Reds go hi-tech too

It appears that communist insurgents in the country have already added computers, laptops and modems to their arsenal with their central leadership urging them to maximize the potentials of the information superhighway.

In fact, they have been maintaining websites but true to their guerrilla form, their Internet addresses have been transferred many times just like when they had to relocate their headquarters whenever government troopers would launch hot pursuits against them.

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its political arm, the National Democratic Front (NDF), used to utilize the free Web hosting services of Geocities (www.geocities.com). About a year ago, however, they transferred their websites to the servers of NBCI and then to Xoom.com, where it had the lengthy address http://members.xoom.com/_XMCM/natdemfront.

All of these websites, however, have been offline for several months now. It seems that the only active website of the communists is that of their official monthly newspaper, Ang Bayan (www.angbayan.org). Nonetheless, the CPP recently issued a directive to its cadres to combine mass movement and modern technology, which obviously requires the insurgents to have computers equipped with modems for quick access to the Internet.

"Toward this end," the CPP said, "(the Party) has effectively used the Internet so that (Ang Bayan) issues and other revolutionary propaganda could be readily downloaded anywhere in the country or the world where Internet access is available."

As a matter of fact, whenever the CPP-NPA assassinates political personalities, such as former Cagayan Rep. Rodolfo Aguinaldo in mid-2001 which prompted the Arroyo government to suspend the peace negotiations, self-exiled communist leaders Jose Ma. Sison and Luis Jalandoni would issue press statements through the Internet from their refuge in the Netherlands.

According to the CPP, "Majority of the regions and leading organs, and even some committees and staff on the provincial and guerrilla front levels already have the capability to get their own copies of (Ang Bayan and other documents) from the Internet."

Because of this, thousands of communists "are able to instantly reproduce and distribute (documents) to other units."

Most of the rebels’ documents are stored in Portable Document Format (PDF), a file format that can capture all elements of a printed document as an electronic image that can be viewed, navigated on and printed.

PDF files are created using the Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Capture software. They can be viewed by using the free software Adobe Reader.

The CPP claimed that "only a few (of the rebels) continue to rely on the clandestine line of the Party for the distribution of revolutionary documents."

"The thrust is to raise, up to the guerrilla front level, the ability of forces and units to use the Internet prudently and safely," it added.

With this aim of the CPP to hook all of its cadres to the World Wide Web, the communist leadership said the ultimate objective is to enable the Party to exercise its political leadership amid the rapid turn of events in society and in its revolution.