Wild, wild east
The recent election-related murders in the Philippines are nothing new. Some 24 people were massacred on a road, including 12 reporters. The victims were associated with one political clan and the suspected perpetrators are associated with another. That will surprise no one.
Back in the day I remember visiting the city of Jolo in sulu after it had been burned to the ground by fighting between the Mayor and the Vice Governor of the Province. About a square mile was totally incinerated down to the foundations. Nor was it an isolated incent, While in Sulu on another occasion, I got a report of a murder of one mayor by another mayor in the process of a reconciliation meeting. The murdered party was asked to bury the hatchet and when they debarked on the pier, two M1919 .30 caliber machine guns were waiting in a crossfire to greet them. The surviving warlord looted the bodies as they were still twitching in death.
It was not hard to believe. Life was cheap. Rebels would kidnap road workers for $50 ransom. You’d see their wives collecting money in tin cans to get their husbands out of captivity. I met the aged Father Blanco when he had just escaped from the Abu Sayaf. The old Spanish priest had waited until his captors drank more than the usual and then asked permission to answer the call of nature in the perimeter. He then ran for all he was worth until dawn when he reached an Army roadblock. Pretty wiry guy for a seventy something person. He could probably walk most people half his age into the ground.
Then there was the time when Herminio Montebon, who was the Mayor of Isabela City, told me about the attack on Christmas Eve on the market by 300 armed men. He was attending an office Christmas party when someone rushed in to say he had intelligence that a battalion minus force of rebels would hit the town in about an hour. Montebon rushed to the Army Camp and got to the market with a company of troops and two V-150 armored cars. Montebon hoped to forestall the attack but he was too late. When they got to the market all hell broke loose. He distinctly remembers the thud of the Ma Deuce in the turret of the V-150 he was in as its slugs ripped through the thin stall walls in the market.
Merry Christmas and welcome to Basilan. But violence isn’t confined to Mindanao. One of the most celebrated massacres occurred in Nothern Luzon.
This involved the burning of two whole towns (Ora Este and Ora Centro) in the Ilocos on May 22, 1970 by Bingbong Crisologo in a case that is now wholly forgotten. The Crisologo family was feuding with the Singsons and, well, things got hot. Crisologo is now a preacher and a successful politician, proof that memory is short in the Philippines. The incident affected the parish priest, who subsequently went and become a famous Communist guerilla commander. Then he became a Trappist monk and my spiritual adviser. He is now a well known monk. I never met Crisologo personally but saw him occasionally over a prison fence where he led the Sampaguita Rehabilitation Center band. It was a treat to see him and his band, all in orange jumpsuits playing away on the electric guitar. Don’t think that the Thriller Video from Cebu city is a novelty. The Filipino penitentiary is a musical place.
And of course there was the burning of Ipil in Zamboanga del Sur. Ipil was probably the second largest town in the province. It was completely torched by the Abu Sayaf in their maiden outrage. They came out in style. Some of my friends were in Ipil when it was attacked. One friend, whose initials are “BB” took over the radio station and broadcast a Mayday, which was funny when you consider that Ipil was not far from an Army base which never mobilized in time to intervene. His heroic initiative was in vain, but he was a quality guy. At any rate, the Abu Sayaf spent the afternoon burning people alive, blowing open all the bank vaults and generally murdering and pillaging.
And so it was (and I’ve related this story before) that I was somewhat amused to hear my seatmate on the plane, a doctor from Medicins Sans Frontiere, confidently declare to me that he would be protected by humanitarian law when he reached Jolo. I told him if he went much beyond town he’d be kidnapped before he could say Jacques Robinson, which he was. You really have to be well educated to believe that stuff about the “religion of peace”. Both the victims and the suspects of the latest massacre reported in the New York Times are from Muslim warlord families. If you’re ignorant, you’ll probably know that human folly and malice is confined to no religion. Man is a beast when he isn’t an angel.
As to Maguindanao, I’ve only been a couple of times, and that with an escort of armed men in whom I reposed scant confidence; their rifles being dirty and ready ammunition meager. In fact, we were probably better off without them. But heck they had to earn a living as “security escorts”. It’s not always peaceful in them parts, but it’s always interesting.
Richard,
Why do you not use the obvious words here. Many of these people were beheaded. This was an act of Jihad, was it not?
My wife and her family are from Mindanao. The problems with Jihadists go back decades.
What is your opinion? Was this Jihad, or not? If not, then how do you explain the beheadings?
W:
To hear these stories from you brings immediacy and relevance. How many other stories have we all heard of Congo, Sudan, Zimbabwe or Sri Lanka and shrugged “they’re not our folks.” I’ve been to refugee camps in Chad, Somalia, Sudan and Laos and thought “who cares for these folks?” I guess the answer is you, and me, and lots of others (among whom, BTW, I do NOT include the paid employees of organizations like the UNHCR), but each one of us cares for the ones we’ve seen, heard, smelled (yes, there is a common odor to a refugee camp, whether in Laos or Sudan) and talked to. But we care too little, or for too short a time, or without the means to bring permanent change to the place we are visiting.
Which makes me ask what changes in this world anyway? I don’t mean to sound cynical, but the folks who speak of change (Obama, foreign assistance workers, etc., etc.)come and go but the little people curl up around their smoky dung fires in the evening with nothing but grass and bark in the soup pot — if they’re lucky — and I don’t see the change.
One might expect TV to be the major change agent. It brings, after all, haunting images to the living rooms of well-fed people. Then those images are interspersed with American Idol or CSI or other daily “entertainment” and who can remember where the fiction leaves off and the reality picks up? Unless you’ve seen and smelled the real thing. . .
Thank you for bringing life and reality to another haunting image, Wretchard. Pray for real change some day. F
They were beheaded:
http://ibloga.blogspot.com/2009/11/muslims-in-action-cnn-21.html
Manila, Philippines (CNN) — Gunmen killed at least 21 people, a dozen journalists reported among them, in the Philippines on Monday in what a presidential adviser called the most “gruesome massacre of civilians” in recent history.
Some of the bodies were beheaded, according to Filipino media. The details suggest the daytime abductions were politically motivated, and the military has said the gunmen were loyal to the province’s incumbent governor.
Those killed include a gubernatorial candidate’s wife and one of his sisters, according to two of his family members who spoke on local television. The death toll also included at least 12 journalists, according to Reporters Without Borders, a media freedom organization.
