_______As reported in "Philippines News" 12-18 June 2000 THE US-ESTRADA REGIME OF THE PHILIPPINES PLANS TO "SAVE" SQUATTERS Philippine President Estrada unveiled a plan to tax, finance, mortgage, license squatters such as those barely existing at the Payatas garbage dump shanty town. The government is considering privatizing such lands and selling them to squatters. He suggested small loans as "assistance" to squatters to make them to buy back land and embark in "legitimate" business undertakings. Targeting the petty trading of the poorest of the poor near urban areas that squat in places such as garbage dumps, Estrada and his henchmen hope to channel some of the estimated $132 billion-a-year value of the underground economy into the hands of the rich. They want to make all subsistence activity illegal and regulate it, forcing petty traders and garbage scavengers to register and licence their activities. This would enable the government to demand taxes as well. The government claims that underground activity is scandalous, implying it amounts to theft from society. Foreign investors getting more and more leary of the Philippines since he took office, Estrada hopes to deflect the movement to oust him by measures such as increasing open military and economic attacks on the people. He declares that this speculative figure of $132 billion in black market activity is greater than the total foreign investments in the Philippines in the past 40 years. Once again the US-Estrada regime can think of no other way out of its political and economic crisis than squeezing the life out of those who suffer the worst. END Macdonald Stainsby ----- Check out the Tao ten point program: http://new.tao.ca ".- I would be thinking of a world worthy of the human species, without hyper-wealthy and wasteful nations on the one hand and countless countries mired in extreme poverty on the other; a world in which all identities and cultures were preserved, a world with justice and solidarity; a world without plundering, oppression or wars, where science and technology were at the service of humankind; a world where nature was protected and the great throng of people living on the planet today could survive, grow and enjoy the spiritual and material wealth that talent and labor could create. No need to ask; I dream of a world that the capitalist philosophy will never make possible." - Fidel Castro
