The video is priceless.

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.”

Based in General Santos City, Reblando covered the southern Philippines for The AP from the late 1980s to the early 2000s. He was recently named a regular staffer for Manila Bulletin daily.

Reblando covered the Mindanao Island region during a period of rising tensions between Muslims and Christians and rampant criminality, said former AP Manila Bureau Chief Robert H. Reid.

“Reblando knew everybody in the area, from military commanders, to Muslim militants, businessmen and politicians,” Reid said. “Even though he was a devout Roman Catholic, he had a large number of friends in the Muslim community, whom he could tap as sources.”

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.

Mindanao is an agriculturally rich land, and in and around Mindanao the black stuff is thought to be found in fairly significant amounts.

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I add my voice in praise of the Cat.

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.