News Roundup

The FBI Debating Union

This is not exactly the kind of anti-terrorism counteroffensive predicted, but it has certain elements which were anticipated. The first is that America is challenging the terror network at its root: where the money and motivation comes from; on its physical and spiritual homeground. This story describes how the FBI is conducting a kind of metaphysical debate with terror in Saudi mosques. This is something sophisticated Europe has never done and indeed, can never conceive. But ... but ... how can this be? Everyone knows the Americans are hicks. Hicks that can go to the moon, develop a working theory of teleportation, discover the Big Bang. But they must be hicks. They don't have the proper Marxist education.

Manila Folders

Across the Pacific, the price of three dozen civilian lives has been set at less than two weeks. The Republic of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front will kiss and make up before grass has had a chance to grow on the graves of civilians killed in a rampage by Islamists in the town of Siocon, Zamboanga del Norte.

COTABATO CITY-Twelve days into a military counteroffensive ordered by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the Muslim separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) on Wednesday declared a 10-day unilateral ceasefire starting June 2 to pave the way for the resumption of peace talks in war-torn Mindanao.

MILF spokesperson Eid Kabalu said the guerrillas would halt their attacks on Monday and give the military 10 days to pull out from their strongholds. The 12,000-strong rebel group also demanded the dropping of murder charges against MILF leaders accused of ordering recent bomb attacks.

Naturally, the peace lobby is estatic.

"Great news ... the CBCP is hoping the government would reciprocate," CBCP president and Cotabato Archbishop Orlando Quevedo, OMI, told the Inquirer in a phone interview. "The return to their homes of more than 200,000 evacuees becomes more probable."

As this blog has often pointed out, the Armed Forces of the Philippines do not possess a victory option against the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. But the peace option so beloved by Archbishop Quevedo does not exist either. Therefore the "peace negotiations" which will shortly be recommenced will fail in a welter of blood and gore just as soon as the Moro Islamics have restocked and redeployed again. Bookmark this blog. Count on it.

Although legal considerations never counted for much in the Philippines, one wonders how mass murderers can routinely be forgiven for their depredations. Don't the victims of Siocon have certain rights? Are the lives of the dead worthless. The answer, apparently is yes. In my debates with the Left, I have often pointed out that it was easy to prove the existence of the Devil by simply pointing out the existence of the Party; and that the existence of the Devil necessarily implied the existence of God, inasmuch as not everyone believed in the Party. Hell exists, and there is a special place in it for the abettors of the killing of children. We are watching people vie for that place.