Many New NPA Attacks in the Philippines

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.

Updated November 3:

The NPA* has staged a wide variety of attacks all over the Philippines in the past few weeks. In addition, the AFP has gone on the offensive in Mindanao in Negros Oriental.

October 29, 8 AM: In Pantukan town, Compostela Valley Province, Mindanao, NPA guerrillas on a motorcycle shot dead a policeman as he was waiting for a bus . Later, 1 of the NPA team was shot dead and 2 more were wounded in a firefight.

Pantukan municipality in Compostela Valley Province in Southern Mindanao. The NPA have been very active here for some time now.

October 29, 10:20 AM: In Santa Teresita village, Bayugan City, Agusan del Sur Province, Mindanao, 20 NPA guerrillas raided the Jose C. Aquino rubber company here, seizing firearms and a laptop computer.

Bayugan municipality of Agusan Del Sur Province on Mindanao.

October 29: In San Jose village, Prosperidad town, Agusan del Sur Province, Mindanao, Guerrillas set up a checkpoint and stopped a civilian bus on the road, confiscating the weapons of a government soldier on the bus. My, what humanitarian rebels! They didn't even kill the guy.

Prosperidad municipality in Agusan Del Sur Province of Mindanao.

October 29: In Negros Oriental, the NPA warned biofuel corporations in SE Negros such as the Tamlang Valley Agricultural Development Corp that they would carry out punitive operations against them because they worsen the food crisis in the Philippines and cause military harassment of villagers.

Negros Occidental. This island has been practically ruined. 96% of the tropical forest here has been cut down and the rest is under continuous threat. There are many rare and endangered species on this island, some of them critically endangered. In addition to habitat loss, some critically endangered animals here face hunting pressure. An AFP offensive against the NPA is currently underway in this area, where the NPA have been building up forces for some time now.

October 26, 6:15 PM: A large NPA force dressed as Drug Enforcement agents attacked the Quezon Provincial Jail in Lucena City, Quezon Province, Luzon and freed 7 NPA prisoners. 2 policemen and 2 civilians were wounded in a shootout afterward.

The city of Lucena in Quezon Province, Luzon, near Manila. Despite the proximity to the capital of the Philippines, the NPA has a heavy presence in Quezon.

October 25, 10 AM: NPA guerrillas attacked militiamen in Barangay Luna Sur, Makilala town, Cotabato Province, Mindanao, killing 1 and wounding 4 more. They also seized 16 weapons.

Makilala municipality in Cotabato Province on Mindanao. There has been some heavy fighting in this area recently.

October 23, 5 AM: NPA guerrillas attacked government militiamen in Paradise Embac, Paquibato district, Davao City, Mindanao, killing 1 militiaman and wounding 2 more. 1 NPA guerrilla was killed in the attack.

Davao City in Davao Del Sur Province in Mindanao. This is one of the larger cities in the Philippines.

October 25, AM: The NPA attacked an AFP Special Forces outpost in Canidkid village, Montevista town, Compostela Valley Province, Mindanao, killing 1 soldier.

Montevista Province in Compostela Valley Province in Mindanao. There has been some very heavy fighting in this area lately.

October 25, 11 AM: NPA guerrillas attacked government soldiers in Barangay Olaycon, Monkayo town, Compostela Valley Province, Mindanao, while they were carrying the body of one of 8 soldiers who were killed in guerrilla attacks in the area the previous day to another town. The attack wounded 1 soldier.

Monkayo municipality in Compostela Valley Province. NPA guerrillas recently killed 8 AFP forces here.

October 24: NPA guerrillas ambushed a military truck with a roadside bomb and then strafed it with gunfire in Monkayo town, Compostela Valley Province, Mindanao, killing 7 soldiers and wounding 2 more.

October 23, 3 PM: There was a shootout between militiamen and the NPA in Barangay Hilawan, San Andres town, Catanduanes, but there were no casualties on either side.