…
Army officials said 100 gunmen surrounded the group of about 40 people — many local journalists and women among them — and ordered them out of their vehicles. They took the hostages to a mountainous region, officials said.
Some of the women were raped and tortured, according to media reports.
The military told state media that they found 21 bodies — 13 women and eight men — and that some had been beheaded.
“Never in the history of journalism have the news media suffered such a heavy loss of life in one day,” Reporters Without Borders said of the 12 journalists reported dead.
Much as I look forward to your forthcoming novel (an autographed first printing is to be hoped for) I await the autobiography with more than rapt anticipation.
Life is so much more illuminating than fiction.
I do not care to edit F.’s post
Thank you, W, for baring your cultural soul this way. I needed to hear this. Suspect many others did, too.
I dont know if the journos deserve anymore attention than the 9 or 12 innocent (or maybe not) other victims. But the perpetrators really need to deserve to be hunted down like dogs. (but maybe that is a slander on dogs)
How much of this is related to clans (or tribes) or other concatenations of ethnicity? Has Western Civ imposed politics as a substitute for kinship? We see a lot of the tribe in Iraq. Is it radically different in the Philippines?
My understanding was the latest massacre was an altercation between two Muslim warlord families. Religion was probably a sideshow here. In the case of the machine gun massacre on the pier, all involved were Muslims. Muslims kill Muslims all the time. Of course there’s a particular enmity between Muslims and Christians and there’s a sectarian dimension. But a lot of this — and I’ve been struggling to convey this — is just the low life. It’s all about money, power, ego, jealousy, hate, perversion, cruelty and plain orneriness.
Some of these guys are just plain homicidal maniacs. And a lot of the militia men who are used to offset the Jihad boys aren’t upstanding guys either. Truth to tell, they are mostly the scum of the earth. The world of low life is what it has always been. Floozies, booze, drugs, sharp knives, treachery, lies and guns. It’s always funny to see how some guys overintellectualize what is really banditry; who think everything is about the resentment of Western oppression or blasphemy. There’s probably some of that, but I think a lot of this is plain old human nastiness.
W.
There is very little on the wrong side of life that isnt the result of “plain old human nastiness.” The really serious problem is the excusing of this low behavior by ascribing it to Oppression or Poverty or Colonialism or Hegemony or America (which never happens when the complainer has a ticket or a hope for a ticket to America).
Lately I’ve been browsing the Old Testament, New International Version. It’s much more easily digestible than the King James, if a little prosaic. In the 1980′s I skimmed thru the Old Testament for the first time, after realizing I’d only ever listened to excerpts selected by different folks trying to use the Bible to beat some point of their own into my brain.
The vivid impression I took from that first reading was that humans have been a pretty bloody lot. If your priests weren’t ordering you to slice open your first-born on their altar, they were ordering you to slaughter everyone who DID SO from here to the horizon, along with their pigs, chickens, cows, mothers, grandmothers, sons, the halt, the lame, and, well, every thing but female certifiable virgins.
Twenty years later, I guess I’m a little more reconciled to the realization that humans are just as bloody-minded as they’ve ever been.
This time as I read, I begin to see patterns that are familiar from the headlines – the sorts of absurd jockeying for position, power, “face”, respect and loot, against the persistent minority that risk their lives to protect the values of honor, faith, integrity, and love.
You can despair if you see all this as proof that we are essentially the same as when we first appeared on the planet. Or you can take some comfort in the sense that we share a continuity of experience and yearning with our longfathers from the mists of time. (Yeah, and longmothers…)
If you grasp that we are spiritual beings first and foremost, you can see the underlying truth is that these are worthy challenges and fit lessons for each entity in turn.
I have to remind myself to take the long view. To the creator of universes, what’s a few billion years?
The US colonization of the Philippines seems to have not left a lot of good behind as far as I can tell from here?? The corruption and the poverty seems to have become so intertwined that the economy looks like, from here anyway, it is going to go broken forever. The hardships of the place produce both demons and angels and a diaspora that breaks your heart sometimes. A charity that I’m involved with was seeking additional funds because the big storm not only killed people, and tore up infrastructure but also destroyed jobs and put families at risk.
Richard,
You said: My understanding was the latest massacre was an altercation between two Muslim warlord families. Religion was probably a sideshow here. In the case of the machine gun massacre on the pier, all involved were Muslims. Muslims kill Muslims all the time. Of course there’s a particular enmity between Muslims and Christians and there’s a sectarian dimension. But a lot of this — and I’ve been struggling to convey this — is just the low life. It’s all about money, power, ego, jealousy, hate, perversion, cruelty and plain orneriness.
I say: I get what you’re saying. However, when Muslims kill Muslims they are still doing so according to the will of Allah, the thirsty/hungry god.
Muslims kill Muslims all the time, because they don’t always have enough Infidels to kill. Muslims kill Muslims all the time because it is Islamic to do so. We must root out all those who are not PURELY monotheistic. Everyone who is not strict enough in their doctrine must be killed.
Read Paul Bowles’, The Garden. That’s a great example, from a Leftist writer of great literature, of how Muslims kill Muslims for no other reason than not being strict enough in their interpretation of Islam.
These people were beheaded, as I have already repeated.
Ye shall know them by their fruits.
Richard,
I would also submit to you that this “low life” that you speak of arises from a lack of willingness to make hard distinctions, but instead to compromise endlessly with the evil (which is instead deemed to be “corruption”, because it comes with money being passed from palm to hidden palm, instead of coming in the guise of murder – but here we see that murder is the hidden hand of corruption).
It is not mere corruption. It is evil.
Until the Philippines, Mexico, and much of South America stand up against this “corruption” they are not going to be able to create a civilization for themselves like that we have in America.
America has, traditionally, had a pretty strong idea of what we would and would not stand for (the Constitution), and that is why we are what we are (though we seem perched to lose much of what we have been).
The US colonization of the Philippines seems to have not left a lot of good behind as far as I can tell from here??
The British have been given a lot of credit for their “good colonies”, but I think each place really developed according to what it was to start with. Hong Kong and Singapore were former British colonies. So were Pakistan and Uganda. Never ascribe to the British what you can ascribe to the Chinese.
