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WHICH SHALL COME AHEAD?

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By Jose Maria Sison

Which shall come ahead?
The blazing of forests,
The thawing of icebergs,
The rise of oceans,
The drowning of cities,
The parching of the land,
The whimpering death?

Which shall come ahead?
Sudden fright at the big burst,
Mushrooms in the sky,
Blinding light in a trice,
Before the endless night
Under the seamless fog,
The freezing of the land?

Which shall come ahead?
The endless rule and lure of greed,
The cycles of boom and bust,
The captive flow of blood and sweat,
The ruin of the greenscape,
Or the breaking of chains
To end myths of the endless?

Which shall come ahead?
The rise of the human spirit,
The liberation of the oppressed,
To smite the vile sources
Of greed, wars and plunder
To end the absurd choice
Of calamity to doom all humankind.

 

ALIN ANG MAUUNA?

Alin ang mauuna?
Ang pagliyab ng mga gubat,
Ang paglusaw ng mga yelong bundok,
Ang pag-ahon ng mga karagatan
Ang paglunod ng mga lungsod,
Ang pagtigang ng kalupaan.
Ang maungol na kamatayan?

Alin ang mauuna?
Biglang takot sa pagsambulat,
Mga kabute sa kalangitan,
Saglit ng makabulag na liwanag,
Bago ang gabing walang hanggan
Sa ilalim ng walang siwang na ulap,
Ang pagyelo ng kalupaan?

Alin ang mauuna?
Laging paghari at tukso ng kasakiman,
Mga siklo ng paglobo at pagsabog,
Ang binihag na daloy ng dugo at pawis,
Ang pagwasak sa luntiang tanawin,
O ang paglagot sa mga tanikala,
Nang wakasan ang mga mitong walang hanggan?

Alin ang mauuna?
Ang pagtayog ng makataong diwa,
Ang paglaya ng mga inaapi,
Upang bigwasan ang mga imbing bukal
Ng kasakiman, digmaan at pandarambong
Nang wakasan ang balighong pagpili
Ng kalamidad na tatapos sa sangkatauhan.

             —Utrecht, October 16, 2018

Duterte ouster more likely than CPP’s defeat, Sison says

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Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founder Jose Maria Sison laughed off President Rodrigo Duterte’s claim that the revolutionary movement would be finished by the middle of next year.

Sison said he thinks Duterte is taking too much of the anti-pain drug Fentanyl, leading him to have “pipe dreams.”

“Duterte is delusional by claiming that he shall have destroyed the CPP-New People’s Army (NPA) and the entire revolutionary movement of the people by the middle of next year,” Sison said after Duterte said in a speech his government is winning the war against the rebels.

In a speech at Camp Melchor dela Cruz, headquarters of the Philippine Army’s 5th Infantry Division, in Gamu, Isabela Tuesday, September 18, Duterte claimed his government is winning the war against the revolutionary movement.

“I think, God willing, this will be over by about the second quarter of next year. Many are surrendering,” Duterte said.

Duterte commended the 5th ID for its active and relentless efforts against threat groups in Cagayan Valley.

But Sison said Duterte forgets that his government’s “campaigns of mass murder, mass intimidation, fake surrenders and fake encounters under Oplan Kapayapaan are angering the people and inciting them to íntensify their resistance.”

Sison added it is Duterte’s bankrupt and weakened government that is ready to be toppled due to corruption as well as soaring prices of basic goods and services that make him the target of the “people’s rising hatred.”

“The people consider Duterte a clown” as they “reject the traitorous, tyrannical, murderous and corrupt character of his regime,” Sison said.

The communist leader said it is more likely that Duterte would be ousted from power than that he could destroy the people´s revolutionary movement by the middle of next year. # (Raymund B. Villanueva)

LODI: ‘Imee as guest of honor degrades Cry of Pugadlawin’

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A group of artists and writers slammed the choice of Ilocos Norte Governor Maria Imelda Josefa “Imee” Marcos as guest of honor at the 122nd anniversary of the Cry of Pugadlawin in Barangay Bahay Toro Thursday, August 23.

The Let’s Organize for Democracy and Integrity (LODI) asked what was a daughter of a dictator doing in an event that supposedly celebrates the people’s heroism as when Andres Bonifacio and the Katipunan tore their “cedulas” to signal the start of country’s revolution against Spanish colonialism.

“Her presence in Pugad Lawin is a desecration of the sacred grounds where Andres Bonifacio once stood with the revolutionaries to proclaim their independence. Once more, it diminishes our collective efforts to fight for justice and emancipation from greed and avarice,” LODI said.

