Written by Media Roots

(MR) — In this two part series on the US/Philippines human trafficking epidemic, Abby Martin recalls the history of the colonization of the Philippines and how it has led to a dramatic rise in human trafficking of Philippine workers.

She interviews the executive director of Damayan, the 8,000 member strong New York City based organization created and led by Filipino women domestic workers that provides legal assistance to migrant workers and human trafficking victims, as well as other victims of human trafficking who have experienced the dark side of migrant employment.

Part One: Buying a Slave – The Hidden World of US/Philippines Trafficking

Part Two: The Roots of the Philippines Trafficking Epidemic

The Philippines has suffered the consequences of occupation and colonization for hundreds of years with the effects still being seen today in the form of poverty, job shortages and a human trafficking epidemic. A shocking 10% of the Philippine population must leave the country in order to seek employment in hopes of sending money back to their families. An estimated 6,000 people, mostly women, leave the Philippines daily to seek work.

Human trafficking is a multi-billion dollar industry that entraps millions of people across the globe. The majority of victims are abused– living and working in shockingly inhumane conditions. Particularly horrifying is the fact that, in the Philippines, humans have become the number one export.

Most of these migrant workers leave the Philippines for the United States, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia and Japan where they work in low-wage jobs. In fact, 21 million people are working in forced labor situations worldwide- many of them right under the noses of the average citizen of these countries.

There are currently 2 million migrant domestic workers working in the United States. According to the recent report The Human Trafficking of Domestic Workers in The United States, over 80% of these workers have experienced their pay being withheld or having been paid under minimum wage, 81% live in abusive conditions and 73% work excessive overtime.

Through this process, many of these migrant workers have become victims of human trafficking and have found themselves stuck in a seemingly endless cycle of abuse and neglect. But what has led to this disturbing trend? Why do so many Filipinos flee their home country for work and subject themselves to such harsh and inhumane conditions?

The Philippines was first claimed by the Spanish in 1525. The indigenous Filipino people engaged in over 300 armed revolts over the next three hundred years, eventually securing their independence after a two year long war of independence. At the time, Spain was also engaged in the Spanish-American war. Upon losing that war, Spain negotiated the sale of the Philippines to the United States, behind the backs of the Filipino people, for a total sum of $20 million in the Treaty of Paris.

This began a many decade-long hostile relationship between the Filipino people and their new occupiers from the United States. With such a volatile relationship, conflicts occurred frequently resulting in the deaths of numerous Filipinos. In one such conflict, the Moro Crater Massacre, only six out of 1,000 Filipinos survived. Shockingly, in the first 15 years of colonization, more Filipinos were killed by the U.S. than during the entire three hundred years of Spanish occupation.

As the violence decreased, the occupation took on a new form– economic destruction and experiments in neocolonialism. There quickly became a dependence on U.S. patronage for survival of the now fragile Philippine economy and the U.S. began focusing it’s efforts and attention on the elite of the Filipino people– training and educating them to be vehicles of U.S. colonization.

This led to the granting of Philippine independence in 1946 but that independence was only in name. With the puppets of neocolonialism now in charge of the country, the U.S. continued to have a direct line of control, only now it was slightly obscured. Also in 1946, the United States Congress passed the Rescission Act, stripping Filipinos who fought in defense of the U.S. against the Japanese during World War II of the benefits they were promised for doing so, yet another damaging blow to the Philippine people.

“Our country was ruined primarily by the U.S.” –Linda Oalican

Tensions between the Filipino people and the U.S. backed ruling class have continued to this day, with the Philippine economy continuing to suffer and a successful government propaganda campaign encouraging workers to seek employment elsewhere via the Philippine Labor Migration Policy continuing to grow. In this episode, Abby Martin details the history of the colonization of the Philippines, starting with the Spanish in 1525 and ending with the present day situation, leading to an exodus of able-bodied workers from the Philippines to all corners of the globe– often ripping families apart and damaging relationships for years to come.

“The history of the Philippine resistance is an unbroken chain– from it’s first hand-to-hand battles against colonizers wearing armor and swords to it’s organizing against today’s exploiters who wear three piece suits, the poor and oppressed of the Philippines are much more than victims of the system, but are indeed the force that will change it.”

By Emma Fiala / Republished with permission / Media Roots / Report a typo

This article was chosen for republication based on the interest of our readers. Anti-Media republishes stories from a number of other independent news sources. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect Anti-Media editorial policy.

The CIA has been creating, arming, and funding terrorists for a very long time. They were responsible for al Qaeda, and now they’re in part responsible for ISIS. This isn’t new information, though many people are completely unaware of these operations because mainstream media doesn’t report on these topics, not being in the U.S. government’s best interests to do so. We’ve written about it countless times — here, here, here and here are a few examples out of many.

What is new is that Trump has decided to end a covert CIA program that funded rebels in Syria, and mainstream media actually covered the story. The program was designed to aid anti-Assad rebels by arming them and paying them monthly salaries.

Not only did Trump stop this program, but the Washington Post actually reported on the story. Though the mainstream media outlet did push the anti-Russia/Trump narrative, suggesting that Trump’s decision was motivated by his desire to work with Russia, this is still a step in the right direction.

Trump Ends Covert CIA Program That Funded Syrian Rebels

The U.S. has been funding the Syrian war for quite some time, so it’s clear that they have a vested interest. U.S. Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard even proposed a bill recently in an effort to put an end to this government corruption, titled the “Stop Arming Terrorists Act,” which only received an alarming 13 supporters.

