Gunmen abducted two American citizens along with their Filipino relative from a southern Philippines island Tuesday, police said.
At about 3 a.m., 14 armed men snatched Gerfa Yeatts Lunsmann, 43, her son, Kevin, 14, and Lunsmann's Filipino nephew, Romnick Jakaria, 19, said Nonito Asbai, the area's police chief inspector.
Police and the Filipino navy have launched search operations, Asbai said.
The victims were forced at gunpoint to board awaiting boats, which then sped toward the troubled island of Basilan, a stronghold of the Islamic militant group Abu Sayyaf.
No one, however, has claimed responsibility for the abduction or asked for a ransom.
-CNN
This was the type of stuff that filled the news during the early heyday of George Dumbya's war by terror.
Shortly after Bill Clinton was impeached but not removed from office in 1999, former action-movie-star-turned-Philippine-President Joseph Estrada became embroiled in his own scandal when allegations surfaced that he had consolidated most organized crime in the country under him. Elected in 1998 after successfully helping to lead a campaign in the Senate that evicted the US military from their Philippine bases, Estrada survived an impeachment trial in late 2000, but not a military coup in early 2001. Just a few weeks after the US Supreme Court selected George W. Bush to be President, the Philippine Supreme Court selected Vice-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as Estrada's successor. Like Bush, Macapagal-Arroyo's father was a former President known for being a lapdog for the bankstas.
Macapagal-Arroyo, a Harvard alum, was an eager ally during the early days of Dumbya's infinite war, and allowed US troops to return to the Philippines, largely because of a conveniently-timed Abu Sayyaf kidnapping campaign. The Philippines was dubbed "the second front" in the war on terror.
The Abu Sayyaf was started by people who learned their trade as Mujaheddin in Afghanistan (i.e. they were trained by the CIA). They serve as a convenient excuse for US military operations in the Southern Philippines, a historically muslim region that was not conquered by either the Spanish or the United States. Hence, it is a resource-rich region that multinationals are not exploiting sufficiently. US-puppet regimes in Manila have re-settled the area with former Maoist insurgents from the Northern Philippines who had signed peace-deals with the government. Not surprisingly, it is known for lawlessness and violent strife. However, none of the legitimate muslim separatist movements in the region ally themselves with the Abu Sayyaf, obviously because they know that they are connected to the CIA. The Abu Sayyaf, even when they are holding hostages, are able to roam about in their territory freely despite intense military crackdowns that are led/backed up by the latest and greatest US intelligence technology.
It shouldn't be any surprise that, amidst the ever-more-apparent reality of peak oil and worldwide economic collapse, the Abu Sayyaf has once again kinapped Americans. The bankstas dredged up the Osama bimn Laden boogeyman a few months ago, and it only makes sense that the Abu Sayyaf would not be far behind as well.
This time around though, there is the added issue of increased tensions with China over the Spratly issue. Obviously, the CIA realized that Filipinos weren't overly concerned about the Spratlys, and perhaps needed a better excuse to send more military "advisors" to the area.
Philippine military officials were quick to implicate the Moro Islamic Liberation Front as the perpetrators, but even CNN knows better.
Needless to say, this latest development warrants our attention.