The US/Spanish colonization of the Philippines brought forth two nations. One was the Republic of the Philippines and the other is the Filipino nation and two are not the same. A large part of the Filipino nation exists overseas. It is the country of the middle class, a population with a dozen different nationalities and a shared culture. It consists of people with the wit and the skill to get the hell out of Dodge. As to the Republic of the Philippines, that is the name given to the spoils system of the former upper classes, who have a peculiar symbiotic relationship with the poor. The only way I can explain it is to think of the worst aspects of the Democratic Party bossism allied with the worst elements of dependency. The Republic of the Philippines is the Kingdom of Boss Tweed in a tropic setting. The Filipino nation is an altogether larger and cultural concept. Most Filipinos have some feeling for their nation and kindred and practically none for the official government.
Be that as it may, the Islands are a good place to learn about God and Devil, laughter and tragedy, folly and wisdom, simply because it is so teeming with the variety of human life. It has in Huizinga’s words, that quality of “directness” that the West seems to have lost. You trust or mistrust people. Institutions mean nothing. They are just names.
Even religion means nothing. Only the actual circumstances mean anything. You can trust some Muslims with your life simply because they are good men; and there are good men among them. Or you can understand that you are in danger and your life is hanging by a thread. The trick is learning how to judge people, knowing who to trust; understanding the envelope. Those poor devils who died on that road suffered from that terrible affliction, “malas”. They were S.O.L. The hundred to one chance had come off.
Your line “Man is a beast when he isn’t an angel” reminded me of this from Flannery O’Connor’s “A good man is hard to find”. The Misfit speaks his truth just before finishing off grandma:
Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead,” The Misfit continued, “and He shouldn’t have done it. He thown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it’s nothing for you to do but thow away everything and follow Him, and if He didn’t, then it’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can–by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness,” he said and his voice had become almost a snarl.
wretchard, I can’t claim to have much of a clue what it’s like to live in, around, or through that. I read your posts on the violent side of the Philippines as bulletins from an alien world. I’ve been too long in modernity and suburbia, and never *that* far away from it in my entire life.
That “directness” the west has lost? Yes. Even as a kid in NYC, I recall at least a bit of that “directness” utterly foreign to me, now, in politically correct American and palmy Los Angeles. And apparently absent from MSM news accounts. “Directness”, hmm? Have to think about that. Direct, indirect, what is it we should hope for?
As that may be, let me read your story then as a little Thanksgiving gift from you to those of us like me, here in yet peaceable America. May it last beyond today.
On Twitter and on FB I saw two prominent Pinoy bloggers talk about the role of “rido” in this. I got the notion one thought that model did not fit this and instead just used the terminology of warlordism. In any event, the dynamics appear to be the same.
I think it fair to note, the massacred group was a group escorting a candidate’s wife to file his candidacy papers for the governorship and the report I link notes: Earlier, military officials had said about 100 armed men, several of them in police uniform, had stopped the Mangudadatu convoy at a police checkpoint on a highway and taken the victims to a remote mountainous area. One family, dominating the political scene as W points out.
Dude at the top guy acting as a boss appointing family members to mayoral posts. Of course, he can claim all the people want his sons as mayor as a wish to the contrary would most likely result in denial of needed resources or perhaps a 9mm allotment of lead. So, someone is attempting to take his seat and he and his machine act and act with incredible brutality. Maguindanao is within the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao.
http://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFTRE5AM1F120091123
The Islamic thing is not a real huge factor here. As is noted, this is Muslim v Muslim and has all the hallmarks of a simple struggle for power in a place where there is no real central governmental authority — so the contenders set the rules.
Floozies, boozies, and drugies. I recall the pool huts in rural Cebu. Always inhabited by two-three guys lit up on cheap Tanduay or perhaps hopped up on Shabu (crystal meth I do believe) never looked to healthy and while I am certain they had potential hard chemical abuse can take it real quick. I never bothered to get too friendly with them. A far far cry from the Filipinos I know and have known — doctors, solaris adminsters, nurses, engineers, or plain old hardworking grunts.
Not about Maguindanao in particular but Mindanao in general: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdsPfcQ6c9M
By all accounts the Philippines were always like this. Lapu Lapu if memory serves was feuding with others before the Conquistadors came, and Spanish rule was marked by constant feuding as it had been before them. American rule the same.
The ONLY WAY (and Wretchard hints at it here) for Filipinos to stop being Filipino (that is violent feuders) is for Filipinos to stop being well, Filipino. Become an acculturated diaspora never strong enough in numbers to bring the culture of the Philippines over.
The Philippines have gifted mankind with some great cuisine, some awful cuisine, very deadly martial arts, and amazing accounts of human bravery. However, like my Scots and Irish ancestors they are stuck in feuding mode and absent a conqueror simply eradicating 90% of their culture or diaspora, they will never change. If Ireland (which was as feud driven as the Philippines, only a lot colder and with even worse food and cooking) could not be other than what it was (a very colorful failure) it is folly to expect anything out of the Philippines or its people.
You can tell a lot about the character of a people by their martial arts (or lack of it). A nation (Scotland until conquest, the Philippines now) that uses a weapons-based system to produce fighters as quickly as possible, using humble tools, is not one that will be ever given to peace or prosperity.
[I agree with Wretchard on Singapore vs. Uganda. It is also of course a reflection on Ugandan people that their nation is a total failure, by all measures that mean anything and can be in fact, measured.]
Today, or should I say yesterday, I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and saw the special exhibit, The Art of the Samurai. Over 20 years ago I had been to the National Museum in Ueno and seen some of the swords honored as National Treasures but as the Met exhibit made clear there is no place else, not even in Japan, that one can go to and see a collection of this significance. These swords are venerated as religious objects. Some were used in combat. These were violent people. I believe that it was mentioned regarding one blade that Nobunaga was insulted by a server dressed as a priest during a tea ceremony and he killed the man by driving the sword through the table the man was hiding under. And yet despite that capacity for violence the Japanese create and maintain a highly effective and organized government. The two qualities or impulses, the creative and the destructive, are not mutually exclusive. The same men who wielded those blades studied Buddhism and wrote poetry. They were not, and their descendants are not, effete. The same applies for the British and the Americans. The thugs and bullies exist. Sometimes a society manages to control them and sometimes it manages to suppress them and sometimes it falls victim to them. There is no reason that I can think of for the Philippines as a country to be less effective as an expression of the Philippine nation than Britain has been of her nations or America or Japan or Israel has bee. The only difference I am aware of is the annual rainfall.
wretchard:
One thing that puzzles me is why, according to you (and I have no reason to second guess you on this), so many people from the Republic of the Philippines have no historical memory. The Philippine archipelago has a long history of literacy; to this day, the Hanunoo are said to have an interesting Indic syllabic script used for love letters.
