The US, British and Dutch governments represent and protect the biggest Western monopoly interests in the Philippines. These are the Chevron Texaco Malampaya LLC, and Royal Dutch Shell. Each of them owns 45 percent of the total investments of at least 4.5 billion US dollars in the Malampaya deepwater gas-to-power project.

The two monopoly firms have at first limited the share of the Philippine National Oil Co. to only 10 per cent and have subsequently compelled this Philippine government firm to sell out its share through the ING Bank. Worst of all, they have extracted from the Macapagal-Arroyo puppet regime an official and treasonous declaration that the underwater Camago and Malampaya oil and gas fields are beyond the territorial jurisdiction of the province of Palawan and therefore of the Philippines.

The US, Britain and The Netherlands comprise the combination of imperialist powers that now plunder the oil and gas resources of the Philippines, as in Iraq and many other oil-producing countries. They are the same powers now with the highest propensity to band together for wars of aggression, engage in repression and undertake the "terrorist" listing of national liberation movements and anti-imperialist leaders.

Under the baton of the US, the Dutch and British governments have been the most active in pushing the "terrorist" listing of the Communist Party of the Philippines, New People’s Army and the NDFP chief political consultant by the European Council. They have made Europe inhospitable to the negotiating panel of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines and have in practice discarded the 1997 and 1999 resolutions of the European Parliament supporting the peace negotiations between the NDFP and the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP).

In view of the renewed "terrorist" listing by the US, we can expect the European Council to follow suit and the Dutch government in particular to take further actions to make the work of the NDFP negotiating panel difficult and too risky in The Netherlands. In fact, Dutch government policy is preventing the establishment and operation of the NDFP side of the Joint Monitoring Committee on human rights and international humanitarian law in The Netherlands.

The US, Dutch and British imperialist powers wish to eliminate any challenge to their oil, gas and other monopoly interests in the Philippines. Thus, they want to intimidate and force the capitulation of the NDFP to the GRP or else push all-out war against the revolutionary forces under the pretext of anti-terrorism. They are in fact sabotaging the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations.

The worst of the military puppets in the Macapagal-Arroyo regime go so far as to threaten the use of the "military solution" ala Indonesia of 1965, the massacre of more than a million of communist suspects and ordinary people, in order to destroy the revolutionary forces.

However, the biggest obstacle to such a "solution" is that the CPP, NPA and NDFP are tested and tempered in protracted people’s war and have not exposed their rank and file to the enemy, as the Communist Party of Indonesia had done through electoral and other legal struggles. As during the time of the Marcos fascist dictatorship, massacres only served to goad the people to intensify and advance the armed revolution.

At any rate, the US is hell bent on stepping up imperialist plunder, terror and war in collaboration with Britain and The Netherlands. The Filipino people and their revolutionary forces have no choice but to prepare against the worst in order to hope for the best. They are in fact carrying forward the revolutionary struggle for national liberation and democracy against imperialism and the local exploiting classes. ###