Catanduanes is an island that is also a province. It's off the southeast coast of Luzon. This is a map of San Andres municipality in Catanduanes Province. I didn't even realize that the NPA were active here.

October 19: NPA guerrillas attacked a hacienda, Hacienda Santa Ana, in Cadiz City, Negros Occidental Province, causing 1 million pesos in damage. In the past eight months, guerrillas here have caused 30 million pesos in property damage.

Cadiz City municipality in Negros Occidental Province.

NPA guerrillas overpowered and disarmed a policeman in Balintawak village, Escalante City, Negros Occidental Province recently. A lot of times these guys just refuse to fight and hand over their weapons.

Escalante City municipality in Negros Occidental Province.

Guerrillas attacked the Globe Telecom cell phone tower in Cauayan municipality, Negros Occidental Province recently.

Cauayan municipality in Negros Occidental Province.

*This blog supports the NPA to the hilt. Our view is that system in the Philippines is such total crap that it needs to be wiped off the face of the Earth.

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Clashes Continue In the Philppines

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.

Updated October 30:

There has been very heavy fighting between the NPA and AFP lately. In addition to heavy fighting in the last two weeks of September and early October that left 19 AFP troops dead and 23 wounded, there has been an upsurge in attacks in recent days.

Monday, October 13, 4 AM: A group of 60 NPA attacked an AFP 72nd Infantry Battalion base in Kingking village, Pantukan municipality in Compostela Valley Province on Mindanao. Three hours of fighting ensued that left 2 guerrillas and 1 government militiamen dead.

Pantukan municipality in Compostela Valley Province in Southern Mindanao. The NPA have been very active here for some time now.

Monday, October 13, 6 AM: An AFP patrol came upon an NPA group of undetermined size in the Sitio Pasalilo, Mabini village in the municipality of Mulanay in Quezon Province in southern Luzon. Fighting ensued and 1 guerrilla was killed. The NPA has always been strong in Quezon.

Mulanay municipality in Quezon Province on Luzon. The NPA have been pretty active here in the past few years, but they are also active in other places in Quezon, including urban slums. This area is just southeast of Manila.

Monday, October 13, 10 AM: An NPA force attacked the AFP 60th Infantry Battalion in Palma Gil village, Talaingod municipality, Davao del Norte Province in Mindanao. 2 guerrillas were killed in the fighting.

The location of Talaingod municipality in the southern part of Mindanao, long a hotbed of NPA activity.

Monday, October 13, 2:20 PM: 7 NPA guerrillas fired on government militiamen in Sitio Likupon, Sanghay village in Mati City municipality, Davao Oriental Province on Mindanao. A 12-minute firefight followed in which one militiaman was wounded by an M203 grenade launcher fired by the NPA.

Mati City municipality in Davao Oriental in Southern Mindanao. As you can see, all of this fighting has been in the same general vicinity. They are quite active in this area too, where they have apparently linked up with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in recent times. The MILF is a very well-armed Muslim insurgency in Mindanao currently in a shaky truce with the government.

Monday, October 13: An NPA force ambushed a military truck carrying provisions to troops in Palma Gil village, Talaingod municipality, Davao del Norte in Mindanao. 2 AFP soldiers were killed in the fighting.

A photo of Talaingod municipality in Davao Norte, Mindanao. Typical Philippines tropical rainforest here. The NPA has been very active here for a very long time. They were extremely active here 17 years ago and prior and had tons of support.

That's quite a bit of fighting for this usually sleepy war. A Filipina I know from Sampaloc, Manila, told me that the NPA "is recruiting everywhere now, especially at the universities." She also said that most Filipinos who live in big cities are apathetic about the conflict since it does not effect them. They dislike both the NPA and the government but are not very passionate about either party. They are almost neutral.