“She is not only the daughter of the dictator. She herself has blood in her hands,” LODI said in the statement, recalling college student Archimedes Trajano who was alleged to have been tortured and killed by Imee’s bodyguards when he dared ask her pointed questions in 1977.

LODI also said Imee is reportedly the owner of the production house that produced many a social media content debunking the people’s victory in EDSA and reducing the people’s anti fascist struggle to a Marcos vs Aquino narrative.

In her speech at the event, Governor Marcos paid homage to the revolution against Spanish colonization and the heroes that fought for freedom of the Philippines.

She also challenged the audience to look past beyond personal interests and serve the country wholeheartedly.

“Ang Pugad Lawin ay historical hindi lamang sa himagsikan kundi historical pa rin noong sunod-sunod na EDSA People Power Revolution,” Gov. Marcos said. (Pugad Lawin is historical not only because of the uprising, but historical also because of the successive EDSA People Power Revolution.)

A source told Kodao that Marcos represented President Rodrigo Duterte who could not attend as he is in Davao City for the 12th anniversary celebration of the Eastern Mindanao Command of the Armed Forces of the Philippines.

Ilocos Norte Governor Imee Marcos’ wreath laying at the Pugadlawin Shrine thursday, August 23 (Photo by QC PAISO)

Quezon City Vice Mayor Josefina “Joy” Belmonte led the anniversary rites in behalf of the city.

Belmonte was the daughter of the late Betty Go-Belmonte who was a prominent figure in the struggle against the Marcos dictatorship.

LODI accused the governor of wanting to run for a Senate seat, thus her current public visibility.

The group said the people cannot and should not allow another Marcos in the Senate.

“We urge Filipinos to remain vigilant and oppose any attempts by the family of the thieving dictator to rule the nation once more,” LODI said. # (Raymund B. Villanueva)

NDF-Panay on Antique 7: ‘Proudest to acknowledge and claim them’

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“We boast of them as among the best sons and daughters of our motherland.”–Concha Araneta

 

THE National Democratic Front in Panay (NDF-Panay) acknowledged that the seven killed in San Jose, Antique Wednesday, August 15, were their own who were “veterans and responsible cadres of the [Communist Party of the Philippines] and the revolution.”

In a statement issued a few hours after news of the massacre broke out, NDF-Panay spokesperson Concha Araneta said five of those mowed down by the military were “comrades full of ability, talent, intelligence and [were] most assiduous.”

Araneta said Felix Salditos alias Ka Dudi, Eldie Labinghisa alias Ka Elton, Karen Ceralvo alias Ka Liway, and Liezl Nadiola alias Ka Mayang were members of the CPP’s education and propaganda staff in the island who were in Antique to investigate people’s complaints.

Araneta said among the problems brought forward by the people in the province included demolition of urban poor houses, concerns of poor and small fisherfolks, the poverty of workers and sacadas, soaring prices of commodities and expenditures, among others.

She added that the two others, Jason Talibo alias Ka Bebe and Jason Sanchez, provided technical services in order to facilitate their research and study of the conditions of the most backward province in Panay.

“(U)nlike the fascist troops who conceal their casualties, we are proudest to acknowledge and claim Ka Dudi, Ipoy, Elton, Liway, Mayang, Bebe and Jason. We boast of them as among the best sons and daughters of our motherland,” Araneta said.

Araneta said the martyrs gave the ripest and most productive years of their lives to the utmost service to the people and for the advancement of the revolutionary struggle in Panay.

The seven were killed after midnight of August 15 in Barangay Atabay in what the San Jose police and the Philippine Army’s 301st Infantry Brigade Intelligence Task Group said was a 30-minute firefight.

No encounter

NDF-Panay, however, said the incident was a brutal massacre, planned and executed by the Philippine National Police and the Philippine Army.

Araneta said the seven victims were all asleep and unarmed, contrary to claims by the raiding team that a grenade, a .38 revolver, one KG-9, an M203 grenade were found at the scene that could hardly sustain a 30-minute clash if there was indeed a firefight.

She also questioned the police claim that the raiding team went to the area to serve warrants of arrest against two of the victims.

“If their intention was to serve the warrant, why execute it in the middle of the night, under cover of darkness? And to think that (they) had a hundred men deployed just to capture two personalities,” Araneta said.

Araneta also belied that the victims were members of the NPA’s taxation team or were planning to raid the San Jose police station.

Families of the victims in a press conference in Iloilo Thursday described some of them as writers, with Salditos cited as a notable painter and writer.

