On Admiral Timothy Keating’s threat to escalate US military intervention

By Professor JOSE MARIA SISON
Chief Political Consultant
National Democratic Front of the Philippines

Far worse human rights violations can be expected to follow from the statements of US Pacific Forces commander Admiral Timothy Keating that the US is going to tighten its “anti-terror military cooperation” with the Arroyo regime and is willing to escalate the long-running US military intervention in the Philippines in order to fight the New People’s Army (NPA) led by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) upon the request of the Arroyo regime.

Admiral Keating’s statements appear to be coordinated with attempts of the Arroyo regime to use the so-called Human Security Act (Anti-Terror Law) to intimidate the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), further escalate human rights violations and pressure the NDFP towards capitulation in the guise of a ceasefire agreement. In violation of The Hague Joint Declaration, the national security adviser Norberto Gonzales has shamelessly set such kind of ceasefire as precondition to the resumption of formal talks in the peace negotiations.

My estimate is that the Filipino people and the revolutionary forces will become more determined than ever before to wage the national democratic revolution through people’s war and that they are not at all cowed by the actual atrocities and threats that have been unleashed against them by the US and the Arroyo puppet regime. In their most recent pronouncements, the CPP and NPA have expressed readiness to fight every degree of military intervention and aggression by US imperialism.

At the same time, the NDFP has consistently made clear that it is willing to resume the formal talks in peace negotiations after certain prejudicial questions are answered satisfactorily and that ceasefire is possible upon the forging of a 10-point concise agreement for an immediate just peace proposed by the NDFP since several years ago through Speaker Jose de Venecia.

The prejudicial questions that need to be resolved first of all include the gross and systematic human rights violations, the murder and abduction of NDFP consultants in the peace negotiations, the “terrorist” listing of the CPP, NPA and the NDFP chief political consultant and the misappropriation of funds for the indemnification of the victims of human rights violations under the Marcos regime.

The ten points in the aforesaid concise agreement for an immediate just peace are clear principles to guide the forging of comprehensive agreements on socio-economic and on political reforms. But the bloodthirsty elements in the Cabinet Oversight Committee on Internal Security (chiefly executive secretary Eduardo Ermita and national security adviser Norberto Gonzales) have frenziedly engaged in gross and systematic human rights violations in a vain attempt to terrorize and pacify the revolutionary movement and compel the NDFP to capitulate.

Further military actions and further threats from the US are futile. Everyone knows that the collaboration between US imperialism and the Marcos fascist dictatorship failed to destroy the revolutionary movement but succeeded in pushing its growth and advance. Since 2002, the US and the Arroyo regime have exposed the limits of what they can do by failing to completely subdue the minuscule Abu Sayyaf bandit group. The US is sinking in the quagmires of its own making in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bush himself is floundering in Washington because of his wars of aggression, abuse and misuse of public resources and other impeachable crimes.

Further atrocities and further threats from the Arroyo regime are also futile. The excessive local and foreign borrowing to conjure the illusion of economic growth and misuse of huge public funds to rig the local and congressional elections will come crashing down on the regime. The crisis of the world capitalist system is worsening and is aggravating the crisis of the local ruling system.

In their publications on www.philippinerevolution.net, the revolutionary forces have made clear that they will frustrate the scheme of the Arroyo regime to auction off the mineral wealth, land and other natural resources of the country and that they will target the worst of the foreign predators, human rights violators and plunderers. The broad masses of the people are so fed up with the impositions of the US imperialists and the puppetry of the Arroyo regime that they are intensifying more vigorously than ever before the struggle for national liberation and democracy. ###

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