This sort of pragmatic fence-sitting is very common in civil conflicts. If guerrillas can get to the point where they have the support of 30% of the population, they are doing well. In the American Revolution, 1/3 supported the colonists, 1/3 supported the British and 1/3 were neutral. And the colonists won.

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New Fighting in Peru and the Philippines

According to World War 4 Report , fighting between government troops and Shining Path guerrillas on Saturday, October 12, 2008, in Mazangaro, in Junín Department, killed one government soldier. This area is in the Vrae, the region where the Apurimac and Ene Rivers come together. It's Amazonian rain forest.

The Peruvian military has lost 16 troops along with 8 wounded in four days.

Photos of the Vrae are on this blog here.

Meanwhile, on October 7, in Sitio Kapihan, Barangay Concepcion in Valencia municipality of Bukidnon Province on Mindanao Island, the NPA detonated a roadside bomb against a military vehicle from the Army’s 29th Infantry Battalion, wounding 3 AFP soldiers. Afterward, there was a 5-minute firefight ensued between soldiers and NPA fighters from Front Committee 6.

A photo of a peasant in Valencia municipality, Bukidnon Province, Mindanao. Photo by Bobby Timonera. This could be Guatemala or Ecuador.

Things seem to be hotting up in both Peru and the Philippines lately. A Filipina friend of mine told me yesterday that the NPA are "recruiting everywhere" now, especially on university campuses. A lot of urban Filipinos are apathetic about the conflict and tend towards neutrality. They don't like the NPA much, but they don't really hate them either. Most of them don't seem to think much of the state either.

In Peru, a lot of peasants are pretty much neutral too. There is widespread contempt for the Peruvian state and Peruvian capitalism, which has completely failed to develop the country or provide a bare minimum of a living standard for most people.

I assume there is a draft in both countries. If I were an average Peruvian or Filipino drafted into the military to fight guerrillas, I think I would legitimately ask what the Hell I was even fighting for anyway. I would ask that even if I had little sympathy for the rebels. Why the Hell should I fight and die for a venal, corrupt oligarchy that has been doing nothing but screwing me and mine for decades or centuries. Gimme a reason.

The NPA Hammers the AFP In Mindinao

In the last 2 weeks of September, there was very heavy fighting in Mindanao between the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the New People's Army (NPA).

This blog strongly supports the NPA because we feel that capitalism in the Philippines has completely failed, seems destined to continue to fail into the foreseeable future, and it's time to give something else a try. In other words, capitalism in the Philippines has had a good 100-200 years or so, and it's done nothing but fail. Just how much more time do we need to give it until the experiment finally starts working?

Capitalism in the Philippines seems hopeless. A tiny, corrupt, semi-feudal, murderous elite monopolizes almost all of the land and most of the wealth.

Any attempts to make the situation the slightest bit more fair or democratic are met with repression, arrests, harassment, beatings torture, and murder. Hence, all peaceful avenues for change have been blocked and will continue to be blocked into the foreseeable future. In cases like this, armed struggle becomes a clear and logical option.

The NPA themselves have said that if there were a democratic opening for their movement, they might just lay down their arms. Factions of the NPA have broken off many times in the past few decades to try to run for office. Most have suffered repression and many have been killed outright. However, the NPA even has supporters in the Philippines Legislature, so the situation has become more democratic in recent years.

The corrupt, closed and semi-feudal nature of the Filipino elite has made it almost impossible to develop this country into a modern industrialized nation. Similarities with Nepal, Peru, Bolivia, Indonesia, India and other backwards 3rd World capitalist wrecks are appropriate.

The NPA is a vast movement with probably many millions of supporters across the Philippines. These are mostly in the rural areas, but there are also some in urban slums. It's pretty typical for militant students at the University of the Philippines to drop out at some point and head off into the hills to join the NPA.

In many areas, the NPA is the de facto government. Local producers and businesses must pay revolutionary taxes in order to operate in these areas, and workers' efforts to achieve higher wages are often negotiated through NPA intermediaries.

