The book Jose Maria Sison: At Home in the World - Portrait of a Revolutionary (Conversations with Ninotchka Rosca), published in the US early this year by Open Hand Publishing, is scheduled for a series of launches in the Philippines beginning this week. It is a series of interviews that deal with the life, thoughts, and works of exiled Philippine revolutionary leader Jose Maria Sison, who is also branded by the US government as a "foreign terrorist" together with the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People's Army.

The collaborators in this book are both award-winning writers. Sison, a poet and essayist, won the 1986 Southeast Asia WRITE Award, while journalist-novelist Rosca is a recipient of the American Book Award for Excellence in Literature.

Co-author Ninotchka Rosca will be autographing copies of the book at Powerbooks-Greenbelt on Aug. 19. Another launching will be held on Aug. 24 at Balai Kalinaw, University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City.

See reviews by Alexander Martin Remollino and Elmer Ordoñez.

After seventeen days of protest actions, peace vigils and prayers, the Filipino people are triumphant in demanding that the Philippines withdraw its 51-member military contingent in Iraq in order to save the life of overseas worker Angelo de la Cruz. This is a landmark victory to all the people who supported the campaign in the Philippines and abroad. [Read more]

Related articles:
> Let us rejoice for Angelo's freedom and continue to demand an end to U.S. occupation
> The Release of Angelo de la Cruz is a People's VIctory
> The upcoming homecoming of Angelo dela Cruz is a victory of the Filipino people

Both the government of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and the family of Filipino worker Angelo de la Cruz who is being held hostage in Iraq are in desperate straits.

Because of the growing outrage of a public politicized by the De la Cruz hostage crisis, the Arroyo government is desperately attempting to solve the situation short of withdrawing Filipino troops from Iraq--which is what De la Cruz's captors demand. Among the crisis-management measures it has been taking is the isolation of the De la Cruz family from the media.

This is part of the news blackout that the presidential palace has implemented in dealing with the hostage crisis. Needless to say, the experience is like torture for the captive Filipino's family.

Meanwhile, the government seeks to quell rallies calling for the pullout of Filipino troops deployed in Iraq with police violence.

Calls to pull out Philippine troops from Iraq are mounting as the life of Filipino truck driver Angelo De la Cruz is still in limbo. Angelo was taken hostage on July 8 by Iraqi rebels who are demanding the pullout of the 51 Filipino soldiers and policemen by July 20.

At least 3,000 Filipino's are currently working in Iraq, many of them on US military bases. They are part of the almost one million Filipino migrant workers in the Middle East who fled the poverty and lack of job opportunities in their own country. Angelo De la Cruz, for example, is a poor 47-year-old father of eight from the town of Mexico, Pampanga. According to family members he had no choice but to go abroad after five years of unemployment to send his children through school and repair the shabby hut the family is living in.

Subservient to its imperialist masters in Washington, the Philippine government stubbornly refuses to withdraw its troops from Iraq and even endangered Angelo's life when cabinet members prematurely announced his release on July 10. Meanwhile, many Filipino's are convinced that the Philippine government should withdraw support for the US war of aggression. Progressive groups are calling on the people to join vigils and protest actions to put pressure on the Philippine government and save the life of Angelo. They likewise reiterate their continuing solidarity with the people of Iraq who are resisting the US-led occupation of their country.

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Quezon City, Philippines (Indymedia QC) -- All over the world, overseas Filipinos joined last week's mass protest against US war and occupation. Pictures of Filipinos joining protest actions in San Francisco and Los Angeles were posted on local indymedia centers' websites. UK-based Filipinos joined the contingent of the International League of People's Struggle in London. In New York, the Justice not War in the Philippines Campaign mobilized Filipino domestic workers, professionals and solidarity friends behind a banner that said "US Troops out of the Philippines!"