Earlier this year I wrote about JJ who has come to live with us as an International Student, and the reason she has gone into debt up to her eyeballs in the hope that one day she can bring her family to Australia.
Now the Moro Liberation Front has launched yet another attack on the tiny [predominantly Catholic] peninsula of Zamboanga.
Six dead, 20 hostages, and about 200 trapped in the city centre, unable to go home.
I can't begin to imagine what it is like to live year after year with this crap. I can't begin to imagine what it is like to be living with a self imposed curfew after 5 pm. I can't begin to imagine what it is like to be separated from a 6 year old daughter for so long [despite skype]. And I can't begin to imagine how JJ feels, right now, while all this shit is happening where her daughter, husband and sisters live, half way across the world.
If the US decides to attack Syria, the Philippine army will be on alert to help America. If Obama pulls off his plans, it will be a huge blot on his record.
Nothing can stop these pigs, and it's time to stop letting our own people die, to stop killing the innocent, as if we can make any bloody difference.
WTF is our new foreign affairs minister, the Stepford, wife going to do or say that will make any foreign leaders stop laughing at our new PM? If the US asks us to get involved in Syria, what is the Rabbit going to do?
'rebel attack shuts down Geelong'. 5pm curfew.
ReplyDeleteNo fresh food deliveries, no public transport.
Of course they would all move to Tasmania.
I did some Googling-
"Mindanao became a land for new beginnings when broad tracts of land were given away by the Philippine government from 1903 to the 1970s to migrants from other parts of the country in a so-called Homestead Program. There was no land titling system by the natives of Mindanao at that time. The Philippine government took advantage of the absence of land titles to give away lots in Mindanao to poor farmers and other migrants from other parts of the country. Mindanao saw itself as the adopted home of a rapidly burgeoning population of Christian settlers who encroached on the living areas of the original Muslim and tribal residents, who now began to feel that they were also being robbed of their lands and the economic opportunities they provided"
Is there anything we can do to help JJ and her family?
Lots of trite noises are all I've been able to come up with so far. She knows I'm an atheist so it's hard to say I'll pray for them.
DeletePerhaps it will die down again - I hope so. The alternative is for everybody to pack up and leave a place where they are relatively well off and have jobs.
One sister told her last night they are living in the basement of their house, eating baked beans and sardines.
I wouldn't like to be locked in a basement with TO if all she could eat was baked beans.
Maybe all those people in Geelong who've lost their jobs [in spite of the great mining boom] could go and work for Cadbury?