I had a Filipino physician back in the mid-1990's who was an NPA sympathizer, despite the fact that he made a very good income in the US. He said that a number of the kids he grew up with had joined the NPA. They had wanted him to join too after he got his MD, but he had declined.

He said that if you go to his rural village, you have to go through numerous rebel checkpoints. Along the way, you will see NPA forces walking down the side of the road with uniforms and machine guns as if nothing is out of the ordinary.

The size of the NPA is controversial, but I figure they have at least 20,000 regular forces under arms. Part-time militias probably number into the 100,000's. The support base is huge, surely in the millions.

The NPA is surely not as large as it was about 20 years ago. A series of insane and murderous purges badly damaged the movement and led many people to quit in disgust. The purges ended quite a while ago.

The NPA closely follows the rules of warfare and even refuses to use land mines, as they are considered banned weapons. In many attacks, government forces and police just surrender and give up their guns, because the NPA treats prisoners very well. In such cases, the local cops or soldiers are just disarmed, offered a chance to join the NPA and released if they choose not to.

The Bush Administration has labeled the NPA a terrorist organization, but that's a load of shit. They're one of the cleanest-fighting armies on Earth.

Being an archipelago, it's hard to supply the NPA with weaponry. Hence the NPA has to rely a lot on seized weapons.

It's true that the NPA has had serious problems making inroads with ordinary working class and middle class Filipinos in the big cities, most of whom dislike the movement without despising it. They simply see no value for themselves in the NPA project. This is a failure of the NPA in articulating how their project can benefit the average middle class to working class person in the big cities.

The NPA supports religion and has cultivated a friendly movement with the armed Moros in Mindanao (the sane ones anyway). There is a vast NPA support base in lay workers, parishioners and even priests in the country. Most cadres are Catholics and many priests openly support the movement, take up arms along with fighters, and minister over fighters and villagers in the base areas.

The NPA strongly supports women's rights, of course, but oddly for Maoists, they also support gay rights. This has been used by supporters of the Philippines government to portray the NPA as radical and out of step with a conservative, Catholic country.

Truth is that the Filipinos, despite the Catholicism and machismo, are easy-going SE Asians with a fairly open attitude about sex, in particular male homosexuality, which is widely accepted in Manila anyway.

Two NPA comrades getting married and sealing their marriage vows with a kiss. The NPA stunned the world when they came out for gay marriage, but really, it's a proper progressive stance. I always thought that the persecution of homosexuals by the USSR, the East Bloc, China, Cuba, Peru's Shining Path and Nepal's CPN-M was preposterous.

In the USSR, this was caused by Stalin's return to Great Russian Orthodox Christian-type social conservatism in the 1930's. The heavily-Jewish Bolsheviks from 1917-1927 actually supported gay rights.

A problem, nevertheless, is that the NPA has cultivated a seriously extremist form of Leftism that denounces most of the rest of the Left as revisionists or sell-outs. That's not so great for building movements.

In the last two weeks of September, the Brigade-size military operations in Eastern Mindanao by the composite 36th Infantry Battalion, Division Reconnaissance Company, 67th Infantry Battalion, Scout Rangers Company of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police's 1105th Provincial Mobile Force were hit head-on in the series of tactical offensives by the NPA under the Conrado Heredia Command of the Front 20 Operations Command of the NPA.

The AFP suffered 19 killed and 20 wounded in these operations. This area is in the mountains along the border of Surigao del Sur and Davao Oriental in west-central Mindanao on the coast.

Illegal logging in Bisling, Mindanao, on the coast near Linging where the heavy fighting took place last week. As you can see, this area is a tropical forest.

These logging trucks are waiting along the side of the road for the idiotic police to shut down their roadblocks at 5 PM (They go home for the day!). Then they will transport their illegal logs (all logging here is illegal) to a local paper mill after dark where the logs will be unloaded. Everyone knows what is going on here, but no one does anything about it. What a stupid, fucked-up, chaotic, corrupt, dysfunctional mess of a country. Photo credit Bob Martin.

