Yes, Virginia, There Are Christian Terrorists

Even though Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden is already history, are Christian Terrorist Groups the new face of global and regional terror?

By: Ringo Bones

Back in July 22, 2011, an apparently lone white supremacist Christian Islamophobic neo-Nazi Jesus-Freak named Anders Behring Breivik had managed to terrorize the whole of Norway by undertaking two brazen attacks. The first one was an ammonium nitrate fuel oil bomb in the heart of Oslo followed by a Mumbai 2008 style attack on a youth resort on Utoeya Island. But still, the mainstream press are still very, very reluctant to call Breivik a "Christian Terrorist". But why?

For much of the 1990s, the mainstream press have always downplayed terror attacks by white supremacist Christian militias while resorting to rave-style coverage whenever the perpetrators happen to be a Muslim Islamist terror group. The now almost-forgotten Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building bombing of April 19, 1995 has always been squarely blamed on Timothy McVeigh but not on the white supremacist Christian terror group McVeigh is affiliated with. Is there a valid reason for this rather inexplicable mainstream press downplay on Christian Terrorist attacks? What about those Planned Parenthood doctors being gunned down across America during the 1990s - why no First-Graders today are taught that Christian Terrorists also exist?

Its not just the mainstream press downplay but also most of the world's major law enforcement agencies tend to downplay attacks perpetrated by right-wing Christian Terrorists which, unfortunately, made Christian Terrorists the global terror ticking time bomb du jour. Could the various global law enforcement's very own prejudices enabling Christian Terrorists to get away with their murderous acts? Since 9/11, law enforcement agencies have automatically associated terrorism with Islam, but could this oversight be their own undoing when another Anders Behring Breivik launches his own clandestine terror attack?

Death of Osama Bin Laden: End of Al Qaeda?

After the successful US Navy SEAL team raid on Osama Bin Laden's "secret compound" near Islamabad, Pakistan, is this finally yhe beginning of the end of Al Qaeda?

By: Ringo Bones

With US President Barack Obama's obligatory "victory speech" announcing the death of Osama Bin Laden after the successful US Navy SEAL team raid on his highly fortified mansion near Islamabad, Pakistan, many had now wondered whether this event will mark the beginning of the end of Bin Laden's famed global terror network called Al Qaeda? Sadly, Al Qaeda can easily go on without a figure-head like Bin Laden.

Though it didn't stop the midnight jubilant celebration of Americans in the Pennsylvania Avenue and the death of Osama Bin Laden means that President Obama is now spared of making that somewhat awkward and uncomfortable speech explaining why Osama Bin Laden is still at large as America celebrates the 10th Anniversary of the tragic September 11, 2001 Terror Attacks. At least this will be one of those globally historic moments that I will be explaining to my descendants on where I was when President Obama made the now iconic "victory speech" announcing the death of Osama Bin Laden.

Revolution 2011: True Democracy for the Arab World?

Even though US President George W. Bush failed miserably to bring one to the Arab World, will the one started in Tunisia earlier this year finally bring true democracy to the Arab World?


By: Ringo Bones


For a very long time, the Arab World has faced only two real choices for leadership: either a) a pro-Western despot or b) Anti-Western Islamism. Fortunately, since the martyrdom of a Tunisian activist named Mohamed Bouazizi, the Arab World now has a chance to experience true-blue democracy where everyone has a voice on how their government’s should be run instead of an autocratic rule by a single individual or a secretive cabal. The question now on everyone’s mind is: does the recent popular revolution that started in Tunisia that’s spreading throughout less-than-democratic Arab states will change the region for the better?

Fortunately, there are very hopeful signs that the recent wave of popular uprisings in the Arab World could change the region for the better. Egypt’s president-for-life Hosni Mubarak recently stepped down out of – we hope – concern for the escalating casualties of Egyptian demonstrators. Two Libyan fighter pilots defecting to Malta with their fighter planes back in February 22 after refusing orders from Muammar Gaddafi to strafe unarmed Libyan demonstrators.

Unknown to most of the Western public-at-large, lack of opportunities for young graduates, poverty and high food prices are only part of the gripes that drove Arab youths in a wave of popular revolts helped by internet-based social networking sites. These uprisings are – in truth - largely driven by denial of governmental decision making of the citizenry by their despotic powers-that-be. As of late, the King of Saudi Arabia had recently been handing out “dole money” to the young citizenry to pacify them, but if the Royal House of Saud wants to avoid a widespread revolt while they still can, it would be better if they provide their young, well-educated citizenry more participation in the day-to-day decision making of their government.

Will Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution Free the Arab World?