Maya Daniel’s last poem, posted a few minutes after they were killed by raiding police and military in San Jose, Antique.

Red poet

Sources told Kodao that Salditos was the poet and visual artist Maya Daniel.

Tributes to Daniel’s poetry in his Facebook account quickly poured, hailing him as an inspiration and thanking him for his sacrifice.

Daniel’s last update a few minutes before their deaths read, “Just posted 17 poems and visuals…Feel free to share, friends. Goodnight!”

Araneta said their martrys were smart and diligent comrades who shared their learning and knowledge to the younger generation of revolutionaries.

“They gave color, music, energy and life to revolutionary propaganda and culture for the exploited and oppressed, for genuine freedom, justice and peace,” she said. # (Raymund B. Villanueva)

Tugon sa pamanang hamon

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Alay kay Maya Daniel ng Antique 7

 

“we stand undaunted/to dark clouds/we fight and we get up/to see our bright day!”—Verse, Maya Daniel

 

Namamatay ang daigdig

Tuwing may pulang makatang pumapanaw

Tumitigil sa pag-inog, ang mundo’y

Hindi humihinga sansaglit.

 

Hindi dumadaloy ang mga ilog

Ang hangi’y hindi umiihip

Ang ulap ay ayaw lumipad

Ang dagat ay hindi dumadaluyong

Walang tumutubo sa lupa

Ang buhangin ay nalulusaw

Walang bulkang sumasabog

Ang mga bato’y nadudurog.

 

Samahan natin silang humimlay panandalian.

At sa gitna ng ating dalamhati…

 

Ating handugan ng awit ang martir

Bayaning aalayan ng bulaklak at berso

Pagpupugayan ng mga talumpati

At palakpakan ng mahaba’t masigabo.

Gawing balada ang pamanang sulatin

Ipatupad ang kanyang habilin

Sa paraang ito natin muling buhayin

Ang damdaming lugmok sa pighati.

 

‘Matapang na tumindig sa unos

Bangon! Lumaban! upang masilayan ang ating bukas.’

 

At tayong naiwan ay tutugon

Matapang na haharapin ang hamon

Atin muling painugin ang daigdig

Ipagpapatuloy ang rebolusyon.

 

                                                 –9:36 n.g.

                                                   16 Agosto 2018

                                                   Lungsod Quezon

NPA: 11 gov’t soldiers dead in Masbate ambush

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The Jose Rapsing Command of the New People’s Army (NPA) claimed 11 government soldiers were killed in the ambush it conducted Friday, August 3, at Sitio Manga, Barangay Mactan, Cawayan town in Masbate Province.

In a statement, Luz del Mar, spokesperson of the rebel army command, confirmed an earlier Philippine National Police report that three were killed on the spot but said eight more died at a hospital in Masbate City.

Three more state troopers were injured, she said, adding NPA guerrillas recovered two assault rifles and ammunition as well as documents containing valuable information from the combined Philippine Army (PA) and Civilian Auxiliary Force Geographical Unit (CAFGU) troopers.

“The fire fight lasted for 20 minutes and ended when the surviving government soldiers fled, leaving behind their dead and injured comrades,” del Mar said in Filipino.

Last Friday, the Masbate Provincial Police Office reported that soldiers of the Philippine Army detachment based in Barangay Del Carmen in Uson town were conducting combat patrol operations when they encountered NPA fighters in the area.

Del Mar said that their successful ambush was in defense of civilians who suffer human rights violations by soldiers of the PA’s 2nd Infantry Division and the 22nd CAFGU Battalion operating in the area.

She cited the case of of the four motorcycle drivers massacred on August 3, 2015 as among the atrocities allegedly committed by government soldiers in the area.# (Raymund B. Villanueva)

 

3 CAFGUs die in Masbate encounter

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Three government troopers under the 2nd Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army were killed in an encounter in Masbate Province Friday morning, a spot report from the Philippine National Police said.

The soldiers figured in a fire fight with suspected members of the New People’s Army at Barangay Mactan, Cawayan town at about 8:30 in the morning that resulted in the deaths of three Civilian Armed Force Geographical Unit auxiliary troopers, the police added.

The Masbate Provincial Police Office (MASPPO) said that soldiers of the Philippine Army detachment based in Barangay Del Carmen in Uson town were conducting combat patrol operations when they encountered NPA fighters in the area.

The MASPPO did not reveal the names of the casualties.

The PNP said they have yet to determine if the NPA also suffered casualties.

