Tape justifies killings?

From the MLQ3:

The government’s response, besides the usual reflex call for “calm”, was to release a video of Jose Ma. Sison (a very interesting one, indeed, if genuine: as Tingog.com points out, Inquirer.net has put it up on YouTube for the viewer to judge; Tingog has a clip from GMA7, and he also states Sison’s reaction: “it’s a fake!”), and call the UN official “in denial.”

So to blunt the Alston report and sort of justify the targetted assassination of leftys, the Arroyo admin leaked a 20 year old video of JOMA sison that tells us what exactly? ("Pero hindi ba si Crispin Beltran ay ipinakulong rin ni Arroyo on a 22 year old rebellion charge filed during Marcos' time?" - Ed, Oo nga ano.)

Nag react ang mga party list groups sa video ng military:

IN what was described as a “crude attempt” to dispute the findings of the Melo Commission and of United Nations Special Rapporteur Philip Alston on the extrajudicial killings, the military released a 20-year-old video tagging certain party-list groups as “legal fronts” for the communist rebel movement.

Releasing the video, party-list groups Anakpawis and Sanlakas said, “strengthens the argument that the real target” of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) are the progressive party-lists and militant organizations.

“By releasing the tape, the propaganda line being peddled by Malacañang and the AFP is that they have the right to go after the unarmed left as ‘enemies of the state’ by association,” Wilson Fortaleza, Sanlakas national president, said in a statement.

Both Alston and the Melo Commission held certain rogue elements of the armed forces responsible for the political killings. Human rights organizations claim that more than 830 left-leaning activists had been killed since President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo came to power in 2001.

The said video shows Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founder Jose Ma. Sison delivering a lecture in Brussels, Belgium in 1987. In the speech, which Sison said was “an old doctored film clip,” he allegedly identified legal mass organizations likeBagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan), Kilusang Mayo Uno, Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas, Gabriela, and the League of Filipino Students as “front organizations” of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDF).

Sison said the military conflated a passage of his speech enumerating the said organizations and another passage mentioning the NDF.

“What is the point of (Armed Forces Chief Hermogenes) Esperon in making all the foregoing false claims against me? To prove that I have identified legal organizations as belonging to the NDF and to ‘justify’ the military in threatening and murdering legal activists?” Sison said.

At sabi pa ng isa sa mga nakakita ng video, commenter Ruth:

have you seen that joma video? you know, i’ve see it when esperon played it during his presscon yesterday. Its pretty old video, 2 decades ago they say. Joma just mentioned that there are revolutionary organizations in the Philippines. Then he went on to say that there are also legal democratic forces in the country and mentioned organizations like Bayan, KMU, Gabriela, KMP LFS, kadena, (can’t remeber the others).

From that statemement, joma was only statinga fact about the existence of such organizations in the Phils. He never said anything that these orGANIZATIONS ARE UNDER cpp-npa?

guys, I haven’t heard that he mentioned Bayan Muna Partylist, GABRIELA Women’s Partlylist? or other partylists that they are saying as leftists. Besides guys, the video really looks very old (they say 2 decades ago), probably 80’s. But when was the partylist system became a law and implemented? Was it not in 1998? And when did Bayan Muna started to run and won 3 seats in congress? was it not only in 2001?

Guys, I think you are smart enough to discern . We don’t have to be activists to know these facts because the partylist sytem is still relatively new, only in 1998.

Tama.

And the point of these killings is not to weaken Communism or the NPAs (in fact, the opposite is what's happening), but to eliminate Arroyo's critics from the Left, and blame it on the Communist purge.

Previous admins had no problems with these lefty groups. Panahon ni Cory, Fidel Ramos, at ni Erap. Even during arroyo's time noong 2001-2005. I don't agree with most of their politics, but I don't consider these party list groups a threat to our way of life either, unlike some crazy right wing hawks and other arroyo sycophants. Naging problema lang sila kay arroyo nung sumabog ang gloriagate scandal at nasira ang legitimacy claim ni Arroyo. Rally kasi ng rally eh, hindi na natauhan sa CPR... kaya hayan, palparan and co. have been trying more "creative" ways to neutralize them.

NAPAKALUNGKOT KUYA EDDIE: And you know what's really sad? What's sad is that hindi naman magkaaway dati ang military at mga leftist groups eh. In fact, they joined forces in 2001 to oust Erap.

And if you believe ARroyo, there was a Communist-Military alliance to topple her gov't.

So naisipan ng admin at ni palparan na pagawayin ang military at mga maka-kaliwa, para wala na silang tiwala sa isa't isa.

UPDATE: Gen. Butch Palparan eyes seat in congress.

UPDATE: Conrad de Quiros comments:

But still more than that, there is the war that Arroyo has unleashed against the Reds, which is as criminal -- and cynical -- a war as you can get. What’s wrong with it isn’t just its boast about accomplishing its goal in a record two years, though that by itself guarantees a scale of mayhem that rivals that of martial law. As Philip Alston suggested when Raul Gonzalez boasted again about wiping out the enemy before you could say “idiot,” what did he propose to do, kill everyone?

What’s wrong with that war is that war itself. At least when Marcos (and later Cory Aquino) unleashed the sword of war against the insurgents, the insurgents were a threat to the country. Today, they are a spent force, lacking arms, lacking a flood of recruits, lacking an ideology that could attract the youth, lacking moral superiority (specifically because of the “killing fields”), lacking numbers.

The only purpose Arroyo’s war against them serves is to save Arroyo, not the country. That war turns public attention away from the real threat to the country, which is an illegitimate government, by trotting out the Reds as the bogeyman, the way Hitler trotted out the Jews in his time. Additionally, it strengthens the “Hello Garci” generals in the military by giving them the power to hound “subversives,” quite literally on pain of death, while neutralizing the rebellious junior officers who have been asking what in God’s, or Arroyo’s, name they are doing fighting (and killing) folk who, like them, have been driven to arms by poverty and injustice. It’s a cynical war -- with criminal consequences.

Like I've been saying before, the purpose of the killings is not to weaken or destroy the NPAs (the opposite is happening), but to take out Arroyo's critics from the left, one person at a time.