Another Loser attack in Mindanao

Dilbert says Trump has relabeled ISIS as "Loser" or "evil loser" and suggests that this was a smart move, since putting that label in to the headlines will discourage the lost boys who want to see themselves as valiant warriors that terrify people will now get the "you evil loser" meme reinforced.

So now the loser group that bombed the innocent folks at the Davao market have been losing to the Philippine military, so decided to try to take over a local city run by Muslims under modified sharia law.

I should note that usually the evil losers only hit Christian villages, or majority Christian cities like Zamboanga,but the press outside the Philippines usually assumes everyone in Mindanao is a Muslim, so misses the religious angle, and the government is loathe to correct the impression, for fear that local militias might start fighting back, as they did when populist Erap was president... which led to a lot of payback murders (similar to the private vigilante payback murders of druggies and drug pushers that is blamed on Duterte now).

The story of what is actually going on can be found in this Inquirer story which notes that this was a response to a raid on their headquarters that wounded their bigshot head. So the bad guys decided hey, let's do an offensive, but instead of attacking Christian enclaves or majority cities like their compadres did in the past, they decided to hit one of their own cities, presumably where they won't get a lot of opposition.

The Maute group is one of less than a dozen new armed Muslim groups that have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group and formed a loose alliance in the southern Philippines in recent years. 

Hapilon was reportedly designated the leader of the alliance. The Maute has been blamed for a bomb attack that killed 15 people in southern Davao city, Duterte’s hometown, last September and a number of attacks on government forces in Lanao, although it has faced setbacks from a series of military offences.

this is in contrast to the AP/UKMail breathless report.  Yes, it points out that they are bad guys, but hey, they are written up in most US news papers as glamourous bad guys, and the attack is in response to the fact that they are getting their asses kicked in recent months, so they need a nice glamours healine

. The local autonomous (Muslim) governments are being asked to intervene for peace here... 

Senior members of the ARMM’s peace and order council are now consolidating plans, via an online teleconference system, on how to respond to the situation in Marawi City.
“These acts of terror are happening in a historic predominantly Muslim city. People sowing terror and says it is being done in the name of Islam should be ashamed of what they are doing,” Hataman said

so will locals get tired of these thugs, who have now turned on their own? No water, no electricity, in hot season? Developing...

the government is denying a full takeover so far (of course, no one trusts these reports either) but we heard Duterte is declaring martial law in the area, and hopefully this won't result in the fragmented and chaotic response that the gentle PNoy put up with when Zamboanga was attacked.

Duterte is flying back from Russia, where he was making nice with Putin, asking for aid and jobs, figuring that it won't have "human rights" strings attached to it... not just the drug killings: in the past US and EU aid came with strings that insisted on changing our laws to allow divorce and abortion to get aid, and now insisting we stop raiding drug cartel outposts and stop the vigilante killings.

For what it's worth, the congress here just passed a one year moratorium against impeachment proceedings against Duterte: Impeachment under the last two presidents was a game to get you face on TV and not really a serious game, but in Duterte's case, there was a suspicion of outside backers to the kerfufle, and the people are saying: Stop.

The gov't is discouraging social network posts by locals, knowing that these will be used as propaganda., both to glamourize the evil losers and to cry "HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS" against Duterte and the military.

Duterte was talking to Putin, asking for modern weapons. Didn't the US give him modern weapons under Obama? Well, Obama and a Hillary ally threatened Duterte last year, cutting aid, including military aid, in protest to drug killings that were exaggerated in the press (the same press that ignores the many more drug cartel related murders in Mexico), so he is not taking his chances with the PC in the US State Department.

oh yes: An d incase you are wondering why the increase in attacks all over the world, well, it's because Ramadan starts on May 26.

Here it means schools and banks are closed.... unlike the US, we don't have bigots objecting to religious holidays like Christma,s Easter, Ramadan and Eid...