With a popular uprising that eventually ousted Tunisia’s own president-for-life, will Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution eventually liberate the Arab world and the rest of Gulf state countries from their respective despots?


By: Ringo Bones


Named after Tunisia’s national flower the Jasmine Revolution – or similar popular uprisings - now on-going in Egypt and has just started, according to the BBC, in Jordan. Has been seen not just by Gulf State citizens but by everyone in the world as well as the pivotal moment that could eventually depose various despots and self-styled president-for-life type rulers in the Arab world. But will it really be successful in liberating the Arab world of long-ruling despots in a relatively peaceful manner?

With the Tunisian uprising still unfinished due to the personnel of the previous despotic regime are still in their posts and the tragic death toll from the clashes between soldiers and demonstrators calling for the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt hovered around 30 by Saturday, January 29, 2011, the on-going revolution in the Arab world – dubbed as their Solidarity Movement of Gdansk Port / Fall of the Berlin Wall moment by political pundits – doesn’t seem to be resolving as peacefully as previously thought. And many top-level geopolitical analysts here in the West have fears that the Egyptian uprising might devolve into a Tiananmen Square style bloodbath.

The current Gulf State uprising is primarily aided by the clarion-call of existing Internet-based on-line social networks like Twitter and Facebook in organizing their rallies. Demonstrators in Egypt are rallying around Nobel laureate and former IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei and could catapult ElBaradei as the potential replacement of president-for-life Hosni Mubarak who had ruled Egypt under emergency rule since the assassination of President Anwar Sadat back in 1981. Only time will tell if the liberation of the Arab World from its despots will be a relatively peaceful one.

Philippine OFWs: Swing Vote of the 2010 Philippine Presidential Elections?

With the bugs behind the electronic voting system sorted out, will absentee voters – like Philippine OCWs and OFWs – form the crucial swing vote of the 2010 Philippine Presidential Elections?


By: Ringo Bones


As a developing nation, the Philippines is probably one of the world’s top providers of Overseas Contract Workers and Overseas Foreign Workers – OCWs and OFWs. These workers range from personnel manning container ships to nannies who know CPR with small-arms proficiency qualifications working for millionaire families. In past Philippine Presidential Elections, the concept of absentee voters doesn’t even exist due to cheating concerns. But the recent sorting out of electronic voting schemes, will absentee voting status of OCWs and OFWs make them the ultimate swing vote this coming May elections?

Filipinos who chose to work abroad – at least those that I know personally – chose to do it because they are sick and tired of the inherent and institutionalized government corruption that exists in the Philippines. An overwhelming majority of them are even in the process of becoming a citizen of their host country. Citing that the Philippine government is already under head-to-ass control by the Catholic Church making the government policies on Planned Parenthood almost stillborn, not to mention the Islamophobia and lack of academic freedom inherent in a Catholic Hegemony. Or maybe they just can’t seem to get enough of those under-aged teen prostitutes frequenting near the Gdansk shipyards, who knows?

Are Filipino OCWs and OFWs be the long awaited swing vote this May 10, 2010? Who knows if they’ll even show up in their nearest Philippine embassy when election time comes? But there’s one thing for sure if they’ll chose to vote, it will spell the end for nuisance candidates that typically comes out of the woodwork every presidential election time. Because a typical Filipino OCWs and OFWs are way smarter than a typical poverty-stricken Filipino voter who are - more often than not - cannot even afford college-level education. And given some Philippine presidential candidates placing on-line campaign ads in international websites, these candidates are probably desperate to make this crucial swing vote swing in their favor.

2010 Philippine Presidential Elections: Ignoring the Other Important Issues?

With yet another presidential election scheduled for May 10, 2010; are the main presidential candidates ignoring the other important issues?


By: Ringo Bones


Election time is again close at hand, and yet again some of the other less discussed but really important issues are yet again swept under the rug. The same rhetoric is spouted yet again about institutionalized government corruption, but no one has ever provided the concept of harm reduction when it comes to deeply entrenched corruption given that it is already a part of our Imperial-era Spain mandated culture for over 500 years.

Or what about the Catholic Church having enough clout to get away with everything? I mean have you ever heard a Catholic Church neutral discussion of Friedrich Nietzsche’s works in Catholic run colleges in the Philippines? Even the supposedly non-sectarian state universities can’t seem to pull this one off. Maybe those paedophile priests will find the Philippines a very inviting safe haven like Argentina was for NAZI war criminals at the end of World War II.

Maybe I should have devoted a whole blog about the Catholic Church as being the root of all evil that has bedeviled the Philippines. Like the way the Church bedevils homosexuality and Planned Parenthood – i.e. birth control that doesn’t involve molesting little altar boys. Or what about the Catholic Church in the Philippines undermining the Indigenous People’s Rights Act of 1997? If the Church can get away with it, would they get away with Church-sanctioned Islamophobia too?

