mkbk

Contrary to the crocodile pleas of the State, it is not the government who has the right to choose whether peace should prevail in this land. It is up to the Filipino people - the peasants, workers, and students united.  The State cannot continue to hoist up "the law" above its head and claim that "this is the will of the people." Neither can they claim that these laws are "the product of man's careful and calm reflection based on sound logic and public policy." In doing so, they foist a great falsehood on the people - one that deliberately strips them of their right, which since the first men entered into relations with each other and called that a society have had - the right to wage a people's war.  What these laws, formed by the probing investigations and deliberations by the landgrabbers in the Senate and the House, and so delicately inked onto the glossy pages in between the thick covers of the Official Gazette, are, in truth and in fact, not...

 

Q: Ano ang HB 407? ‣ Ang pangalan nito ay "Batas na poprotektahan ang karapatan ng lahat ng manggagawa, organisasyon sa paggawa, at unyon laban sa panghihimasok ng amo, pampublikong otoridad, at mga ahente nila, at mga parusa sa lalabag dito."   Q: Bakit kailangan ang HB 407? ‣ Simula't sapul nang maluklok si dating Pangulong Duterte, 56 na ang bilang ng mga unyonistang pinaslang, lalo na noong "Bloody Sunday Massacre" sa Timog Katagalugan. ‣ Pinaigting din niya ang pang-haharas sa mga unyonista, lalo na sa Nexperia, Wyeth, Optodev, at marami pang iba, lalo na ng AFP, PNP, at NTF-ELCAC.     Q: Ano ang unyon? Anumang organisayon, unyon, o grupo ng empleyado, pederasyon, o pambansang unyong at kanyang mga pangkat, sa pampubliko o pambribadong sektor. Kasama rin dito ang mga ambulante, minsanang may trabaho, sarili ang amo, nagtatrabaho sa kanayunan, at mga walang tiyak na amo. Ang layunin ay para sa sama-samang pakikipagkasundo, pakikipagtulungan, pakikipagtaguyod...

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...