The Romulo Jallores Command of the NPA in the Bicol Region has yet to issue a statement on the incident. # (Raymund B. Villanueva)

Country’s leading art critic Alice Guillermo passes away; tributes pouring in

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Tributes are pouring in for the late University of the Philippines professor and leading art critic Alice Guillermo who passed away Sunday, July 29, due to a lingering illness.

She was 80 years old.

News of Guillermo’s death immediately circulated among academics, artists, writers and activists Sunday who held off posting announcements and tributes on their social media accounts in deference to requests by her family for some private time.

Born in January 6 1938 in Quiapo, Manila, Guillermo is survived by poet and essayist husband Gelacio and children Sofie and Ramon.

In his message of condolence, poet and fellow art critic Jose Maria Sison wrote Guillermo’s “great amount and high quality of works in the field of culture and art are outstanding and make her a brilliant icon in the national pantheon of culture heroes.”

“She and her works will live on both as significant contributions to the cumulative revolutionary tradition of art and literature and as inspirational guide to the revolutionary artists and creative writers of this and further generations,” Sison added.

Sison said Guillermo studied the entirety of Filipino artists and scrutinized the works of a wide range of Filipino artists, including Francisco Coching, E. Aguilar Cruz, Santiago Bose, Agnes Arellano, Alfredo Carmelo, Galo B. Ocampo and Julie Lluch.

“She paid the closest attention and appreciated most the artists and creative writers that may be considered as the artists of the people, especially the adherents of social realism who exposed the dire conditions and needs of the oppressed and exploited toiling masses of workers and peasants and expressed their immediate demands for national and social liberation and their vision of a brighter and better future in socialism,” he said.

UP professor Lisa Ito for her part expressed grief over Guillermo’s passing who she considers a “beloved professor.”

“Thank you for teaching how words should be wielded with perceptive precision and a sense of purpose for the people,” Ito wrote of Gullermo on her Facebook account.

“Pinakamataas na pagpupugay kay kasama’t kagurong Alice Guillermo,” former UP College of Mass Communication dean Rolando Tolentino wrote on his Facebook account. (The highest tribute to comrade and fellow teacher Alice Guillermo.)

A former chairperson of the Department of Art Studies of the U.P. College of Arts and Letters, Guillermo became one of the country’s leading art critics and expert on Marxist theory of arts and literature.

In 1976, Guillermo won the Art Criticism Award of the Art Association of the Philippines and became the Centennial Honoree of the Arts (for Art Criticism) of the Cultural Center of Philippines in 1999.

 

https://www.facebook.com/ArtforAlice/videos/202536857024901/

(An endearing portrait of Alice Guillermo as narrated by her children Bomen and Sofie Guillermo, husband Gelacio, and visualized by documentary filmmaker, Jaja Arumpac.)

A prodigious author and writer, Guillermo was most famous for her books The Covert Presence, Social Realism in the Philippines, and Image to Meaning: Essays on Philippine Art and Protest/Revolutionary Art in The Philippines.

According to her profile by the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Guillermo finished bachelor of arts and bachelor of science degrees in education, magna cum laude, in 1957 at the College of Holy Ghost. She then went to UP where she obtained her master’s degree.

Awarded a scholarship by the French government, she studied at the Universite d’Aix-Marseille in France where she obtained the Certificat d’ Etudes Litteraires Generales, the Certificat de Seminaire d’Etudes Superieures, avec mention Assez Bien, with a study of the French nouveau roman, “La Modification par Michel Butor: Themes et Structures” and the Diplome de Langue et Lettres Francaises, also Assez Bien, in 1967.

She was a member of the Cultural Research Association of the Philippines and the Concerned Artists of the Philippines and was a long-time art studies department professor of the College of Arts and Letters of UP Diliman.

Guillermo wrote numerous reviews and articles for magazines like Archipelago, Observer, Who, WE Forum, Business Day, and New Progressive Review.

Her other books included Mobil Art Awards (1981), Blanco: The Blanco Family of Artists (1987), Images of Change (1988), Alfredo Carmelo: His Life and Art (1990), The National Museum Visual Arts Collection and Cebu: A Heritage of Art (1991), and Color in Philippine Life (1993).

Guillermo was one of the senior authors of the survey of Philippine sculpture, From Anito to Assemblage (1990), and authored an essay for the book, Anita Magsaysay-Ho. She also participated in the CCP’s Tuklas- Sining monograph and video series project as essayist-scriptwriter for Sining Biswal, An Essay and Documentary on Philippine Visual Arts (1989) and Sining Biswal IV, An Essay and Documentary on the American Colonial and Contemporary Traditions in Philippine Visual Arts (1993).

