Free Republic

MANILA, Philippines – Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte warned Sunday that he could be "50 times" more brutal than Muslim militants who stage beheadings and said he could even "eat" the extremists if they're captured alive by troops. Duterte has repeatedly threatened drug suspects with death, but he raised his shock rhetoric to a new level as president when he said in a speech during the opening of a national sports tournament what he could do to terrorists who have staged beheadings and other gruesome attacks. Duterte ordered troops to kill fleeing Muslim militants behind a foiled attack in the central...

... He succeeded in getting into the the city of Jolo where he seized a member of the 17th United States Infantry, and promptly disemboweled him. The murderer was caught by a sentry on guard ... It was decided to make an example of the Juramentado. Accordingly, a grave was dug without the walls of the city. Into this the murderer was unceremoniously dropped. A pig was then suspended above the grave by his hind legs, and the throat of the animal cut. Soon the body lay immersed in gore, the direst calamity that could happen to a Moro, his...

US Soldiers Pose with the Bodies of Moro (Muslim) Insurgents, Philippines; circa 1906 On March 7, 1906, US troops under the command of Major General Leonard Wood massacred as many as 1,000 Filipino Muslims, known as Moros, who were taking refuge at Bud Dajo, a volcanic crater on the island of Jolo in the southern Philippines. The First Battle of Bud Dajo, also known as the Bud Dajo Massacre, was a counter insurgency action fought by the United States Army against Moros in March 1906, during the Moro Rebellion phase of the Philippine - American War. After the United States...

THE WISDOM OF KNOWING YOUR ENEMY  "In the years preceding World War I, General Pershing was commander of the American forces in the Philippines.  The small Moslem community on the island nation began to wreak havoc against the Philippine government and American forces.  The American troops captured a large group of these terrorists.  During the interrogation by the Military Court, the fanatics were heard to repeatedly shout, 'Allah Achbar!  Allah Achbar! Jihad!  The Philippines are the lands of Islam!'    "Pershing ordered the Amalekites executed one by one in the presence of the whole group. (The author is referring to ...

MANILA, Philippines – More than 30 police commandos were killed in a clash with Muslim insurgents Sunday in the southern Philippines in the biggest single-day combat loss for Philippine forces in many years, officials said.

Shocking enough are the allegations that a long-perceived unassuming state senator tried brokering an international arms deal with military-style rifles and rocket launchers, but Leland Yee may have narrowly escaped an even more ominous label: supporter of terrorism. Yee, whose arrest after an FBI undercover sting shook the California political world last week, would likely have been charged with aiding terrorists if not for a bureaucratic label missing from the militant Filipino group that he is accused of sourcing for an international arms deal, counterterrorism experts told this newspaper. His ties to the group, whose leader has said he personally...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Suspended state Sen. Leland Yee pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to bribery and gun charges two weeks after he was arrested as part of an FBI sting targeting political corruption and an alleged organized crime syndicate based in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Yee entered his pleas in federal court to one count of conspiracy to traffic in firearms without a license and illegally import firearms; one count of conspiring to defraud citizens of honest services; and six counts of engaging in a scheme to defraud citizens of honest services. The San Francisco Democrat is accused of conspiring...

The stunning arrest of veteran Democrat Leland Yee will erode, at least temporarily, Democratic dominance in the very blue Golden State. Yee, arrested after a five-year FBI sting operation, faces federal charges related to conspiracy to traffic in firearms without a license and accepting campaign funds in exchange for political favors. An LA Times headline read, “Even old hands are stunned by Yee allegations.” “If there ever has been a more nauseating corruption scandal in Sacramento, I’m not aware of it, writes one observer. “The notion of a legislator masquerading as a gun control crusader while offering to help a...

VIDEO. Philippines, Muslim rebels hope for lasting peace with new deal.

Highlights: All slavery in Asia and the Orient is purely Islamic by origin. Child slaves are generally a Muslim thing. The Moro Arab-Islamic savages / pirates ravaged every coast... Looming Moslems' holy war against the Yankee Christians. ___Exciting experiences in our wars with Spain and the Filipinos - Pages 363-66 - William McKinley, Marshall Everett - Book Publishers Union, 1899 - History - 526 pages http://books.google.com/books?id=8j0OAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA363&lpg=PA363Full text of "... Exciting experiences in our wars with Spain, and the Filipinos ... THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS. p.363 [...] The native population may be classifled as Negritos, Mohammedan Malays, pagan Malays and civilized Malays,...

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) hailed Sunday the United States Congress's passage of a resolution recognizing the commencement of Ramadan as the holy month of fasting and spiritual renewal. In a statement on its website (www.luwaran.com), the MILF described the US Congress' resolution as an "epoch-making" act that will help stop bigotry and racism against 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide. “This is indeed an epoch-making for the rest of the world to follow suit and recognize this holy month observed by fasting by more than one billion Muslims all over the world," said Sheikh Mohammad Muntassir, chairman of the MILF...

