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Philippine "coup"

Posted by Doctor Poddy on Thursday, November 29, 2007 5:53:16 PM
Yesterday, a senator and some soldiers accused of a previous coup attempt stormed out of court and took refuge in a local Makati hotel.

Although it was a peaceful seige, the gov't blocked all the roads and then lobbed in teargas and sent in an armoured personnel carrier into the hotel lobby (causing a lot of damage) before arresting the Senator, General Lim, and a lot of the press who were there covering the seige.

Smart? Well, maybe not.
Right now the press is angry...I mean, they were told not to broadcast the government part of the attack, but they were broadcasting from inside the hotel, (giving the govt a look at what was going on). Possible overkill.

The irony is that the Senator was elected AFTER he joined in last year's attempted coup.
President Arroyo is not popular, and today activists and churches had announced a rally to call for her resignation.

One simply can't keep up with the scandals:

The latest is a big plum, a broadband contract for schools, that was given without any bidding and some of her family was involved in the deal. but the "hello garci" tapes are still rankling, and techncally since they were wiretapped, they were kept out of previous impeachment hearings.

What probably started the latest round was last week her allies stopped another impeachment hearing.

The business community backs her, as do many of the elite families. But her corruption is so bad that businesses won't invest, and the "extrajudicial killing" of left wing activists and journalists is a major scandal. Of course, many of these killings are payback for the former militants by soldiers, and many political killings are clan feuds, killing political rivals.

The end result of all this is that we continue the brain drain of our best and hardest working population.
Sigh.
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Living with insurgency

Posted by Doctor Poddy on Sunday, November 25, 2007 6:20:25 PM
I posted this essay on BNN...

I've lived in the Philippines, where we have lowgrade NPA insurgency, and worked in Africa during a civil war.

Life goes on, as long as the level of violence stays below a certain level.:
-------------

Yup. the Iraqi insurgency hit the pet market in Baghdad yesterday.

I mean, what a way to win “hearts and minds”: kill that unIslamic “foufou” poochie and parakeets, not to mention kids.

The US is blaming the Iranians, not Al quaeda, this time, and that makes sense: The Mullahs have been clamping down on the infidel dogs lately in Iran, so what better way to pay back the average Iraqi for that petition signed by 300 000 locals saying to the mullahs to mind their own business. (Note: Iraqi is Shiite but Arab…Iran is Persian. Their feud goes back to biblical times).

Yet signs of life are coming back: even the Democrats and the NYTimes has noticed it.

I have written before that Iraq is not Viet Nam, but Luzon, and that the “surge” was not about more troops, but about changing the style of the war. By inserting different types of troops who could coordinate with the growing Iraqi police and Army, in a manner similar to the change in tactics against the Huks by Magsaysay in the mid 1950’s, the war now is going back into the streets, weeding out the bad guys and letting the ordinary people know that the local cops will protect them (backed up by the US if they need help).

What is amazing is that it is working so quickly, and this may be partly to the fact that the Iraqi people are attributing their increased peace to their own security forces (not outsiders). Another factor is people weary of war will back the strong horse just to get peace. That is why dedicated revolutionaries in the USSR or China or Viet Nam were backed: Not because people loved communism, but because the forces of democracy were too weak and polite to keep fighting extremists who would kill or torture entire families if one of their members cooperated with the other side.

But this time, Bush, by ignoring the Democrats, is leting the world know the US is there until January 2009. This gives various factions time to regroup, but makes the more pragmatic put down their arms in hope to gain power by polls. There is a lot of complaints about the week central government, but if the locals can control their own streets with ordinary cops who help people rather than police or militias who bully locals, you will see peace.
We saw this in the Philippines when the MNLF made peace with the government in the 1990’s, and we are seeing it today with the MILF peace talks.

People get a choice: Carrot or stick, and the stick isn’t going away.

That will leave a hard core who will resort to terror tactics to get their own way. Ironically, they will hate those who change sides first (as with the bomb assasination of Congressman Akbar last week). But it won’t succeed, since the extended family members and clan will continue to cooperate.

Another change is that as money enters for development, young men have another job opportunity: given the choice between making money as an insurgent or working on a road, most men will chose the better career move. If insurgents are winning and rich, they join. If insurgents are loosing, road work or being an OFW in Saudi is the better choice.

That’s why pacification allows ex murderers an amnesty: weed out the extremists, give the average bloke a job.

Finally, a couple bombs isn’t enough to terrorize a population. The bombs will continue, but mainly to impress CNN.