The best I can piece together is that historical memory is a function of a priestly class, perhaps with the history of a major empire or dynasty to record. Java has a Book of Kings. China has a series of dynasties. At one time , the Mayans had their codices. And major religions of modern times have their historical memories (and propaganda) to record.
Bear with me, as I am thinking out loud now, but perhaps we should revisit the effects of Christian fanaticism on late Roman Egypt. I would argue that, after the Coptic alphabet (which was based upon Greek) was adopted in Egypt, Egyptian historical memory ended. At least the Ptolemaic demotic script was faithfully based upon the old hieroglyphics, but the new script came at a time when the old history was getting swept away in the same wave of fanaticism that led to the murder of Hypatia. Perhaps the Coptic alphabet, combined with a “Year Zero” pathology and the custom of using differences over the Trinity as “patriotic heresies”, did much of the work of assimilation to Islam before Muslim armies ever came. In any case, the sense of history that Egypt had prided itself upon during the Ptolemaic Dynasty had been largely forgotten in the Islamic era. It took Jean-Francois Champollion to decipher the Rosetta Stone less than two centuries ago.
Perhaps, just perhaps, the Philippines lacks any sense of national statehood. Perhaps the Philippines is cursed by having independence bestowed onto it, rather than having its independence come from the efforts of an educated class of Filipinos. In other words, the Philippines suffers from a colonial mentality that lacks any sense of responsibility for the future. I would argue that perhaps Texans feel a greater sense of Texas nationalism than people in the Republic of the Philippines, partly because Texans fought for independence against the tyranny of Santa Anna and partly because Texan children are required to learn about Texas history in their public schools.
South Korea started from a position of dire poverty in the 1950’s, but it is now a major power in economics. This was partly because of South Korea’s program of industrialization combined with economic protectionism. Yet, it could come not only from high literacy, but also from a keen sense of Korean nationalism and a keen sense of grievance that comes from knowing one’s national history.
So, is the Filipino history one to be written by exiles with a keener sense of who they are than people living on the archipelago? Is this lack of historical memory a function of a ruling class that has learned to collaborate with the “strongest horse” rather than aligning its fortunes with the future of the Republic of the Philippines?
A state with disloyal leadership cannot expect loyalty from the people.
After reading this post, I’m baffled as to why you ever wanted to leave. Seems like such and interesting place to live…
And now the Chicago political machine is trying to run the US in the same manner. The “elites” having impoverished the poor, must somehow redirect the poor’s anger, and so make scapegoats out of the middle class. It’s no fun being a Kulak.
LOTM:
But it is worth pointing out that the violence of Bushido severely undermined the Japanese system of government in the 20s and 30s, and led to an attempt at National Suicide in WWII. Members of the Japanese government who were not fanatical and aggressive enough were routinely assassinated, usually by junior Army officers. This created, as journalists like to say, a “chiling effect” on those with notions of peaceful government, and led to military adventurisn in China, border skirmishes (which Japan lost badly) with the Soviet Union, and eventually Pearl Harbor, Midway, Guadalcanal, and Hiroshima.
I don’t know the Phillipines as you do, Richard, but as a general rule I’ve found the people who come to Australia from there to be decent. It has always amazed me that the southern parts like Mindanao have remained so intractable for so long. Maintaining law and order has also been patchy at best, particularly when high-value prisoners walk right out of jail! Your post sheds another light on this. If the structure of politics is more like hillbilly horror-show, what hope is there?
Wretchard,
“But a lot of this — and I’ve been struggling to convey this — is just the low life. It’s all about money, power, ego, jealousy, hate, perversion, cruelty and plain orneriness.”
To take up Pastorius’s point, it seems to me that what Mohammad did in Islam was to make banditry, murder, rape and pillaging respectable, legitimate, honorable and somehow a sacrifice for Allah. Mohammad elevated and venerated “human nastiness” and made it a virtue in the name of Allah. I think the power behind Islam is that it harnesses the ruthlessness and savagery of evil men to further it’s pursuit of power and control over mankind.
To bring about a truly productive, civilized society, that society must adopt culturally and institutionally a system that clearly and unambiguously rewards Good and punishes Evil. Islam does the reverse. The Western’s world fashionable infatuation with a morally bankrupt and politically correct multi-culturism, that destroys the rewards of the good deed , and absolves evil, is leading us down the path of evil chaos that has so engulfed much of human history .
Is there a 2nd Amendment in the Phillipines or at least a tradition of an armed citizenry?
Or is there strict gun control or at least the government assertion of it? As in, when guns are outlawed only the people with guns will have guns.
I would have assumed the place was awash in firearms after the end of WWII. As well as a fair number of people who knew what it took to deal with oppression.
OT: Maybe I’ll be moving to Poland
Poland is on the verge of banning communist symbols in a change to the country’s penal code that could make everything from the hammer and sickle and red star to Che Guevara t-shirts illegal.
The amendment would adjust the country’s hate-crime legislation to criminalize the “production, distribution, sale or possession … in print, recordings or other means of fascist, communist or other symbols of totalitarianism.” The punishment could be a fine or up to two years in prison. Exceptions could be made for artistic, educational, collecting or research purposes…
“No symbol of communism has a right to exist in Poland, because these are symbols of a genocidal system that should be compared to German Nazism.”
Hum, I’ve always wondered where those 15 crates of Indonesian Galils assault rifles went.
[Guns seized in Battaan]
Philippine authorities have seized 54 high-powered rifles worth P25 million from a foreign vessel off the coast of Mariveles, Bataan, thwarting a smuggling operation possibly related to the 2010 elections…
‘15 empty crates’
Customs commissioner Napoleon Morales said the guns were concealed in four wooden crates placed inside the cargo hold. He said another crate contained slings, magazines and bayonets for some of the firearms.
