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Muslims kill 21 Filipinos on way to vote

All the Islamic tools in the media - your future awaits you.
Attack on election convoy kills 21 Filipinos hat tip Hal

There was no claim of responsibility for the bloodshed in the predominantly Muslim region wracked by political tensions between rival clans.
The convoy of vans carrying about 40 people was hijacked in Maguindanao province, about 560 miles (900 kilometers) south of Manila, and army troops later found the bullet-riddled bodies of 13 women and eight men, regional military commander Maj. Gen. Alfredo Cayton said.
It was unclear if anyone survived the attack. An army and police search was under way for the other hostages.
The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines said at least 10 local reporters were part of the convoy. Their organizations failed to reach them, leading them to conclude they too were killed.
"Never in the history of journalism have the news media suffered such a heavy loss of life in one day," Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders said in a statement.
"The frenzied violence of thugs working for corrupt politicians has resulted in an incomprehensible bloodshed," it said.
The politician, Ismael Mangudadatu, was not in the convoy and said his wife called him by mobile phone shortly before she and her entourage were abducted.

"She said ... they were stopped by 100 uniformed armed men ... then her line got cut off," he said. He said his wife and relatives were among the dead.
Victims' relatives blamed political rivals in national elections slated for May 2010.

Philippine elections are particularly violent in the south because of the presence of armed groups, including Muslim rebels fighting for self-rule in the predominantly Roman Catholic nation, and political warlords who maintain private armies.

MANILA, Philippines – Dozens of gunmen hijacked a convoy carrying journalists, and family and supporters of a candidate for provincial governor, killing at least 21 of the travelers Monday in the southern Philippines' worst political violence in years.The decades-long Muslim insurgency has killed about 120,000 people since the 1970s. But a presidential adviser, Jesus Dureza, said Monday's massacre was "unequaled in recent history."
"There must be a total stop to this senseless violence," he said, recommending a state of emergency be imposed in the area to disarm all gunmen. "Anything else will not work."
About 100 gunmen were involved in the hijacking, military spokesman Lt. Col. Romeo Brawner said.
Also in the convoy were Mangudadatu's two sisters, followers and several local journalists. They were traveling to nearby Shariff Aguak township to file Mangudadatu's nomination papers for the position of governor of Maguindanao province, Brawner said.
Mangudadatu, vice mayor of Buluan township, accused political rivals belonging to a prominent clan for the massacre. Representatives of that family did not respond to the allegations.
Maguindanao is part of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, which was created as part of a 1996 peace agreement with a large Muslim rebel group.
Army troops went on full alert in Maguindanao to prevent retaliatory killings, Cayton said.

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2009/11/muslims-kill-2
1-filipinos-on-way-to-vote.html

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Twenty-one people who were among a group abducted in the southern Philippines have been killed by armed men.

Major General Alfredo Cayton said in a radio interview on Monday that the bodies had been found, but could not confirm who carried out the killings.

"Our army troopers have reached the area where the vehicles and those held were taken ... they were shot by the armed men," Cayton said.

"We have recovered 21 bodies. Our men are continuing to scour the area to find the others," he said.

Hostage-takers earlier seized 29 people, among them the wife of Esmael Mangundadatu, a local mayor, his aides, supporters and journalists.

Military officials said Mangundadatu's wife was among the dead.

The journalists taken captive were accompanying Mangundadatu's group to a local elections office to file his candidacy for governorship of the predominantly Muslim Maguindanao province in the autonomous Mindanao region in the May 2010 vote when they were captured by the kidnappers.

The Mangundadatu family is known to have a long-running feud with the family of Andal Ampatuan, Maguindanao's incumbent governor.

Marga Ortigas, Al Jazeera's correspondent in the Philippines, said the families were well known to be political rivals.

"This particular governor position is hotly contested because it is the seat of the autonomous region of Muslim Mindanao and the incumbent has been there for years."

Lieutenant Colonel Romeo Brawner, a military spokesman, said that the hostage-takers had links to Amputuan.

Brawner said there were about 100 armed men, most of whom were deputised as government guards by Ampatuan's family.

He said the leader of the group that staged the kidnapping was one of Ampatuan's sons.

Ampatuan was not immediately reachable for comment.

Ortigas noted that Maguindanao was one of the most politically tense provinces in the country.

"It is the site of three different armed insurgent movements," she said.

"Elections in the Philippines over the last few years are becoming more and more violent, particularly in the area."

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Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Don't Say Muslim!
It really became obvious a few weeks ago after the massacre at Fort Hood. It seemed the journalists of this country were stumbling all over themselves to NOT say that the gunman was a devout Muslim. In their politically correct brains, they seem to have a tape that repeats over and over again, "All religions are the same...all religions are the same!"

This present case of insanity is what causes long lines at every airport around the country...as we ask 80 yr old white women from Des Moines to kindly remove their shoes so we can verify that they haven't planted plastic explosives in their shoes.

NEWSFLASH!!! THERE HAS NEVER BEEN AN 80 YR OLD WHITE WOMAN WHO HAS BEEN A SUICIDE BOMBER!! I REPEAT....NEVER!!!

In fact 99% of suicide bombers have been males between the ages of 15 and 30 who share another common trait.....are you ready....THEY ARE ALL DEVOUT MUSLIMS and usually have darker complexions....which means they are from Middle Eastern descent.

