The American media gave some notice to the massacre of 57 in the Philippines this past week.The New York Times did its usual best at not reporting the real news, as shown by this article that appeared in Saturday's Times.
What is really going on here?
The locale of the massacre is on the Philippine island of Mindanao, which is largely in the hands of Muslims, some of whom play ball with the national parties in the mostly Roman Catholic country. Other Muslims have been waging an insurgent war for decades to make the Philippines totally Islamic, starting with Mindanao.
One of the Muslim clans which rules in the Mindanao province of Maguindanao with the support of the national government did not like the idea of a fellow Muslim mounting a challenge for governor in next year's election. As the challenger's supporters were driving to the provincial capital to file his election certificate in a six-car convoy (which included the candidate's wife), they were ambushed by about 100 supporters of the ruling Ampatuan clan or tribe. Those in the convoy and two other cars that happened to be following the convoy were taken a couple of miles off the road and all 57 captives were brutally maimed and murdered. Army and police alerted to the ambush by witnesses located the massacre site before the Ampatua family had finished the job. Using a provincial government back-hoe, three massive holes in the ground had been dug for the bodies and vehicles and some had been filled and covered, but 22 bodies will still on the ground when the authorities arrived. The attackers had been warned by cell phone and had fled the scene.
Of the 57 victims, about 16 were women and 30 were journalists who joined the convoy to report on the filing of the electoral challenge.
Later, some participants in the massacre, who had pangs of conscience, reported to authorities what had happened, which led to the arrest of the son of the provincial governor.
A Philippine TV station posted a timeline on the internet, which can be accessed by clicking here.
Details are still coming out, as in the Times story linked, which fails to note the Islamic culture of vicious violence that is embedded in Mindanao. The late Harvard historian Samuel P. Huntington, in advancing his theory in the early 1990s that the future would be marked by a "clash of civilizations," specifically referred to the "bloody borders" of Islam. Islam breeds not only a readiness to violence against infidels, but against "the other," including fellow Muslims of a different tribe or sect.
Read the Times piece and think about the brutality involved perpetrated by men who didn't even know their victims, including some who just happened to be in cars behind the official convoy of the challenger. There is what to a westerner appears to be a sick but gleeful use of violence deployed in the massacre, a terrorist warning to all who would challenge the clan that ugly things will happen to them and their followers should they even try.
Was it terrorism, the national government wonders. Of course it was. It is the stock and trade of true Islam that more and more is being revived as the teachings of what the Koran and Mohammed really mean are spread throughout the world by Saudi oil billions.
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