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Persistent disasters

It is not by accident or a matter of racial superiority that rich countries have the technologies for disaster preparedness and management such as early warning signs, sturdy infrastructures. The resources at their disposal are proof of unequal development of nations as a direct result of imperialist plunder of resources and exploitation of cheap labor in the Global South by the Global North’s oligarchy. Imperialist plunder accounts for the stark differences in welfare, well-being and chances of survival people in this political-economic and spatial divide under global capitalism.

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Armistice@100: Still living and dying for elite peace

We are still suffering from a crisis-ridden capitalist system for which the First World War was fought and resolved and for which the superpowers imposed a division of the world that continues to emplace our lives and labors. We are still living and dying for the same system for which great wars were fought and ended so that proxy wars and multi-lateral formations like the United Nations (League of Nations resurrected), International Monetary Fund, World Bank, NATO, ASEAN, APEC, and the like will continue to consolidate, retool and recast, whenever necessary, the profits and liberties won by imperialist powers one hundred years ago.

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WANTED: New Women of the NPA

This testimony focuses on Mary, Recca, Tin and Tanya who went to the University of the Philippines-Diliman. As activists and eventually as part of the revolutionary NPA, these women forged their identities by fighting across lines of interlocking oppressions. This account cannot give justice to their work. Rather, my goal is to talk about how revolution looks like in the lives of these revolutionary women.

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All that I owe (to the 70 years of the Palestinian struggle to return)*

To say that Palestine is in a “state of war” or “at war” is to obscure the fact that it has been occupied. The occupation of Palestine by Israel since 1948 is a state of war that breeds resistance. The terrorist tagging of Palestinians, the racism against the Arab people and the demonization of Islam are crucial to maintaining the architecture of a settler colonial state that now rides on western imperialist logic of accumulation of wealth by mass murder.

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#MarchForOurLives

The #MarchForOurLives rally is an outcome of a brave and thoughtful organizing among the youth. They gathered together, reached out to other youths, organizations, institutions, and eventually, the power and speed at which they were holding fast to a belief in the form of an urgent campaign compelled politicians, celebrities, and even ordinary people to share their resources and make the march for our lives happen nationwide. These young people believe in defending lives. And there is nothing more radical, more basic than organizing and politicizing for the defense of lives.

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Ars Terror

This regime labels people who serve the very same people it deprives of life, living wage, and social services as “terrorist” without showing us the way to move the country forward. The term “reactionary state” is crystallized in this government’s perpetuation of violence –Martial Law, war on drugs, criminalization of dissent, neoliberal economic policies, and its active campaign for misogyny.

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Anti-commie PSYOP

While he was quick to add that communists are not terrorists, we all know that a private school history professor is not in any position to dictate upon the president. There has been a strong push back from the mass movement on the labeling of their organizations as “communist fronts.” For progressive activists, this is an act of political vilification enacted by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) that justifies extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearance, torture, warrantless arrests, and the criminalization of political dissent.

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Duterte’s Mocha/Mocha’s Duterte

BLOOD RUSH By SARAH RAYMUNDO It is not the case that “fake news” erodes democracy. Fake democracy yields “faith in fakes”(1) Yet in what was manufactured as a defense of truth, accountability and democracy, the Philippine Senate held a hearing on fake news. Notable propagandists of the Duterte regime were summoned and questioned on their…

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Duterte redux

By SARAH RAYMUNDO BLOOD RUSH In May of last year, one of the goals of this column was to take stock and advance bases for political analyses and solidarities with various sectors dealing with a new regime. I sought to deliver both activist and intellectual documents culled from my politicized organizational and academic engagements. More…

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