On US Imperialism and a way forward for the Philippines

On US Imperialism and a way forward for the Philippines

Full Interview with Prof. JOSE MARIA SISON
Founding Chairman, the Communist Party of the Philippines
Chief Political Consultant, National Democratic Front of the Philippines
Chairperson, the International League of Peoples’ Struggle
BY BILL FLETCHER, JR.

(Shorter version appears in AlterNet, January 22, 2012)
1. Most people in the USA know little about the Philippines, its history, and/or its relationship to the USA. What do you believe are the reasons for this ignorance?

Answer: The US mass media are most responsible for informing, disinforming or simply keeping the American people ignorant about a country like the Philippines. I presume that most people in the USA become most aware of a country when the mass media are blaring out a certain extended course of sensational events of great interest to the US officialdom and the ruling class.

I am sure that in the past there were times of long duration when the mass media called the attention of the American public to the Philippines, like when the US was justifying and carrying out its war of aggression against the Filipino people from 1899 onwards, when the Japanese fascists pushed the US out of the Philippines at the start of World War II and the US reconquered the Philippines in 1945 and when the US-propped Marcos fascist dictatorship was in the process of being overthrown.

When the extraordinary or sensational subsides, the mass media pay less attention to the country and do not say much about the protracted reality of US colonial rule in the Philippines in most of the first half of the 20th century or the US semi-colonial domination of the Philippines since 1946. The ruling system in the US does not allow the Americans who know the truth about of the Philippines to impart their knowledge to the public promptly, widely and sustainedly through the mass media or any other means.

2. Given what you are saying, do you think that the US media has consciously mischaracterized the situation in the Philippines by focusing on groups like Abu Sayyaf?

Answer: Yes, the US media drum up US policy and corporate interests and consciously misrepresent the Philippine situation, as in the focusing on the Abu Sayyaf . This small bandit gang, whose origin can be traced to the CIA and intelligence operatives of the Philippine army who organized and used it against the Moro revolutionaries (MNLF and then MILF), is magnified as an extension of Al Qaida in order to serve the false claim of Bush that the Philippines is the second front of a global war on terror as well as to rationalize state terrorism and US military intervention in the Philippines..... MORE

Source:  Bulatlat.com

URL: http://bulatlat.com/main/2012/01/25/on-us-imperialism-and-a-way-forward-for-the-philippines/