Morales said they also found 15 empty wooden crates on the cargo ship, prompting them to suspect that the alleged smugglers had already unloaded most of the contraband, possibly at sea.
http://tinyurl.com/yez4czp
[Captain married to a Filipina]
…Married to a Filipina and staying in the country for the last 14 years, Jones said he was a victim of the incident, adding that he has documents to support that the guns were legally acquired from P.T. Pindad with address at JI. Jend. Gatot Subroto, 517 Bandung, Indonesia.
“In fact, when they loaded the 20 wooden crates of guns into my ship, these were even supervised and guarded by around 50 policemen or soldiers from Indonesia. So I presumed it was all legally acquired,” he said. He said he was instructed by his employer to deliver the guns to La Plata Trading, Inc. with office address at 14th floor, BDO Building, Paseo de Roxas, Makatiy City and was told that the cargo had been cleared by the Philippine National Police. According to Jones, a total of 20 wooden crates full of guns were loaded into the ship from Indonesia. He said 19 of the boxes contained assault rifles and only one box contained 9mm pistols.
Authorities identified the rifles as Israeli-made Galils. However, a check by the Bulletin showed they were actually SSI-VI Pindad, made in Indonesia by a licensee of Fabrique National of Belgium. The guns are also of a different caliber than Galil. When authorities seized the cargo vessel, only five wooden crates were intact and the 15 boxes of guns had been slipped out by the syndicate, he claimed.
http://tinyurl.com/ycl2k6u
22. Unsk: “..morally bankrupt and politically correct multi-culturism, that destroys the rewards of the good deed , and absolves evil, is leading us down the path of evil chaos that has so engulfed much of human history ”
You are so right, all one has to do is to look into the ugly core of a US city and you can find all of the aspects of which Richard speaks. Detroit (my local metro area) is being eaten away from the inside by “the low-life”. It hasn’t gotten to the point where political rivals kill each other in the streets, but it is frightfully close. I would not want to show up at a polling place wearing a “Go Republicans” button.
The “thug life” is held up as a proper way a man should live, but leads only to filth and degradation. In the meanwhile the elites in Lansing and Washington make excuses about poverty and racism but the body-counts pile up. Sadly Richard’s point about people trying to “..overintellectualize what is really banditry” explains a lot about public policy here in the US.
Perhaps the worst part of all this is that we are only one year into the resurrection of the Tammany Hall government here.
The guy I feel the most for is the poor schmoe (here, in the Phillipines and everywhere else) that just wants to live a life in peace; a family, a place to live and a job…and maybe a fishing pole and a bottle of whiskey on Saturday afternoon.
Another way to describe what you have is tribalism. It happens world wide. At some level WW1 and WW2 were tribal wars; Germans against others. The overlays of religion and civility are just that; overlays on top of tribal clashes. America, Canada, and Australia are the only countries that essentially disposed of the native tribal element and developed a merit based civil society upon a land. That is why they view the world in such different terms. Even at that, as we have grown, elements of tribalism have arisen; enviro wakos, gun clutchers, etc.
Now if you go to east LA, prisons, or most any inner city you will see real tribes at work. Not civil in a classic sense and very violent.
Richard,
Your explanation of the actions of these Muslim terrorists is reminiscent of the Fisk excuses for the 9/11 terrorists; they were poor and oppressed.
Sorry this is not the result of poverty and a lack of education. This is Islamic Jihad.
As my friend, and co-blogger, Reliapundit said:
“JIHAD INCLUDES MUSLIM VERSUS MUSLIM, NOT JUST MUSLIM VERSUS INFIDEL.
THE MEDIA IS TRYING TO “HASAN-IZE” THE ACT: EXPLAIN IT WITHOUT REFERRING TO ISLAM/ JIHAD.”
Wretchard@7:
“It’s all about money, power, ego, jealousy, hate, perversion, cruelty and plain orneriness.”
That brings it home for me. I come from some hardy stock…and especially ORNERY. If you go out to west-central Minnesota you’ll see the cradle of the American branch of my “tribe”.
A bunch of Norwegian and Swede dirt farmers who have had a hard struggle for the last century or more. Of course, my family has been domesticated by living in a relatively peaceful environment…but there are still multi-generational disputes with other families in the area. Mostly it is hidden and almost cordial, but don’t be fooled. It’s there, and just sort of waiting. For what, I don’t know.
I’ve heard a lot of rumblings and musings on the web about the possibility of a new American revolution, or a societal collapse. I don’t take it seriously enough to stockpile weapons in bulk…but I have laid in a smallish stock of food and ammunition for my existing weapons, and I’m slowly adding to those until my crystal ball clears a little.
But if a revolution or collapse were to come, those old family rivalries (ours and many others) are likely to surface. All families in my case are Christian and not Muslim, but I think the principle still holds. Take away the threat of jail and the society whose disapproval keeps a lid on these kinds of conflicts, and who knows how they could manifest?
When we initially destroyed the existing order in Iraq in 2003, there was a lot of score-settling. Some was against members of the old regime. I’m betting a lot was old family/tribe conflicts just like the ones back home.
Don’t think it couldn’t happen here. Take away all the reasons we have carefully put in place for people not to misbehave, and the horrors that visit places like the Philippines and Iraq and Afghanistan could spread here like wildfire. We are, after all, of the same species. We are what we are, and it isn’t all pretty. We would do well to keep that in mind.
This strikes me as a series of cautionary tales to those who shout ‘Revolution!’ if there are any more encroachments on our freedoms as Americans. Our nation has had 228 years of peaceful transitions of power out of 233, not a bad record overall. This does not mean the demons of tribalism and regionalism and The Strong Man are exorcised forever, we drive them away each election when we choose to leave our guns at home or in the car and pick up our ballots instead.
All of these incidents and more are likely to be duplicated here if there is a breakdown in the belief in a continuing society. I laugh when I hear leftists murmuring about armed insurrection, if the bumper stickers at my local gun club are any indication that battle will be short, sharp and one-sided. But I cringe when I see folks on the right talking, even eagerly, about unleashing the righteous dogs of war. The scenes from the Philippines Wretchard describes are not unique to that location, that we have a couple of hundred years of other problem-solving and dispute resolution techniques under our belts does not mean that we will not see precisely the same thing.