September 22: the NPA launched two operations against the AFP: one against the 36th IB-AFP detachment in Cabunsuan in Linging township, and later, an ambush on AFP reinforcements.

September 24, 3:15 pm: The NPA ambushed the AFP in Bogak, also in Linging township in Surigao del Sur.

September 30: The NPA fighters engaged the AFP in Sumilao in Boston township, Davao Oriental.

During the offensives, one NPA fighter was wounded and later died of his wounds.

In the Surigao del Sur-Davao Oriental border area, the AFP troops are protecting American-Australian -owned Omega Gold and the gold mining ambitions of Asia's largest paper mill, PICOP. These multinational operations don't do anything for the locals, but the Filipino elite rakes in big money via their relationship with foreign capital.

NPA official website (really cool).

Official website of NPA Bicol Region (very well done).

Jews Versus Overseas Chinese

Uncle Milton comments on a previous post of mine, An Apologetics For Zionism, that dealt peripherally with the overseas Chinese. I will deal with his comments at the end of the article:

Robert Lindsay: There are differences between Jews and Overseas Chinese. The Overseas Chinese tend to keep their heads down, keep out of politics, and are not endlessly meddling in the cultural and political affairs of the nation - they just focus on making money. Jews focus on making money too, but they can't seem to help trying to change society, a habit that arouses mountains of anti-Semitism.


Uncle Milton: I would say this is incorrect. Thaksin Shinawatra, the former prime minister of Thailand (and one of the richest if not the richest men in Thailand) was deposed by a military coup is ethnically Chinese.

There were also many ethnic Chinese who were very close to Suharto and received special favors and privileges from the Indonesian government.

The Chinese in Indonesia, however, have had to play a background role because the Indonesians, especially the Muslims, resented them. Basically, as recently as 1998 there were pogroms against ethnic Chinese. (One could also say the anti-communist purges of the mid 60s were heavily directed against ethnic Chinese.)

In other words ethnic Chinese in Indonesia were never tolerated previously as much as Jews have been in the US in the past five decades, so they had no basis on which to build a political or cultural movement. In recent years however, China has given aid and been an important foreign investor in Indonesia.

I suspect ethnic Chinese influence using mainland China with it's rising economic prowess (and potentially it's substantial army) will increase (outwardly) in Southeast Asia.

As for the Philippines, their national hero Jose Rizal was part Chinese as was the first president after Marcos' dictatorship ended: Razored Aquino.

I really do not know much about the Overseas Chinese. I do not think that they would go on Jewish-type jihads to wage radical change in Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines no matter what. Overseas Chinese just do not care about such things. They just care about making money and keeping the pogroms away and little else.

Sure, they have gained quite a bit of political power, as one might expect due to their money. However, I believe that Indonesia and certainly Malaysia still have some very anti-Chinese laws on the books.

The Communist revolutionaries in Malaysia were mostly Chinese, but the Chinese got into this movement not due to any love of Communism so much as a way of changing a government that they saw as heavily biased against the Chinese.

In this way, they may be somewhat comparable to the many Jews who flocked to the Bolsheviks in Russia and the Communists in Poland during and after World War 2 not necessarily because they loved Communism so much, but more because the Communists were offering to crack down hard on anti-Semitism, and Polish and Russian anti-Semitism has not been a picnic for the Jews.

It's quite common for Filipinos, especially the urban university educated middle and upper classes, to be part-Chinese. The Chinese have been coming to the Philippines in large numbers for 800 years now and they bred in pretty heavily with the locals. Filipinos with some Chinese ancestry are quite common. The real Overseas Chinese are the pure Chinese who are 3% of the country and control 70% of the wealth.

Uncle Milton responds: I would say any ethnic minority group that controls 70% of a nations wealth inherently has a large amount of societal and cultural control, albeit indirectly.

Ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia (with the exception of Thailand) are probably in a position similar to Jews in the US around 1950 with the although the ethnic Chinese control a much larger percentage of the wealth in the Southeast Asia than Jews control in the US.

The rise of political and cultural influence from Jews (US) came fairly soon after WWII and the formation of Israel and really got rolling by about the mid-60s. In my view US Jews have probably hit their peak influence or are past it. Basically it's a numbers game, Jews are declining rapidly in number both nominally and as a percentage of the population.

The average number of children born to Jewish women is 1.1; even this number is skewed towards Orthodox Jews, who tend to have larger families and generally do not get involved in politics. The ongoing Hispanicization of the US will, in my opinion, ironically (since multiple Jewish groups promote immigration to the US) mark a decline in Jewish influence.

Latino Catholics tend not to be interested (and if anything are somewhat anti-semitic) in Judaism unlike many evangelical Whites, many of which are Zionists and and tend to be very pro-Jewish.

I tend to believe the Overseas Chinese influence will strengthen in coming years, basically in conjunction with the rise of economic power in China. Effectively, over time, I believe we will see a Sinicization of all of East Asia with the exception of Japan.

In regards to repression of ethnic Chinese in Indonesia: those laws have been reversed. As for Malaysia, basically the laws are similar in scope to our affirmative action laws. It's up to each individual, I suppose, to determine how oppressive affirmative action is. In addition, Malaysia has some quirky laws about Islam; the Constitution states that all Malays are Islamic and anyone marrying a Muslim has to convert to Islam.

I am convinced that any further pogroms against Overseas Chinese will be met with some sort of response by the PRC. Likely first an economic threat and if severe enough, a military threat.

I respond to Uncle Milton: I am not going to go round and round about this. My perception is that the whole Overseas Chinese (OC) thing has been to keep their heads down, focus on making money and getting along, and stay out of cultural stuff. They are the complete opposite of the Jews.

Now, why so many OC got involved in the Indonesian Communist Party in 1965, I have no idea. First of all, I am not even sure it is true. I am sure that there must also have been huge numbers of Indonesians involved. After all, that party was one of the largest political parties in the nation. It's been outlawed since 1965 because the ruling Indonesian elites are so terrified of it coming back bigtime.

Communist parties (CP's) are still a pretty big force in that region.

Vietnam and Laos are ruled by CP's, Cambodia had a ruling CP until just recently (not the Khmer Rogue, but instead a pro-Vietnamese CP whose leader was named Hun Sen), the Philippines has a vast CP that is outlawed and has taken up arms in a huge insurgency, Nepalese Maoists are about to seize power, Indian Maoists are tearing up India, there is a Maoist insurgency in Bangladesh, there is an active armed CP in Burma, and China, the largest nation on Earth, is ruled by a CP.

Communism goes right along with the cultural and economic realities of the region very well, particularly with Confucianism and Buddhism.

Indonesia still has one of the most horrible and inequitable semi-feudal economies in the region. It's not that different from the Philippines. A ruling elite who are little more than criminals has teamed up with the military to steal about every spare dime in the land. Hunger and malnutrition are widespread, and wages are ridiculously low.

The state for all intents and purposes as a guarantor of the rights of the poor, who are the overwhelming majority, simply does not exist. The ruling system under Suharto (pangasila) - an alliance (LOL!) between capital and labor along with very close ties between capital, the military and state, along with all sorts of para-state organizations - bears quite close resemblance to classical fascism.

The state even has bands of street thugs (usually Islamists) who conveniently assault striking workers. Leftists, dissidents and labor activists are also just out and out murdered by the state.

I am not sure about the Sinoization of the whole region, because so many nationalists in those countries are hostile to the OC. Even in Vietnam there is a lot of hostility towards the OC and to Chinese in general. Fact is, no one in Asia likes the Chinese. This is what I have been told by Asians. They are an 800-lb gorilla romping through the backyard and everyone is scared of them.