Gabbard publicly discussed the U.S.’s interests in the Syrian war (as the U.S. sells arms to ISIS and other terrorist groups), offering a compelling call to action in the process:

I return to Washington, DC with even greater resolve to end our illegal war to overthrow the Syrian government. I call upon Congress and the new Administration to answer the pleas of the Syrian people immediately and support the Stop Arming Terrorists Act. We must stop directly and indirectly supporting terrorists—directly by providing weapons, training and logistical support to rebel groups affiliated with al-Qaeda and ISIS; and indirectly through Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, and Turkey, who, in turn, support these terrorist groups. We must end our war to overthrow the Syrian government and focus our attention on defeating al-Qaeda and ISIS.

You can read our CE article about it here.

Trump apparently made the decision to end the program about a month ago, and in-depth details surrounding the program have yet to be released. The only tangible confirmation of the program actually came from President Donald Trump via Twitter:

Julian Assange, Founder of Wikileaks, also took to Twitter, quoting an article from the Financial Times:

The particular program that Trump decided to end represents further proof that the U.S. government is directly affiliated with rebels and terrorist organizations. To be clear, there’s not even proof that the program has 100% ended, as people on the ground haven’t confirmed this as stated in the Financial Times article above.

However, most mainstream media outlets that reported on it chose to focus on their concern that Trump was hoping to ally with Russia and that this was his motive for choosing to end the program, rather than honing in on the Pentagon funding rebels. Of course, that was all just speculation.

For example, the New York Times wrote that “the decision is bound to be welcomed by the Russians,” and USA Today referred to the end of the program as a “victory for Assad, Russia and Iran.”

What about a victory for the people? Many have referred to some of the rebels as “moderate terrorists” and some rebels go on to join terrorist organizations. There’s no point in speculating whether this was a move that supports Assad or Russia; ultimately, it’s simply a move that has the potential to shift the U.S. regime away from funding rebels and terrorists.

The specific program allegedly started in 2013 in hopes of pushing Assad out of power, a longtime goal for the U.S. government, which was reflected in many of their military decisions over the past couple years. This includes their role in funding the White Helmets, an organization funded by the West that’s painted as being a group of peacekeepers who provide aid to victims, when in reality most of the help they give is to the terrorists the U.S. is allegedly fighting, when in reality they’re funding them.

The U.S. Government’s History of Funding Rebels and Terrorists

Independent journalist Vanessa Beeley speculated that in regards to the creation of the White Helmets, “What we are seeing here is an eradication of Syrian state institutions and the implantation of a Syrian shadow state by predominantly the UK and the US, but also supported by EU governments.”

Essentially, Beeley suggested that the White Helmets could actually be a front for a shadow government. This wouldn’t be surprising, as a shadow government already exists in America, plus the U.S. has been keen on overthrowing Assad.

Mainstream media spun this propaganda as an inspiring story of peacekeepers, and Netflix even created a fake documentary on the White Helmets, which you can read more about in our CE article here.

The “film itself is not a real documentary,” explains Patrick Henningsen, a geopolitical analyst at 21st Century Wire. “What this film is essentially a PR cushion for a $100-$150 million covert op, which is basically an NGO front funded by USAID, the British Foreign Office, various EU member states, Qatar, and other various and sundry nations, and members of the public, who quite frankly in my opinion and many others, have been duped into donating their money for this rescue group, that is anything but. It essentially functions as a support group alongside Al-Nusra and al-Din al-Zenki and other known terrorist groups operating in Syria.”

The U.S. clearly has a vested interest in Syria, otherwise they wouldn’t be supporting terrorists or fabricating stories, one of the more recent ones being the fake chemical weapons attack. You can read more about how there actually was no chemical weapons attack earlier this year in our CE article here.

Michel Chossudovsky, an award-winning author, an Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa, and the founder and director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), explained:

Trump’s decision to strike a Syrian airbase in retaliation for Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons against his own people confirms that the “False Flag” Chemical Weapons attack scenario first formulated under Obama is still “on the table”. Our analysis (including a large body of Global Research investigative reports) confirms unequivocally that Trump is lying, the Western media is lying and most of America’s allies are also lying.

If there’s anyone we should be concerned about using chemical weapons, it’s the U.S. government and the terrorists they’ve trained to use them. Chossudovsky goes on to explain that CNN accused Bashar Al Assad of killing his own people while also acknowledging that the ‘rebels’ “are not only in possession of chemical weapons, but that these ‘moderate terrorists’ affiliated with Al Nusra are trained in the use of chemical weapons by specialists on contract to the Pentagon.”

Even Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. spoke out about the Pentagon’s ties to terrorists, explaining:

In fact, many of the ISIS fighters and their commanders are ideological and organizational successors to the Jihadists that the CIA has been nurturing for 30 years. The CIA began arming and training the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan in 1979 to fight the Soviets. Following the Soviet withdrawal, the CIA’s Afghan Mujahedeen became the Taliban while its foreign fighters, including Osama bin Laden, formed Al-Qaeda. In 2004, then British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook told the House of Commons that Al-Qaeda took its name—meaning “database” in Arabic—from the voluminous CIA database of Jihadists—Mujahedeen foreign fighters and arms smugglers trained and equipped by the CIA during the Afghan conflict.

Final Thoughts

To be clear, CE is not saying that Trump should or should not side with Russia, and we recognize that there still aren’t enough details on this CIA program to make any solid claims. We are not siding with Trump either, but simply presenting what we know.

The U.S. government must stop funding rebels associated with terrorists and terrorists in general, and we are hopeful that this could be a step towards achieving that.