I surely do not want the federal government to overstep. I also do not want to be in the position where armed resistance is an option, because everything that Wretchard so ably describes is likely to follow in its wake. That is another cost to be weighed, and not dismissed because we don’t live close to the equator. There are things worth fighting for, but once that line is crossed it also means fighting against the very base things that a civil war will unleash.
DocBill/29
elements of tribalism have arisen; enviro wakos, gun clutchers
I’ll take an umbrage at the later. The “gun clutchers” are one of the groups that are trying to preserve the merit base civil society and prevent a split into two main tribes–elites and hoi polloi. The later, without guns, would be tribalized further based on a number of arbitrary parameters by the designated gun-holders–the elites, to splinter it, so no possibility of a self-organized resistance would be possible. Clutching a gun is a defense mechanism of the merit based philosophy.
h/t Maggie’s Farm,
Islam would die without jihad –Mohammad Asghar writes in the New English Review (link at bottom to more of Asghar’s work).
First thoughts, no wonder the Muslim Brotherhood was formed in 1920s Berlin, no wonder the nazi theoreticians and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem so fascinated one another in the 30s and 40s, no surprise the nazis were so green, so surprise the greens are so tranzi, no wonder the left can’t oppose jihad, no surprise the jihad is so silent, for the moment, on the western left. All flow from the premise there is nothing so detestable, nothing so in need of comeuppance and domination, as a human being in full. And nothing so dangerous as the dark spiral wherein man himself creates this form of truth by the very act of creating this form of truth. Free will finding its own fall, the free will to surrender free will.
Tribalism. This is the legacy, the pride and the problem of the Philippines. I am half Filipino, and all American. One day on a visit home to my family, my grandfather took the trouble to forgive me for being half American. As a former lawyer and teacher, he then led two lectures, one on what he termed the actual history of the Philippines (the battle of Manila Bay was a farce, how much he resented the Americans for displacing Filipino culture with Yankee culture), on another occasion he compared and contrasted the East and the West (the East characterized by the family, the West by the individual, and the presence of an American in the family was solvent to the glue of family).
I love my grandfather but he was cruel as well as loving. There were many occasions when I asked myself silently “If he loves us, then why was he so cruel?” I finally came to the conclusion that every tribe needs a chief and he was merely reinforcing his position by inflicting arbitrary fear. After his death, my family clan broke apart in internecine rivalry and to this day cycles of resentment and retaliation seem endless.
It is the ideal of the tribe and family as a basic social unit that is the problem in the Philippines, this is why corruption in government is so endemic there. It may take centuries to migrate to an individualistic mindset, but in the meantime the situation seems hopeless.
W – When I was stationed on the USS Midway out of Yokosuka japan, I was part of the air wing squadron VA-115. We would often deploy to the Philippines for weeks at a time. This was during the 1980′s. I remember being in Subic Bay when Marcos was overthrown. When the Midway was dry-docked in 86, we were in the PI for a large part of the time doing exercises with the Air Force at Clark.
Anyway, several of us used to travel throughout that beautiful country – further up north to Bagio City, and south to Cebu. I remember walking through the jungle to find remote waterfalls to go swimming, putting complete faith in the person guiding us.
As much as I admired Japan, I loved the Philippines. The filipinos I found to be a warm people who, although poor, would share with you whatever they had.
It is sad to hear these stories and the disregard for human life. I suppose I was blind to it when I was there. Perhaps as the saying goes, God looks after fools…
Josh – I think you can still catch glimpses of ‘directness’ in the boroughs. I grew up in Brooklyn and still have a lot of family there. I notice that there is a degree of mistrust until you prove yourself in my nieces and nephews that I hope my own children acquire.
An interesting development in NYC is the gentrification of a number of neighborhoods that used to be really bad – e.g. Redhook, Fort Greene, etc., Many of these areas are quite stable and pushed up rent to where people start moving into even riskier sections – Bed/Stuy, East New York – Indian Country.
Now that the NYC economy has turned, I wonder how things will hold up for them. The locals remember what life in NYC was like 10 years ago, when it was bad, and know how to survive. Hopefully the newer folks have the wits about them.
The death toll is now up to 57. Piracy, tribal feud, warlord disagreement, jihad, terrorism. Just words. Evil is another.
I recall my visit to the Phillipines, Subic and ‘po city. We went to the bank to change from US dollars to Phillipino Peso and I was standing in line while being wtached by a man in each corner of the bank each armed, two had M-1 Carbines, one had a Thompson M-1 and one had the biggest, ugliest double barreled shotgun I have ever seen. I ask an old hand what the artillery was for and he said, Moro’s, Huk,s and bandits.
Po city was one of the worst places I ever saw and I was deployed three times OCONUS and saw some real shatholes.
I once took a trip there to Clarke and was amazed at the serene beauty of the Phillipines outside and away from the military bases. The kids along the way took great delight at throwing water obtained by rope and buckets from the streams and rivers along the way and splashing us as we drove by.
The driver of the bus was armed, We were not.
Perhaps it wpould have been different had we been in muslim controlled areas.
33. 2×4. Don’t mistake my meaning. If there is a group that I fit into it is gunclutcher. I simply use that term as a handle to label a group that some think describes a clan/tribe in our culture. The gunclutchers are much closer to our core culture and are much more benign and tolerant than the left crazies. So far they haven’t burned down any ski resorts, suv dealerships, or housing subdivisions. On the other hand retrograde elements of that culture have murdered abortion doctors, burned abortion clinics, burned black churchs (maybe), and protested at military funerals. Both elements, greenes and clutchers, have zealot elements that need to disappear for us to maintain a merit based civil society.
We also collectively need to make disappear the culture of grievence/victimization that has risen among us. Maybe Oprah going off the air will hasten that.
20. JMH:
A large part of the Filipino nation exists overseas. It is the country of the middle class, a population with a dozen different nationalities and a shared culture. It consists of people with the wit and the skill to get the hell out of Dodge.
After reading this post, I’m baffled as to why you ever wanted to leave. Seems like such and interesting place to live…
As to the Republic of the Philippines, that is the name given to the spoils system of the former upper classes, who have a peculiar symbiotic relationship with the poor. The only way I can explain it is to think of the worst aspects of the Democratic Party bossism allied with the worst elements of dependency. The Republic of the Philippines is the Kingdom of Boss Tweed in a tropic setting.