Recent events in Tunisia, Lebanon and Egypt spell a dangerous new trend in the region. There have been major developments in Tunisia, Lebanon and Egypt, each of which is of tremendous importance. In Tunisia, a popular uprising fueled by unemployment, economic suffering and long-term discontent has overthrown the dictator, but not necessarily the dictatorship. In 55 years of independence, the country has been governed by two dictators, the current one being Zine al-Abedin Ben Ali, who has been president for 23 years and was a key power in the regime even before that. Is this going to spread? Does it...

ROME -- Italian police have arrested two suspected members of the Red Brigades terror group, including one believed to have been involved in the organization's most notorious act, the 1978 kidnapping and killing of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro. Rome police on Wednesday confirmed the arrests of Rita Algranati e Maurizio Falessi and said the two were in custody in the Italian capital. No other details were released. Italian news reports said the two were arrested at Cairo airport in a joint operation by Italian and Egyptian police. The two, who had been fugitive for years, were carrying fake IDs,...

A former Italian president says his country had allowed Palestinian terror groups to roam free in exchange for not attacking Italian targets. Francesco Cossiga's admission confirmed claims of such a deal revealed last week in an interview in the Corriere della Sera newspaper with Bassam Abu Sharif, the former chief of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. In a letter published Aug. 15 in Corriere della Sera, Cossiga described a "secret 'non-belligerence pact' between the Italian state and Palestinian resistance organizations, including terrorist groups" such as the PFLP. The deal, he said, had been devised by Prime Minister...

MANILA - A controversial Muslim congressman was the target of a powerful bomb blast outside the Philippine House of Representatives that killed him and two others, police said this morning. Wahab Akbar, one of the most influential figures in the Philippines' restive south, died in hospital last night as doctors fought to save his life. A driver and a congressional aide were also killed. Nine other people were injured in the blast, which hit the south lobby of the sprawling complex in the capital Manila just minutes after most congressmen had left for the evening. Manila police Chief Geary Barias...

Excerpt - MANILA, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Muslim separatists in the southern Philippines are holding Manila's military chief, the head of the government's truce panel, a colonel and an undetermined number of soldiers hostage, senior military sources said on Saturday. Members of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) were refusing to let Brigadier-General Ben Dolorfino, the commander of military forces in the capital, and Ramon Santos, government undersecretary for the peace process with the MNLF, leave their camp until their jailed founder was released. Local media reported that more than 20 senior military, defence and government officials were being held...

A senior US official on Friday raised the prospect of increasing US military deployments in Mindanao to confront Moro extremists who Washington says threaten regional stability. US Special Forces troops are known to deployed on a rotational basis in the Muslim southwestern portion of the former US colony. Although the 1987 Constitution bars them from actual combat, they have been providing intelligence, equipment, and training to elite troops combating extremist groups such as the Abu Sayyaf and their Jemaah Islamiyah allies from neighboring Indonesia. "We have a very good pace and rhythm of exercises. I think there may be...

The Philippine National Police on Tuesday said the alleged plot to sow terror in Metro Manila similar to the September 11 bombings in the United States has been thwarted with the arrest of three suspects over the weekend. "Alam naman nating lahat na ang target talaga is Metro Manila so nagpakalat na kami ng information. (An all-out information campaign was conducted because we all know that Metro Manila is a prime target)," PNP chief Director General Oscar Calderon told a DZMM interview. Police and military agents nabbed Razak Macarimbang, Wahad Sandigan and Sammy Gampong before boarding a SuperFerry vessel bound...

Why have we chosen “The Jihadist” as the title for this column? We need to reclaim the meaning of true Jihad from those who have misused and abused this significant Islamic injunction. What is Jihad? Each language has unique words which can’t be translated precisely. Respected Muslim scholar Dr. Abdulaziz Sachedina defines Jihad as “a sincere and noticeable effort (for good); an all true and unselfish striving for spiritual good. …Jihad as presented in the Quran and any of the other scriptures implies the striving of spiritual good. This Jihad particularly involves “change in one’s self and mentality.”

MANILA (AP) - About 500 Muslim rebels have withdrawn from two Mindanao strongholds to let government forces launch an offensive against another Muslim group -- the al-Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf, a rebel spokesman said Sunday. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front guerrillas, nearly 300 of whom were armed, withdrew from Talayan and Guindolongan Thursday to allow the jungle offensive to go ahead and avoid accidental clashes with government troops, rebel spokesman Eid Kabalu said. The guerrillas plan to return to their camps Monday unless the military asks for an extension, Kabalu said.