Even some of the representative’s of the past evil regimes managed to run for high elective offices. Like the son of a former dictator who is famous for secretly assassinating his political opponents. Not to mention that former deposed corrupt leader who ruined my 300 US dollar a day business after he does a Zimbabwe strongman Robert Mugabe like reform to bedeviling ex pats and other foreign nationals - like tourists. A move that ruined my business into a 30 US cents a day lemonade stand.

Maybe there’s truth to the Church sanctioned Islamophobia given that the Philippines is a Catholic majority country when the Catholic Church scandal of paedophile priests seems to have been hardly discussed in the local press. There are probably two practicing Muslims running for an elective position – maybe I’ll vote for the two just to keep the election fair and balanced. Unless the Philippine Catholic Church managed to deliver the promise they’ve been telling me since Ronald Reagan ruled the free world. Like using their magical powers that they have earned through their piety to turn worthless rocks and dirt into some kind of food the starving majority of Filipinos seems to be craving for.

Fall of the Berlin Wall – 20 Years After

Hailed as the iconic event of 1989 and as a supposedly history-ending one, did the fall of the Berlin Wall resulted in a better world 20 years later?


By: Ringo Bones


Imagine an American serviceman stationed close enough to witness the iconic event back in 1989, later reading Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History. Later participating in Operation Desert Storm and later returning to the sight of the former Berlin Wall around December 1991 with a copy of Fukuyama’s The End of History in hand. In this surreal setting, what would we be going through his head?

For those of us who had lived a significant portion of their lives during the Cold War, most of us had thought that the Berlin Wall would last well into the 21st Century. Who knew that it fell just a few years after when the former US President Ronald Reagan pleaded the then former Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall”. Not to mention the then US President George H. W. Bush castigating the Berlin Wall as the monument which stands as the failure of communism. To our generation, the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9 1989 meant the advancement of civil liberties for those people trapped behind the Iron Curtain. The "Minzhu" revolution that started in the People's Republic of China a few months before the one that fell the Berlin Wall in November 1989 resulted in a bloody crackdown in Tiananmen Square Massacre of June 4, 1989.

Sadly the euphoria behind Fukuyama’s End of History is only just that – mere euphoria. Even though thousands of former East Germans and other folks trapped on the Marxist-Leninist side of the Iron Curtain got a taste of what we in the Capitalist West had always taken for granted – i.e. a relatively high standard of civil liberties (up to a point?) and conspicuous consumption. Most of folks who used to live behind the proverbial Iron Curtain never really benefited the supposed prosperity they are supposedly entitled to 20 years later. Our “protracted” global mini recession that started in the latter half of July 2007 and supposedly ended in the summer of 2009 resulted in the reevaluation of the “theories” established by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Which caused most of us asking whether capitalism can really reform itself.

Unfortunately, Western Capitalism had managed to turn itself into the proverbial “Evil Empire” that we all had dread since the days when the Soviet Union was still a formidable superpower. Western Capitalism even resorted to using politics and Anglo-Saxon Protestantism to deny global warming. Thus denying the environmentally conscious among us our “End of History” moment when it comes to saving our environment. Even the global warming issue is now the prime mover of that Doomsday Clock in the headquarters of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists when it used to be only nukes. If the upcoming UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen fails, the clock would be permanently stuck at two minutes to midnight – assuming if luck were still on our side.

As one of the folks responsible for formulating the “Reagan Doctrine” Francis Fukuyama really forgot to advise then President Reagan about very important aspects of American foreign policy that still matters today. Maybe it didn’t fell into Fukuyama’s purview, but he should have advised Reagan the folly of thinking that Islamic Fundamentalism is the moral parallel of the Anglo-Saxon Protestant Work Ethic that made America a superpower. Now, we can all safely blame Ronald Reagan for empowering the thugs that later became the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

The end of communism in Europe is a mixed blessing at most. Due to the Cold War “victors’” oversight, countless millions had died in the Balkans throughout the 1990s due to the rise of extreme nationalism / tribalism of the breakaway Yugoslavian territories. In other parts of the world, this had resulted in the rise of powers and despotic nation / states that simply can’t and won’t be reasoned with. And I often hear that our current state is “supposedly” better than the Empire of the Soviet Union lasting forever. Would this have resulted in most of us being cooped up in a 10 feet by 20 feet room150 meters underground with a 30 dollar Geiger Counter from the 1950s with only World War II era c-rations for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the next 35 years?