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MIM, RAIL, and SLALA also helped organize other educational events in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara on the deployment of U.$. troops to the southern Philippines under the auspices of the "war on terrorism." An activist from BAYAN International USA provided an interesting anecdote regarding the kind of "training" going on in the southern Philippines. Evidently Philippine soldiers have had to teach u.$. soldiers the basics of jungle survival, such as which fruit to eat or game to hunt. This raises some interesting questions: Who is training whom? And for what?
The speakers at the southern California events also discussed the repressive tactics of the Philippine police and military, including mass arrests of Muslims and extra-judicial killings. Nicholas Kristof recounted one case of brutality and correctly argued that by massively funding the Philippine military, the united $tates was "sleeping with the terrorists." "Elnie Angulo, a slim, shy, 25-year-old peasant, was walking along a jungle path when he was accosted by three terrorists here on the island of Basilan, the second front in America's war on terrorism.
"What happened next can be deduced from the findings of the imam who washed Mr. Angulo's body and the doctor who conducted the autopsy. The body had seven broken ribs, three broken vertebrae, slice marks on both hands and cuts on the neck. In addition, Mr. Angulo's tongue had been cut off and his genitals severed. "This kind of terrorism against civilians is the reason President Bush is sending 660 troops to help destroy the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group here on Basilan. But there's one problem: the men who tortured Mr. Angulo to death were not in Abu Sayyaf. They were Philippine troops, our new partners in the war on terrorism."(New York Times, 12 Feb 2002) Of course, as Danny Elsberg said about the Amerikan role in Vietnam, it's not that the united $tates has chosen the wrong side, it *is* the wrong side -- the puppetmaster behind the puppet.