But one can live with low grade terror the same way as low grade crime. People may die in bomb attacks but they will also die of disease, accidents, clan feuds, and natural disasters. In the third world, death is part of life, and the Pinoy Catholic’s “behala na” is echoed in the “It’s the will of Allah” of pious Muslims.

The dirty little secret about bombings to impress Americans on CNN is that dead babies also impress Indonsians and others watching Al Jeezerah (the only “free” Arab network in the world: The other Arab news sources are government controlled.)

Which is why Osama, despite successes in western Pakistan, is less popular in the Muslim world now than he was in 2001.



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WMD in that Syria raid?

Posted by Doctor Poddy on Tuesday, November 20, 2007 8:56:40 PM

Carolyn Glick of the Jerusalem Post has an article reprinted HERE...most of it is about stopping Iran from nuking her, but the important paragraph is about the WMD from Iraq, and whether or not that hushed up airstrike in Syria by Israel was to destroy them:

the head of the non-governmental International Intelligence Summit, John Loftus, released a report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program... "The gist of the new evidence is this: Roughly one-quarter of Saddam's WMD was destroyed under UN pressure during the early to mid 1990s. Saddam sold approximately another quarter of his weapons stockpile to his Arab neighbors during the mid-to-late-1990's. The Russians insisted on removing another quarter in the last few months before the war. The last remaining WMD, the contents of Saddam's nuclear weapons labs, were still inside Iraq on the day when the coalition forces arrived in 2003. His nuclear weapons equipment was hidden in enormous underwater warehouses beneath the Euphrates River. Saddam's entire nuclear inventory was later stolen from these warehouses right out from under the Americans' noses."


So what is going on?

Glick says the intelligence stories she reads are confusing.

And what is the North Korea link?

Is the raid a way to tell Iran (Syria's ally) they are next?

And why all the secrecy?

Who knows.
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Terrorist assasination in the Philippines

Posted by Doctor Poddy on Thursday, November 15, 2007 2:24:20 PM
The Philippines has several terrorist /insurgent/ criminal groups, but the worse is the Abu Sayyaf, which has connections with the JI Terrorists from Indonesia and with Al qaeda.

The difference?
The NPA will blow up stuff and kill those who won't bribe them, and will kidnap and kill rich people. But they won't randomly kill innocent civilians.
The MNLF has settled with the government, and the MILF is making peace, and although they are still causing trouble, their leaders want the government to have their own land to govern (never mind that half those living there now are Christians) mainly so they can steal the loot given for local development instead of letting the Christian politicians in Manila steal all the goodies.

The AbuSayyaf (ASG) group are crazy jihadis. Often they overlap with the other groups (family ties more than ideology) which makes it easy to hide. But lately they have been hunted with a vengence by the Philippine Armed forces in the South.

The latest bombing at the mall two weeks ago was probably sewer gas, despite initial worries that it was terrorism. Ditto for the grenade that killed one southern politician (someone threw it into his house), the NPA bombing and bringing down a cellphone tower, and for the fishing dynamite stash that blew up a couple days ago. Business as usual.

But the cellphone remote controlled IED motorcycle bomb that killed two congresspersons and their 2 helpers  and injured several others is undoubtaly due to Abu Sayyaf. The fact that it was remotely detonated and contained C4 and other high quality explosives, and the fact that some nails were found makes the bomb sound suspiciously like those in the middle east.

The congressman who was thought to be the target, whose name is Akbar, was a supporter of ASG but reportedly turned against them. He was a congressman, and two of his three wives are mayors in his area: Basilan Island...

(the third wife lost the election).

Basilan Island is where twelve Philippine marines were killed in an ambush and several beheaded by the ASG with help from the local MILF, who helped them maybe because the ASG told the locals that the marines were breaking the truce (which they were not)....since then there has been a lot of payback time in Basilan and in Jolo and other areas in the south.

So was the bomb the ASG or merely a political rival trying to kill the congressman?

Usually, political killings are done by hand: Usually a drive by shooting, once in awhile a kidnapping first. Usually they hit who they are aiming at (although my nephew was killed in the crossfire of one political hit).

The latest reports are that the Philippine security services raided a house where a couple ASG were held up. Reports say they were wanted for other bombings, but that the Police found the motorcycle registration, a car license with a number implying it was from a congressman's car, and some ID that could let one inside the Philippine Congress.

Given the Philippine president's annual impeachment parade is due to begin, there will be the usual suspects pointing fingers at her, but in this case, she had nothing to gain.

But just in case, the (opposition party) speaker of the House will be holding parallel hearings on the bombing, just in case someone was involved.







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