OXYMORON

Western Mindanao Security forces slackened their efforts to find two German kidnap victims held by Abu Sayyaf a few years ago, allowing Islamic terrorists to buy more weapons in order to strengthen their hold on their territory and to facilitate more kidnappings for ransom. When they were kidnapped, the German hostages had been on a yacht sailing out of a peaceful island resort in Palawan where Hollywood stars hang out.
 
Terrorists are not greedy; they share their loot. Cabinet ministers get a commission for their work. With his commission, one official bought a crematorium as an investment; sounds like innovative cross-product marketing to me.
 
The Western Command Chief, Armed Forces of the Philippines, was playing golf at the time of the kidnapping. It was reported to him but he did not believe the military intelligence reports. Oh! The cruel kindness of the oxymoron "Military Intelligence."
 
How did 2.5 million US Dollars ransom get withdrawn from a local bank without being noticed?
 
How did the emissary who carried the cash to the Abu Sayyaf get past the soldiers who surrounded them? The soldiers could just have shot the kidnappers.
 
A Joseph Heller book, Picture This, is more erudite but just as antithetical as his “Catch 22”.  The first words in the story refer to a painting I have had hanging on a wall wherever I have lived, Rembrandt’s “Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer.” It says so much to me, and obviously also to Joseph Heller, the master of the oxymoron, “Military Intelligence.”
 
Driving along MacArthur Highway in Davao City,(named for MacArthur but spelled “McArthur” (to save space on the sign—I presume) I saw a store branded: “Emaculate Conception Junk Shop.”
 
And farther up is the Mosque on Father Selga Street.
 
Oxymoron?

Tom