And now the Chicago political machine is trying to run the US in the same manner. The “elites” having impoverished the poor, must somehow redirect the poor’s anger, and so make scapegoats out of the middle class. It’s no fun being a Kulak.
I think you answered your own question; interesting is a much more fun place to read about than to inhabit. For dwelling, select boring every time.But then, I’m a furry-toed hobbit who has had his adventures. YMMV.
At every election, plus July 4, I toast the Miracle of Independence Hall. Every time an outgoing administration steps down, and a new one comes in, without any need for bloodshed, I look at my history books and become amazed all over again.
We live in the shining city on the hill.
Bill
If Ireland (which was as feud driven as the Philippines, only a lot colder and with even worse food and cooking) could not be other than what it was (a very colorful failure) it is folly to expect anything out of the Philippines or its people.
Uh, Whiskey: Ireland has been known as the “Celtic Tiger” for about a decade now because of its vigorous economy — a dramatic change from centuries of poverty. The recent financial meltdown has put a serious dent in Ireland’s economy, but it ain’t the old, charming, barefoot kids Ireland anymore.
After reading this post, I’m baffled as to why you ever wanted to leave. Seems like such and interesting place to live…
But you eventually have to become one of recognizable “types” and live within that skin. The readily available ones were:
1. Corrupt politician
2. Jesuit-educated and enlightened tycoon, strongly affiliated with the church but not particularly religious
3. Wholly insane, formerly criminal preacher
4. Impoverished leftist academic and journalist
5. Dotty art-house intellectual
6. Dirt poor manual laborer
7. World-class criminal with military connections
8. Military or police officer with criminal connections
9. Upstanding, inspirational clergyman
Although I haven’t proved it, my guess is that these are with variations the choices on offer in every Third World Country, perhaps in every country. I’m not good enough to be #’s 2 or 9. Can’t wear a suit without it itching. I find it too ridiculous to be 1, 3, 4 or 5. Couldn’t keep a straight face. The problems with numbers 7 and 8 are that I’d probably find myself feeling sorry for the a-go-go dancers at the nightly drinkathons. I guess I could have become number 6, but I was too chicken.
So I became what in comparative terms might be termed a “failure”; perhaps not in absolute terms, but certainly with respect to the potential for good and evil. Something blocked the full “directness” of experience; some shadow made simple hates, joys and loves impossible. When I get to Saint Peter I won’t be able to boast that I put together the 10th largest sardine factory in the world; nor that I ran clean elections; nor that I stole a billion dollars. My excuse will be the cats, the flowers and the fascination of water rippling outward in a pond I remember in my grandfather’s house. At play in the fields of the Lord.
W.
When St. Pete greats you, you will be able to boast of the best club in the world. Not to mention all your hidden real life virtues. Your clear-eyed view of the Phillipines, offers us a chilling view of what awaits if we lose our central core, and become a place of feuding tribes.
An example of feuding is what happened after the heavy yoke of communism was lifted in the Caucasus. Almost as soon as they were free Armenians and Azerbaijani were at each others throats. I thought at the time; it was like two armies, frozen in time, unfrozen after 200 years, fighting as if no time had passed. Communism had only delayed the battle.
One advantage of being a Calvinist is awareness utter depravity tis our natural state. So we are not surprised when evil crawls from under the rock. Civilization is a very thin veneer. The noble savage is a crock.
On a sadder note, my 20 year old cat Ninja has just died, now there is true sorrow. A wise soul, he will greet you and your cats when you arrive in heaven. So in the midst of all recent horror, his death is the one i feel the sharpest. It is those who are close to us we grieve. That is why tribes are so strong. Why Jesus message to love those who hate us is such a strange message, but so necessary..
P/45; so sorry to hear that –it does really hurt to lose a friend, no way around it.
RE: the Filipino diaspora
“A large part of the Filipino nation exists overseas. It is the country of the middle class, a population with a dozen different nationalities and a shared culture. It consists of people with the wit and the skill to get the hell out of Dodge.”
Almost without exception, all the Filipinos, and those of Filipino descent, I have met have been honest, kind, hard working, and loyal. The islands’ loss has been our gain.
Unfortunately, that also leaves us with the question: how can a stable and free nation be maintained when the backbone of its civil society has left for a better future?
I’m with Darren in #32–it’s a grim necessity if it comes to that, but too many have no idea of the cost over the long term. Let’s hope the left has jumped the gun with O and that the pushback will be sufficient for a time…
docbill (#40)–protested at military funerals? Surely you don’t think Phelps is one of us, in his heart of hearts, do you?
#30 Pastorius,
Wrong wrong wrong. This was simply one gangster’s brutal reaction to having his authority challenged.
We see this on the highways and streets of Chicago, New York, Los Angeles etc. A ganglord is challenged and people die and similarly there is little regard on the innocent, seems to me the likes of El Rukn, Gangster Disciples, Le Emme, The Vagos, Sons of Silence et al are not at all Muslim, but you get in between them and $ and they will kill and all around you.
The Islamic things fits though in an indirect fashion.
The unrest created by groups such as the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) led to the creation of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) — which created the lawless atmosphere that created the viciousness demonstrated in Maquindanao.
Even without the establishment of the ARMM Malacañang would probably still have little influence there, but I would think without the ARMM this massacre would not have occurred.
I watched the estabishment of the ARMM, which BTW was in fulfillment of the Tripoli agreement which Marcos had negotiated with the MNLF to get them to lay down their weapons. After Cory came into office there was a more than good faith attempt to give the MNLF what it wanted — the idea being that since it was part of the anti-Marcos coalition and its demands were “just” demands, then maybe they ought to have their autonomous region.
It was seen as a comprehensive solution to the problem in much the same way that the Land for Peace or Roadmap to Peace is seen as such, though of course, I would be presumptuous to generalize going from the specific to the general, but I am on solid ground going the other way. In the post-Marcos government it was seen as the Roadmap to Peace.
I was a consultant to the process in those days, having nothing to do with policy. My job was to look at the occasional massacre and talk to the guys on the ground. But the deal was set. Nur Misauri would be bought off and that would be that. Except it didn’t work that way. No sooner had Misuari been given his position and budget than the other warlords started forming their own groups. MILF, Abu Sayyaf — they all claim to be spokesmen of Muslim people — not the corrupt MNLF. But the MNLF was once young and hungry. Damn near took Jolo in 1974. The capital was down to a bunch of Philippine Marines holed up on a hill.
