Bush's Philippine protege, Gloria Arroyo, killing off "leftists"

[Judi Lynn]

Rights Groups Say Military Is Behind Killings in Philippines

By SETH MYDANS, International Herald Tribune
Published: August 25, 2006



Alex Baluyut for The International Herald Tribune

Beatriz Perido, the local leader of a human rights
group, is in hiding because, she says, the military
“can kill me at any time.”


LUPAO, the Philippines — The two heavyset men with pistols said they had come to buy goats, but it was Beatriz Perido they were after. When her father, a farmer and clergyman, turned them away, she said, they told him, “You will receive the news that she has been killed.”

Ms. Perido is the local leader of a human rights group, and like many other community organizers and activists around the country she has gone into hiding to avoid what they say is a military-backed campaign of assassinations of leftists.

“I am on their order of battle,” said Ms. Perido, 34, referring to lists of names the military lets slip from time to time. “They can kill me at any time.”

Her organization, Karapatan, says more than 700 civilians, including more than 300 left-wing activists, have been killed around the country by “suspected security forces” in the past five years. Some were local government officials who represent a leftist political party that the military calls a Communist front organization.

In a report issued on Aug. 15, Amnesty International said “a politically motivated pattern of killings” of members of legal leftist groups was spreading, with 51 victims in the first six months of this year, compared with 66 in all of 2005.
(snip/...)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/25/world/asia/25filip.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[Turbineguy]

1. Whenever Marcos went anywhere

his security people killed somebody. It was usually some hapless jeepney driver or so.

"Shot while trying to escape," as they used to say.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Really! It would seem this may have been a trick he used to keep

people very afraid of him, is it possible?

The U.S. has ALWAYS backed true monsters who keep an iron claw on their citizens, yet the view we hold of ourselves has always been so favorable, so kind!

[Turbineguy]

3. I don't think it was a trick

as much as the approach to life by a man who tucked away an average of $100 million per year on a salary of 60,000 pesos per year.

I think it was the other way around. He was afraid of the people. Strangely enough, he was widely supported because he worked on things that affected, as his wife called them, "the Little People", petty crime and such. He even did things about corruption (at a certain level). He fired the entire Customs Dept. at Manila Airport because they were stealing stamps off letters. But his cronies fared much better...

In 1985 he borrowed $350 million from the World Bank and imported huge quantities of rice which he proceeded to give away for free. This did several things. It proved that he was a good guy and deserved to stay President. It collapsed the price of local rice ruining subsistence farmers. His cronies were able to buy up land at fire-sale prices. And there was lots of money to skim off the whole deal.

If he hadn't shot Aquino, he probably would have gotten away with it.

[FILAM23]

4. Having spent much time in the Philippines

and having many Filipino relatives (in-laws),
most people think things were much better off
under Marcos then they were before and/or since.

[tom_paine]

5. Is Arroyo and election thief and monster in the Bushevik mode?

I think it is highly likely.

It is also important to note what the Busheviks have in store for us as soon as things have transitioned a little further and the chains are a little tighter.

It isn't out of the question that it's already begun, on a smaller scale. Microbiologists and whistleblowers disappearing or suiciding with untraceable special bullets (see Cliff Baxter). Anthrax assassins allowed to target Enemies of the Bush State and then walk free, and on and on.

Wellstone and others...

The Phillipines is our future.

Just one or two more generation have to grow old and pass on. When the number of us who can remember what it was like to be free dwindle and grow feeble, I am guessing the Busheviks will then begin the Penultimate and Ultimate Transition. God alone knows what that would be, but I suspect it will have similarities to Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Imperial Rome, and the book "Farenheit 451".