There is a Chinese nationalist who comes here every once in a while and he is furious at the way that these countries have treated their ethnic Chinese. He is urging the OC's to just pack up, sell off their assets, and go back to China or Taiwan.

You may be correct that China may intervene in the next anti-Chinese pogroms, assuming that they occur.

The Jews are total morons for letting all of these anti-Semitic Mesoamerican Catholics in here. Jesus Christ, what were they thinking? I talk to these Hispanics now and again, and they are, as a group, way more anti-Semitic than the average US White Protestant. Jews are so stupid sometimes. You know that probably 80-90% of US Jews are 100% open borders too.

Jews play dangerous games a lot, and this is one more case of it. They don't want to oppose immigration because that will set off White racism. They like immigration because it weakens the dominant ethnic-religious group in the nation - in this case, White Christians. Thing is, the Jews have done their work and the job is done.

White Christians are already sufficiently diluted that there is not going to be any racist backlash that is going to turn anti-Semitic and go after the Jews. Whites are like 64% of the US population and that was in 2000. You know we are probably like 57% now. That's what this sudden burst of White nationalism is - the last cry of a dying majority. Historically, such backlashes can get nasty, but I think in this case, it's too little, too late.

Amy Chua's World On Fire is an excellent example of a modern-day Overseas Chinese polemic. Her OC aunt living in the Philippines was murdered by her Filipina maid, possibly in a fit of ethnic pique.

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Great Commie Blogs

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.

Updated May 3:

Two totally great new Commie blogs - People's Movement Support Group and Machetera.

PMSG is out of India with an emphasis on support for the Maoist revolutionaries in India along with the separatists in the Northeast (India's armed Maoists tend to support the northeastern separatists), and it's almost all translated stuff from the world press, but there is a strong emphasis on armed Leftwing revolutionary movements.

Thankfully, he is not a fanatic - he supports Cuba, the Maoists in Nepal and especially in India, the FARC in Colombia, the EPR and EZLN in Mexico, the MRTA in Peru and the NPA Maoists in Philippines. In Palestine, he supports the PFLP! What is interesting about this is that in many cases orthodox Maoists do not support non-Maoists like the FARC or Cuba or surely the MRTA on grounds that they are not Commie enough.

Yay!

He also supports armed separatists in the Basque Country, Kurdistan, Ireland (IRA), Sri Lanka and in India's Northeast.

If there are leftwing maniacs anywhere on Earth with guns and bombs, he backs them up 100% (other than Sendero Luminoso). That's some real consistency and style.

Living here in the US, one thing you notice right away is that almost every single human being you meet (who has an opinion on the issue) absolutely hates all guerrillas anywhere on Earth. This is true even for almost all US liberals, and even, incredibly, for many US Leftists.

The line of the average American is clear: All guerrillas are evil. They are all terrorists. In particular, Americans seem to really hate any kind of armed separatists or separatists of any type. This is kind of odd in that we were birthed via revolution, and there is no reason to fear separatism here as there isn't any armed separatism in the US (or anywhere in the Americas) and probably never will be.

So Americans have turned into some of the biggest state-fetishists on Earth. Only the state can have guns. Only the state must have a monopoly on violence. All guerrillas are terrorists, terrorists are evil, and they all need to be killed to preserve the civilized world. All separatists are scum, states alone have the right to draw borders, and self-determination will never be allowed to anyone.

Death squads are fine and dandy, and every state is a democracy, no matter how murderous. The people never have the right to take up arms against any state anywhere, unless I guess it is Communist.

In other words, Americans have turned their backs completely on the noble spirit of the American revolution and have become the philosophical heirs to King George's colonists. We have also become Israelis. They are colonists too. See any connections yet?