Today, the breaking headlines are in the Philippines. It seems that there was a massacre that had something to do with elections. So CNN is reporting it as political violence.

Manila, Philippines (CNN) -- Search teams pulled 24 more bodies out of shallow graves in the Philippines Tuesday bringing the death toll to 46 in "a gruesome massacre" ahead of provincial elections, state-run media reported.
The Philippine government declared a state of emergency in southern parts of the country following Monday's shooting, which government officials called the worse pre-election violence in the country's history.

But check this out...it's not until about half way through the article that you get this tiny sentence;

Maguindanao is a province in Mindanao, a Muslim autonomous region out of the control of the central government. (bold print is mine)

Read full article here; http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/11/24/philippines.emergency.host
ages/

So what does CNN not want to tell us?? That the world is exploding with violence....and that of the 400+ armed conflicts going on around the world right now....almost all of them have SOMETHING TO DO WITH VIOLENT MUSLIMS!

It's the elephant in the room that the journalists can't get themselves to talk about. Why?? I think it's two reasons. One is that the journalists are so overcome with tolerance and acceptance that they are incapable of connecting dots. But even more importantly, I believe the journalists are afraid to put "Muslim" in the headline because they know that the CNN office in Jakarta or Spain could be firebombed or their reporters killed.

They know what happens when angry Muslim mobs take to the streets.

So what we are now witnessing is Islam taking down the freedom of the press brick by brick...as the media has learned it is much safer to, "Don't say Muslim or Islam."

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Clan warfare blamed for Philippine killings
The killing of dozens of people in the southern Philippines has been blamed on clan warfare, and analysts suggest punishment of the perpetrators will be difficult. The BBC's Vaudine England reports.


This is the worst case of pre-poll violence the Philippines has seen
This part of Mindanao is ruled by clan warfare - local journalists describe the powers-that-be as warlords.

One of the men just made a widower by these killings, Ismael or Toto Mangudadatu, is vice-mayor of a small town in Maguindanao province called Buluan, but this underestimates his importance.

His cousin is governor of neighbouring Sultan Kudarat province, where an uncle is congressman in the ruling party of President Gloria Arroyo.

He was hoping to register as a candidate for governor of Maguindanao province, considered a bold move by local commentators as Maguindanao has long been controlled by the Ampatuan clan.

A weak central government and deep-seated patronage politics ... allows political families to thrive

Marites Vitug, Analyst
Datu Andal Sr, the patriarch of Ampatuan, has more than a dozen sons, each of whom, with related sons-in-law, have been given town mayorships in Maguindanao or other positions of power.

He is of the local nobility and gained power and influence by closely aligning his area to President Arroyo. About 90% of the votes in his district went to Mrs Arroyo in the previous presidential elections.

Philippine analysts believe the Mangudadatu bid for power in a second province was too much for the Ampatuan clan to handle, contributing to a dramatic rise in tension in the area in the run-up to the May 2010 elections.

Unprecedented

It is normal for clans to have large private armies of scores and in some cases hundreds of well-armed, ill-regulated men.

In Mindanao, this mix is made more dangerous by the decades of Muslim and communist insurgencies. This has given more power and budgets to local police and military operations, and led to the formation of volunteer squads intended to assist in counter-insurgency.



However, budgets are never enough and the local powers-that-be usually add their financial support thereby creating new groups of loyal, armed men.

"We're a soft state, with a weak central government and deep-seated patronage politics," says Marites Vitug, an analyst of Philippine politics and author of a book on Mindanao.

"This allows political families to thrive, and to accumulate the balance of terror in their favour," she added.

However it is not known who was responsible for these killings - and for the reported mutilations.

Savagery

Election violence is not unusual, even including the assassination of rivals. But this incident has shocked all observers for its scale and apparent brutality.

"Even to our enemies, we don't do this, not to women, not the mutilations. Even the most violent of our warlords, no-one can imagine this," said Amina Rasul, director of the Philippine Council for Islam and Democracy.

It is believed the delegation led by Mr Mangudadatu's wife included journalists and lawyers from rights groups to help ensure its safety.

According to long-standing unofficial rules of "rido", the local term for clan war or vendetta, assassinations avoided women, and avoided non-relatives.

The Mangudadatu clan originates in Maguindanao, as does the Ampatuan clan, but moved earlier to nearby Sultan Kudarat province to build its own power base.

"No-one really knows what the clans are fighting over," added Ms Rasul.

The rule of law has been supplanted by the rule of lawlessness

Amina Rasul, Philippine Council for Islam and Democracy
The area is described as resource-rich but underdeveloped, and analysts said it was a fair assumption that corruption was rife over aid and development funding.

Meanwhile, Mrs Arroyo has expressed her shock at the killings, and vowed to get to the bottom of them.

But both clans in this case are allied to Mrs Arroyo, limiting analysts' expectations of any effective response from the central government.

The larger issue is the rule of law is dependent on powerful local interests - a fact that allows local violence to proliferate and means investigation of this crime will be extremely difficult.

"The rule of law has been supplanted by the rule of lawlessness," said Ms Rasul.

Ms Vitug agrees that the judiciary has failed to tackle clan wars in various parts of the Philippines.

"There have been some attempts at mediation - until it becomes too dangerous," she said.

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Piracy, banditry and kidnapping have been part of life in these islands for centuries; for the last thirty years, groups of Muslim guerrillas have waged a continuous war against the Government of the Philippines.

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