revolution and the seizure of political power from the bourgeoisie.  May Day statement of Philippine RGK  (30 April 2003) 

(pilipino) Bumaklas sa popular na prente ng Pekeng Kaliwa!!  (30 Abril 2003) 

Defeat U.S. Imperialism! Defend Iraq!
Defeat the Aggression of U.S. Imperialism and the Local Bourgeoisie on the Working Class and the Moro People in the Philippines!
(Combat Imperialist War With Class War Through Proletarian Actions!)
Declaration of the Rebolusyonaryong Grupo ng mga Komunista (Philippines) on the War on Iraq
Once again, U.S. imperialism has launched a war of aggression which will use its arsenal of powerful weapons against Iraq. At the same time, U.S. troops and Philippine troops have started military operations in the Philippines as the “second front” of the “global war against terror.” We print here the March 24 statement on the Iraq war by the Revolutionary Communist Group (RGK) in the Philippines, which sympathizes with the League for the Fourth International. The RGK calls for the defeat of the imperialist war of aggression and for defense of Iraq as well as for the defeat of the U.S./Philippine army operations in Mindanao and in other parts of the Philippines, and fights for recognition of the right to independence of the Moro people. The RGK points out that the bourgeois “anti-war” politics of “popular fronts” only lead to defeat for the working people, as occurred in the “people’s power” movements in 1986 and 2001. This underlines the need to fight the imperialist war through mobilization of the proletariat on a revolutionary class program, and the urgent necessity of building a revolutionary party of the working class.   Statement of Philippine RGK on the War on Iraq  (24 March 2003) 

(pilipino) Pahayag ng Rebolusyonaryong Grupo ng mga Komunista hinggil sa digmaan sa Iraq  (24 Marso 2003) 
To contact the League for the Fourth International or its sections, send an e-mail to: internationalistgroup@msn.com 

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