‘No to US-BBM Proxy War’

GLOBAL peace and stability have never been at greater peril in the past 75 years as it is this year, 2024.

In West Asia (Middle East), Israel’s atrocities and provocations backed by the U.S. is threatening to explode into a regional war that is beginning to draw in other powers as Russia starts supplying Iran with superior Electronic Warfare equipment and hypersonic missiles to Yemen’s Houthis. Meanwhile, Ukraine is in the final stages of collapse as NATO contemplates actual entry into the war.

At the same time, the U.S. financial bubble enters its final stages of collapse too, as the inflated bubble starts bursting at its seams with the Tokyo stock market crashing 12.4 percent last August 3, 2024, attributed to “weak economic data” in the U.S. where stocks markets lost over $ 3-trillion in value in a few days.

Everyone invested in the Western financial system is prepping for the ultimate crash, like Warren Buffet who dumped half of his total holdings of Apple stocks to cite one case.

As historians and economists have learned, capitalist societies struggling through an economic and financial Armageddon finds a way to channel popular rage from their misery through war, as happened in the 1929 Great Depression that paved the road to the Second World War.

The suspicious prompt dispatch of a U.S. carrier group to the Persian Gulf so quickly after the assassination of Hamas’ Ishmael Haniyeh in Iran smacks of a premeditated, coordinated provocation to light the fuse of a major war.

It is all the more urgent now that the Philippines ensures security for itself by denying any reason for any party to attack the country pre-emptively or in retaliation for what the U.S. warmongering is doing all over the world and here in Asia.

Hence, the Philippines’ Anti-War movement that started a caravan n Luzon in 2023 now goes to the Visayas, in Cebu in particular, to launch the anti-US EDCA Bases crusade this time. Below is the manifesto issued for this occasion:

Asia today is at peace. ASEAN is at peace. Global prosperity and ascendancy in the 21st Century are shifting to the East, hence it has been dubbed the Asian Century.

The 1987 Philippine Constitution in Article XVIII, Section 25 in its wisdom states, “foreign military bases, troops, or facilities shall not be allowed in the Philippines except under a treaty duly concurred in by the Senate and, when the Congress so requires, ratified by a majority of the votes cast by the people in a national referendum held for that purpose, and recognized as a treaty by the other contracting State.”

The last legal US Military Bases Agreement in the Philippines was rejected by the Philippine Senate in a 12-11 vote saying the Military Bases Agreement was “one-sided,” there has since been no Senate ratified new treaty or one ratified by a majority of the voters in a national referendum. What exists is a politicized, manipulated sham Supreme Court decision under an ousted Chief Justice disqualified to serve ab initio.

The Philippines had been stable and peaceful since 2016, prospering with all countries including China, the US, Russia and ASEAN in mutually beneficial, open, cooperation. Only in 2023 did the country start facing internal divisiveness, acrimonious antagonism with China, isolation from ASEAN, economic retrogression, when the PBBM administration embraced and added 5 US EDCA Bases.

For a year-and-a-half tension with China rose with the U.S. inspired “assertive transparency” strategy to antagonize China, turning the Philippines into the pariah of peace-loving ASEAN, causing multi-billion Dollars infra program cancellations with nothing-in-return from the US except the installation of Typhon missiles launchers inviting Russia’s Putin’s warning to “satellite” Philippines.

The “No to US-BBM Proxy War” has helped compel the BBM administration to stand-down and de-escalate from the US-led “assertive transparency” and restart “de-escalation” and “easing of tensions,” but that is only the first step in a process where the ultimate goal is ejection of all US EDCA Bases in the Philippines and today focusing on Cebu’s Mactan -Benito Ebuen Air Base in particular.

The US EDCA Base in Cebu is right beside the civilian Mactan International Airport making it a human shield for the American military bases. This is, and should be, unacceptable to all Filipinos. This is unacceptable. Hence, we are launching this forum, motorcade and rally and saying “No to US-BBM Proxy War, No to US EDCA Bases.”

Today, with fervent will to restore peace, tranquility and prosperity to our nation, our Asia and our World, we launch this signature campaign calling for the Removal of the US EDCA Base in the Mactan-Benito Ebuen Air Base and all illegal, unconstitutional presence of foreign troops and military bases in the entirety of the Philippines’ territory.