mkbk

1 - Background of BP 880  Batas Pambansa 880, known as the Public Assembly Act of 1985, was passed by the rubber-stamp Batasang Pambansa (National Assembly) during the Marcos era in order to regulate the rising tide of protests against the US-Marcos regime. Although its legality has been challenged for being against the Constitutionally-guaranteed right of freedom of speech, the Supreme Court, in the case of Bayan et al. v. Ermita (2006), upheld BP 880’s validity.  2 - Types of Rallies or Public Assemblies  The law sets forth two types of rallies or assemblies: (1) those with permits or those which do not require permits, and (2) those without a permit where a permit is required. The former category is composed of (1) rallies with permits and (2) rallies in freedom parks, where no permit is needed. An enumeration can thus be constructed as follows:  Permitted:  With permit  No permit needed (Freedom park)  No permit where a permit is needed  2.1 -...

 When the Philippines signed the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, it undertook to comply with the following under Article 2 thereof:   1. The minimum age for voluntary recruitment into the Armed Forces of the Philippines is 18 years, 𝗲𝘅𝗰𝗲𝗽𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗽𝘂𝗿𝗽𝗼𝘀𝗲𝘀 whose duration shall have the students/cadets/trainees attain the majority age at the completion date. (emphasis supplied)  It is submitted that this "declaration" insofar as it purports to clarify Article 2 is in reality a reservation of the law. Note that the word used, "except," basically admits that ROTC graduates, as part of the Reserve Force under RA 7077, 𝗮𝗿𝗲 in fact part of the armed forces as mentioned in Convention. The ICJ (in I.C.J., Advisory Opinion, 1951 I.C.J. 15) succintly put it in this way: "in a multilateral treaty, as long as the reservation does not defeat the purpose of the ...

The reports of indiscriminate bombing in the countryside only show that the AFP will stop at nothing- even spending billions of Pesos of tax money in the middle of a pandemic- to further their goal of being the sole armed power in the Philippines. And what will they do then? Continue to terrorize the countryside with their landlord allies, grow rich off oppressing the workers and farmers, and of course, degenerate into squabbling factions (like they did during the Martial Law era), all at the expense of the people, who face an encroaching Chinese fleet in their seas and imperialist American military bases on their own land.  The reactionary soliders also claim that the NPA is finished, and that "disciplined soldiers and policemen and good governance" will cause the armed struggle to collapse on its own without the need for military spending on guns, bombs, and planes.   The NPA themselves have been saying this exact same thing for years. Except that they know good governa...

Joma's MLM primer, although written some time ago, is nevertheless instructive: "foreign direct investments go mainly into extractive industries and export agriculture to divert the client-state from promoting a well-balanced developing economy into merely improving the infrastructures (road, bridges, ports and the like) for the purpose of reinforcing the unequal exchange of raw materials (and cheap outsourced labor, of course).  It is definitely not in the interest of an industrial capitalist country to allow a subservient underdeveloped economy to develop into another industrial capitalist country and another competitor."  Keeping State control of mass transit would allow transportation to develop in parallel with a program of national industrialization. Thus, instead of the goal being merely to transport agricultural products made by undrepaid tenant farmers to the ports, the products of Filipino-based heavy industries will be transported instead.  We shouldn't for...

  “Higher wages for the workers slow the growth of the economy,” according to many employers. These words are not new- in fact, these words have been spoken by both anti-union bosses and even Socialists alike. In this essay, Marx responds to a member of the latter, John Weston, and exposes this false notion.  According to this argument, called the “wage fund theory,” an increase in the worker’s wages results in an increase in necessary commodities, like meat, soap, gas, and others, thus increasing the cost for everyone. Thus, wages determine prices - a change in the amount of wages results in a change in the market value of commodities.  In a limited sense, Weston is right. When the demand for necessities goes up, it is only natural that the price goes up as well, since there are more buyers and the quantity of necessities being produced remains the same, supposing that no change has happened in a factory’s machinery, or the number of workers employed, or in inflation or ...