They were saved by the Philippine Air Force and Navy in their finest moment. Fortunately the Navy and Air Force were still not completely corrupted by Marcos then and that story is a remarkable one. The Air Force had every antiquity that could fly in Mactan the next day. It must have looked like Terry and the Pirates. Anyway …
The long and short of it is that if the Philippine government bought off the MILF and the Abu Sayyaf and Allah knows who else, the situation wouldn’t change. Yet another bunch of thugs would rise in their place. Another group of freedom fighters. There is no roadmap to peace that doesn’t go through the culture of a people. I think the destiny of Filipino Muslims is entirely theirs and they are welcome to it. But millions want no part of it. The ideal situation would be if they could have some giant island somewhere and be left to create their own sharia and Islamic civilization and we could just forget about it.
But that’s not going to happen and so on it goes. Human folly has no end. Just make sure you tiptoe through life carefully and try not to catch the bullet until you are about 85 years old. After which it’s ok. You’ve run far enough.
Eleven more bodies found at Philippine massacre site
—
I add my voice in praise of the Cat.
Some years back, a Manila columnist said that the ARMM (Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao)is the most expensive real estate in the Philippines. Close to 2/3 of the Armed Forces are deployed in Mindanao, mostly fighting a secessionist war. I would argue that the situation in Mindanao might be one where it is better to live separately in peace than together in war; let the Moros (Muslims) have their own country. They never wanted to be part of the Republic of the Philippines; they were never part, and rightly so, of the organic development of Filipino nationhood. There is Filipinas, the nation of mainstream Filipinos that is held together by a common Hispanic-Christian heritage, and the Republic that also includes the Moros–for now–who don’t feel part of the Philippine state. Moros disdain being referred to as “Filipinos”; that would be analogous to a “Turkish Armenian”. The Moros should learn to live with this historical fact: The Philippines is a secular state that admits of various religious persuasions; it is, however, a country whose national culture has its origins in, and is informed and inspired by, its Hispanic and Christian heritage.
#53 Willy,
Mindanao is an agriculturally rich land, and in and around Mindanao the black stuff is thought to be found in fairly significant amounts.
Just consider the name of the suspected perp: “Datu Unsay Mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr”. There’s a palimpsest of cultural influences if ever there was one. Datu. Mayor. Junior. Consider one of the guys who died, AP stringer Alejandro “Bong” Reblando, 53 years of age.
I don’t know either of them, but I can imagine the terrain and say something about the typical “Mayor” and the typical newsman. The Mayor will be an improbable character straight out of Joseph Conrad. The newsman would be a fairly respected man in the community, but a poor man. Well educated by local standards and a raconteur; with a lot of nerve and a fund of stories. Reblando would have had maybe five or six working years left in him. I’m glad he got a position at the Bulletin and hope they pay his family a little something.
I think the 2nd ID will be the unit around there. Them plus odds and ends of everything. The detachments in them parts are dusty things, a mixture of pure boredom and occasional mayhem. The troops are lean enough, but sometimes the senior noncoms (at least back when) waddled around with beer bellies, oddments of uniform and flip-flops. Maybe it’s better now.
You wouldn’t blame them. They get paid next to nothing. The government owes them back salaries. They live off rice rations and a few cans of sardines, plus the odd goat. It’s a measure of how poor people are that the kids in the ville dream of being these impoverished soldiers.
Some guys told me, last time I was back, that they were eternally grateful for US combat support because Americans would actually fly them out of the battlefield to the hospital. The Philippines often lacks the money to do that. One of my buddies, who recovered bodies in commercial crashes when they happened, told me of how a Philippine Air Force helo sat in La Union waiting for gas so it could pick up the victims of crash in Bontoc. The poor pilot was actually thinking about gassing it up with his own money.
And what do you suppose the politicians in Manila, especially the leftist ones worry about? Whether the US are technically avoiding roles that would violate the law. The politicians don’t give a damn about the soldiers, about the people. They don’t give a damn about the Muslims either. Junior, huh?
In reality, handsome is as handsome does. I think people soon enough discover that all these labels, like “white man”, imperialist, “my Muslim brother”, my this, or my that, don’t matter a lick. You go with the man you can trust. Sometimes you will feel closer to a certain category of human being, even if he is on the “other side”; and with all the backstabbing and double dealing going on — the police chief is one of the suspects in this massacre — just who is on the other side is often a matter of opinion.
Well, I’m sorry for the newsman. No more beers. No more takeaway containers of pancit for the kids. He wrote 30. As for the Datu, well I don’t think they can fry him, though they’ll probably hold on to him for appearances sake. It makes you believe in God, if nothing else does. Because there is no justice within the circles of this world. So you do your best and simply hope that not a sparrow falls to earth; and not a newsman’s child’s tears are forgotten by the Father, because Manila doesn’t give a damn.
presbypoet,
my 20 year old cat Ninja has just died
My sympathy on the passing of your friend the honest carnivore. While my four footed friend does not share my appreciation I believe that cats are better judges of character than dogs are. On occasion I have advised young ladies that if their cat hisses at a gentleman caller (and yes I talk that way) then they should get him out the door as fast as possible. A dog licking someone’s hand may just mean they recently handled bacon.
Wishing all a good Turkey Day. We have so many turkeys these days to give thanks for.
To be blogged under the title “Judging Character.”
Ah, Wretchard, ‘At Play In the Fields of The Lord’, one of Peter Mathiessen’s great works – a look into the Low Life culture, alongside the DoGood culture, displaced into the 3rd world – I long for Louis Moon’s moral clarity as he rides his dugout into the new day….
For more interesting local info on culture in the Philippines see this Belmont Club post:
http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2008/03/spaceships-statesmanship-forgotten.html
The video is priceless.
#54 Marcus Aurelius,
Granting the existence of the black stuff in Mindanao, most of it are in areas where Christians are the majority.(I do consulting work for mining companies.)I haven’t heard of any major mining/mineral investment in the Moro areas; who would put money there? The Moros are not even 25% of Mindanao’s population. What do mainstream Filipinos in Mindanao have to lose if the Moros are given their own country? I agree with Wretchard: the destiny of Moros is in their hands. Let them have their own country where they can run their own lives. And let Christian Filipinos live their lives in peace.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A45190-2004Dec7?language=printer