She was the co-author of the textbooks Art: Perception and Appreciation (1976) and Ang Sining sa Kasaysayang Pilipino (1991).

Guillermo was a recipient of a Japan Foundation Fellowship Grant in Tokyo in 1991, a UP Diamond Jubilee Assistant Professorial Chair in 1988, and was a UP ICW national fellow for the essay in 1987-1988.

Her essay, “Ang Kaisipang Filipino Batay sa Sining Biswal”, won a Palanca Award in 1979. # (Raymund B. Villanueva)

Tao of the Revolution

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by Tomas Talledo

Imperceptible, moving the unmoving ceaseless Tao of Revolution,
The immovable Law of Motion calls,
“Come Li Ta-Chao, come Azad, come Reds now…”
Victory revealed by time, space and causality when burst forth open.

War machines spurt foul operation plans,
But Ho-Chi-Minh’s pond stays Zen.
Still is the tempest waiting, murmuring,
“Nanay Walingwaling, Kumander Posa, Ka Tingting”.
Fools are they who spit at the sky.

Summons of kubing, drums, gongs call over, over and over,
I glimpse of communism in dances of Tumandok highlanders
Where moving fauna totems meld together
In such ancient brave colors of their skin apparel.

While navel gazers amongst us are blind what lays ahead,
So are bourgeois ego lickers and eaters of the dead.

                                                                              –18 July 2018

Arrest try of injured Red commander humanitarian law violation, NPA says

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The New People’s Army (NPA) in Southern Mindanao Region condemned the attempted arrest by combined military and police troopers of its commander recuperating from a major operation in a Bukidnon hospital.

The NPA said Zaldy Cañete, injured in a fierce gun battle in Barangay Kipilas, Kitaotao, Bukidnon Thursday, is obviously an hors de combat and must be given protection, respect and humanitarian medical treatment and recovery in accordance with civilized rules of warfare.

“The GRP (Government of the Republic of the Philippines) and the AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines) should not subject Cañete to further punitive action by virtue of his condition as an hors de combat,” Rigoberto Sanchez, the NPA Southern Mindanao Regional Operations Command spokesperson, in a statement said.

An hors de combat is a person who is “outside of the fight” after injury or surrender.

On May 10, 2018, the Philippine Army’s 3rd Infantry Battalion attacked Cañete’s 1st Pulang Bagani Company, resulting in a two-hour fire fight that involved aerial and ground bombing by the GRP troops.

Cañete sustained head and body injuries, including a bullet wound on his lower left ear that exited on his right frontal skull.

The NPA said eight government troopers were in turn killed.

Cañete was turned over to his relatives in the area who took him to the nearby Don Carlos District Hospital where he underwent an 11-hour brain surgery.

The injured Red fighter is suffering memory loss and loss of speech as a result of his injuries and is confined at the hospital’s intensive care unit, the NPA said.

A few hours after his operation, however, AFP, PNP and intelligence operatives arrived and attempted to serve multiple warrants of arrest against Cañete, the NPA said.

“The GRP’s hasty attempted arrest and detention of Cañete is treacherous and violates the Comprehensive Agreement on the Respect of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL), the Geneva Conventions and other generally accepted principles and standards of international humanitarian law which clearly protect injured persons of the Parties in armed conflict,” the NPA said.

“In the same manner that the NPA has treated leniently any captured personnel of the military, police and paramilitary forces as prisoners of war in faithful allegiance to the international customary law pertaining to humanitarian principles, norms and rules in armed conflicts, the GRP has no recourse but to afford Cañete the same rights and non-discriminatory protection,” it added.

Human rights group Exodus for Justice and Peace (EJP) echoed the NPA’s call, saying the attempted arrest of an hors de combat is an international humanitarian law violation.

“Any action taken by the AFP on Cañete would constitute a serious breach and will dampen the spirit of reopening the [peace] talks,” EJP said in a statement.

“[The] EJP observes that the AFP continues to ignore the efforts of the GPH panel and the people’s clamor for peace as it continues its operations and propaganda. Clearly this does not help the peace talks,” their statement added.

The EJP periodically acts as a third party facilitator to the release of GRP troops who were taken as prisoners of war by the NPA.

The EJP appeals to the government to release Cañete on humanitarian grounds and as part of an enabling environment for the resumption of the talks.

NDFP and GRP peace negotiators are reportedly engaged in a series of backchannel talks in accordance with GRP President Rodrigo Duterte’s directive to try to revive the peace negotiations he cancelled in November last year. # (Raymund B. Villanueva)