Joshua Lipana

Great news in the Philippines.  As Inquirer.net reports:

MANILA, Philippines—Eight suspected members of a moribund communist rebel group were killed in an encounter with police and military troops in Rizal, Nueva Ecija province, early Friday, officials said.

Provincial police said the slain rebels belonged to the Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan (HMB, also known as Huks), the communist guerrilla army that was the precursor of the present-day New People’s Army (NPA).

Read the whole thing here. And to read a more about the communist insurgency in the Philippines, check out my article in The Objective Standard: “The Communist War against the Philippines and Why It Rages On.”

More violence in post-Mubarak Egypt. As the Associated Press reports:

Hundreds of Christians and Muslims hurled stones at one another in downtown Cairo on Sunday, hours after Muslim mobs set fire to a church and a Christian-owned apartment building in a frenzy of violence that killed 12 people and injured more than 200…

Muslim youths attacked a large crowd of Coptic Christian protesters marching from the headquarters of Egypt’s general prosecutor to the state television building overlooking the Nile, said Christian activist Bishoy Tamri. TV images showed both sides furiously throwing stones, including one Christian who held a large wooden cross in one hand while flinging rocks with another…

Hours earlier, mobs of ultraconservative Muslims attacked the Virgin Mary Church in the slum of Imbaba on the opposite side of the Nile. The attack was fueled by rumors that a Christian woman married to a Muslim man had been abducted by the church. Residents said a separate mob of youths armed with knives and machetes attacked an apartment building several blocks away with firebombs.

The “religion of peace” it seems is on its way to another genocide.

The United Nations is negotiating with communist and Islamist insurgencies in the Philippines in the hopes of making the insurgencies stop their recruitment of child soldiers. As Reuters reports:

The Philippines’ main Muslim separatist group has promised to hasten efforts to remove child soldiers from its ranks, the United Nations said on Friday, and it hopes to reach a similar deal with Maoist rebels. . . .

Army spokesman Arnulfo Burgos said about a dozen child soldiers fighting for the Maoists had been killed this year, with 121 captured and 215 having surrendered.

This is insane. Can we really expect organizations that engage in mass terrorism to keep their word?

The Islamists and communists have no respect for human lives and will continue to inflict atrocities on the Filipino people until they are wiped out of existence. Negotiations and appeasement will do nothing but further increase the lifespan of these totalitarian butchers.

The Filipino people should condemn the U.N’s legitimizing of the people who bomb them and send only one message to the totalitarian insurgents:  “Give up or die.”

(To read more about the situation in Philippines, see my article in the latest issue of The Objective Standard: Around the World: “The Communist War against the Philippines and Why It Rages On”)

Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party just won a a good majority in the recent Canadian election. As the Christian Science Monitor reports:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party won 167 seats, well past the 155 he needed to win a majority. After overseeing a series of weak coalition governments, Mr. Harper now has a strong mandate to push the traditionally centrist Canadian political agenda further to the right.

This is good news. Unfortunately, there is a new more sinsiter opposition facing the Conservatives. As the report also says, although the recent election

produced Canada’s first majority government in seven years. At the same time, it all but wiped out Canada’s traditional ruling party, the centrist Liberal Party, and propelled the historically marginal socialists to the important role of official opposition…

The New Democratic Party (NDP), a party with socialist roots, and its cheerful leader Jack Layton secured 103 seats, nearly tripling its strength in Parliament with a historically strong showing in Quebec. The NDP has played the role the role of Canada’s social conscience for decades but has never won more than 44 seats.

The rise of the socialists in the form of the NDP will be a very troubling matter for the already socialist Canada.  Hopefully Harper and the Conservatives can hold the line.

A potentially exciting story is developing in Russia. As the Christian Science Monitor reports:

As the political differences between Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev widen into a visible public rift, and each continues to insist on the wish to run for president in polls next year, some Russians are mulling a prospect that sounded like a fantasy just a few weeks ago: What if they faced off against each other in an open and fair election?…

“There are a number of voices now, both from liberal and conservative camps, that maintain it would be best to break with [the Putin system] and let the voters decide between them,” says Alexei Pushkov, anchor of Post Scriptum, Russia’s most popular TV public affairs program.

“If we had two candidates, Putin and Medvedev, with somewhat different political lines, that could create the basis for a genuine two party system in Russia. After all, these are authentic differences within Russian society,” Mr. Pushkov says. “Some favor the more traditional approach of Putin, while others are for the more liberal line that Medvedev pushes…. Whoever the next president would be, he would possess a new level of legitimacy. If it were Medvedev, he would be finally free from the bonds of the Putin system and able to chart his own course. If it were Putin, we would know that his victory was based on honest public support.”

Unfortunately, it also says in the article that Medvedev’s likely allies would be the socialists.  If this is true, Russia then sees two figures who upholds the supremacy of the state over the individual.   The battle would be confined only to details.

According to the U.N Global Warming would create 50 million “climate refugees” by… 2010. Instead of admitting their massive mistake however, they’ve began deleting stuff. Seems to be a common thing among environmentalists.

President Obama, and a whole host of other people, have supported various revolutions in the Middle East that clearly do not serve U.S interest. Another revolt is brewing. But this one is worthy of U.S support. As Craig Biddle writes:

The Green Movement in Iran… has been struggling—with no moral support from the Obama administration—to free the Iranian people from the religious dictatorship that oppresses them.

[T]here is some cause for hope…

As Foreign Policy reports, while the Green Movement was “drawn primarily from the ranks of the middle class, intelligentsia, and students” who sought freedom from the theocratic dictatorship, “the underclass, still loyal to the regime and Ahmadinejad, became known as the Blues, to underscore the fact that, to the extent that they had jobs, they were primarily engaged in blue-collar professions.” But now, “although the Greens and Blues were once split by socioeconomic and political lines, the parlous state of the economy is making the line between them less distinct: The Blues are going Green.”…

We should urge the Greens and the Blues to merge and form a unified “Teal Movement,” which the regime simply could not suppress. Unlike the situations in Libya, Egypt, and other countries in the Muslim world, regime change in Iran can only be good for the United States. The current regime is as anti-America and anti-West as a government can get, so there is no possible downside for us to regime change there.”

Finally! A brewing revolution that is actually in America’s interest! Unfortunately, for that reason alone, it has already been disqualified in Obama’s list of entities to support.

Islamists have killed many prominent people in Pakistan for challenging the country’s “Blaspheme Laws.”  As another one is killed, the CS Monitor reports:

About 1,000 mourners, including the top diplomats and the US ambassador, today attended a Roman Catholic funeral for Shahbaz Bhatti. The former head of the Ministry of Minorities was Pakistan’s sole Christian minister and the second Pakistani official slain in as many months for opposing the country’s blasphemy laws…

Critics believe the government’s strategy of distancing itself from liberal politicians who have campaigned for amendments in the blasphemy laws, which includes the death penalty for disrespect of Islam, has emboldened militants and will allow extremists to shape the country’s future. On Thursday, Pakistan’s representative to the UN called on other countries not to link the killing with blasphemy laws.

For a supposed U.S ally, Pakistan is certainly acting like one of its enemies.