Weird headline watch

A bomb goes of in a mall in Manila, a country that’s been the subject of devastating terrorist attacks from Islamist groups. The news story starts by describing the bomb, having a government official announce that it’s a terrorist attack, and then acknowledges that such attacks do happen in Manila, albeit rarely:

A blast in an upscale Manila shopping center killed at least eight people and wounded about 130 Friday in what the country’s national security chief said was a militant attack.

“This is definitely an act of terrorism, although we have not yet pinpointed what group is responsible for it,” National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales said.

Muslim insurgents in the southern Philippines frequently bomb civilian targets, but such attacks are rare in Manila. Authorities citing intelligence reports recently had warned that terrorists were plotting attacks in the capital.

And how does the SF Chron’s headline writer (or, maybe, the LA Times headline writer, since that publication is the story’s source) headline the story:

Terrorism suspected as bomb kills 8 at Manila mall.  (Emphasis mine.)

What kind of evidentiary hurdles do you have to cross before the terrorism goes from merely suspect to actually real?

Islamic violence for Islam’s sake

The anti-War activists’ favorite trope is that all the Islamic violence in Europe and the Middle East is because of us poking our noses in Iraq.  It’s useless to point out that the Islamic violence began long before Iraq, as did the threats and the rationale for that violence.  I guess it would also be useless to point out, as the Webloggin editor so eloquently does, that the violent Islamic convulsions in the Philippines have nothing to do with America, Israel or Iraq, and everything to do with internal jihadist impulses.  Nevertheless, even though I’m sure the political pagans will keep their fingers in their ears and their hands over their eyes to blog out this information, wise people still will want to know:

It seems that members of the Religion of Peace can’t help themselves when it comes to torturing and desecrating the bodies of their foes. Amidst the contextual backdrop of the torture at abu Ghraib, stunted recreational activities at Gitmo or the more mundane torture of non-Islamic societies that have the audacity to live life in a non-Islamic way we are treated with another lesson in what really constitutes torture and crimes against humanity.

Islamic militants in the southern Philippines have killed 14 marines, beheading 10 of them, a military spokesman has said.

So sorry to break it to the rest of the left, but the militants in the Philippines didn’t behead these soldiers because the United States is at war with terrorists in Iraq or because of the other popular notion that it is all the fault of the Jews. Nope, they did this in the name of Islam. This is your basic “we want an Islamic state” in a nutshell type of violence. The problem for Islamic separatists in the Philippines is that they live in a predominately Christian nation. Can’t have that.

Read the rest here.