Machetera is definitely a blog after my heart. I get called a Stalinist a lot on here, but that's not necessarily true. I do defend Stalin in some ways, mostly just to counteract the nonsense about "the biggest murderer that ever lived", by pointing out the many great, humanitarian and life-saving things he did. He also killed a lot of people, and I think it many cases that was just plain wrong or even flat out evil.

Honestly, I would really prefer that we Lefties stopped killing people once we got into power. Other than the obvious moral questions, it has given the Right a gigantic shot in the arm by portraying us a the biggest murderers that ever lived. This has been so successful that many people around the world are frightened to let the hard Left back into power due to fear that they may start killing people.

So it is that I am a big fan of Castro's Cuba, a place where the state has hardly killed a single political prisoner since 1970. They put a few in jail, but that's not the same thing. By the way, I think the Cubans should go out of their way to treat the jailed political prisoners well, if only to deprive the anti-Commies of their propaganda snacks.

On the Majority Rights (careful - very nasty WN blog) blog a while back I was called a Castroite. That's not a bad portrayal of me.

There is such a thing, and the Castroite philosophy, a Left, and sometimes an armed Left, that is particular to Latin America, is quite well portrayed on Machetera. So if you want to see what a Castroite looks like, head on over. They've actually long had conflicts with anarchists, Maoists and even some Trotskyites.

The Castroite philosophy could be best seen in the revolutionary movements that arose in Latin America in the 1970's and 1980's. Prior to that, there were a number of small bands in Peru, Bolivia and Venezuela that were wiped out. These were often influenced by Regis Debray's flawed foco philosophy of armed revolution. Che's fated project in Bolivia in 1966 is another example.

The ELN and the FARC in Colombia are very much Castroite (especially the ELN), with the ELN having a very strong Catholic liberation theology flavor. The FARC is probably a bit more rooted in an indigenous Colombian Left with roots in that nation's particular history.

There are now branches of the FARC in Ecuador (FARE), Brazil (FARB), Panama (FARC), Venezuela (FARV) and Peru (FARP). The FARC extend all the way to Guyana, where they tax the gold mines. In 1984, the MRTA Castroites arose in Peru, but were eventually eclipsed by the Shining Path.

The Sandinistas of Nicaragua, the FMLN of El Salvador and the URNG of El Salvador and various small guerrilla bands in Honduras in the 1980's were all Castroites, and the FMLN and the Sandinistas still have Castroite roots, though they have moved to the Right.

Chavez in Venezuela, Correa in Ecuador and Morales in Bolivia are very much in this special tradition.

There are many aspects to Castroism, and it is hard to put it down succinctly. Typically, many are Catholics and there is a lack of hostility to religion. They are less anti-Semitic than most Latin American Catholics (anti-Semitism is big in a continent with few Jews), in part because some of their leaders have been Jewish.

They tend to be much more pragmatic than Maoists, and are often prone to be called revisionists by the latter. There is a strong anti-Yankee and anti-US strain. The cult of Che Guevara is very important. The role of the peasants is very strong, but not in a Maoist sense.

The role of urban workers is somewhat important but not crucial, in part because the area is not well industrialized. But the industrial and professional unions are strongly supported.

There is a lacks of sexual puritanicalism that typified many existing Communist states. There is a significant de-emphasis on the Indian Question (while it is recognized nevertheless. This in contrast to Sendero, who raised the Indian Question to prime status. There is a very flexible ideology that often incorporates electoral democracy and mixed economies.

Class is much more important than race or sex, though the Woman Question is important. Female guerrillas often make up very large percentages of fighters, and in guerrilla ranks all aspects of Latin American machismo that oppresses women are banned.

Machetera is characterized by support for Cuba and the FARC of Colombia. Along the way, there are also shout-outs for Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Rafael Correa in Ecuador. She also supports Peace Palestine, Mary Rizzo's pro-Palestinian blog. The PFLP in Palestine have always had a fondness for Che Guevara and Cuba, and Cuba has long supported the PLO. Furthermore, she is a fine writer, witty and smart.

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