Equipping Arroyo with more weapons

-- Reuters: Islamic militants find haven in RP

-- Paredes on truth as a "destabilizing" force.

-- Philippine Commentary on GMA playing the "China card".

-- Malaya Editorial: Arroyo in the role of bully

-- Ninez Cacho Olivares: Equipping Gloria with more weapons

In the House, the anti-terror measure equates rallies and the like as an act of terrorism while providing our already abusive police and military even more tyrannical powers, and in complete disregard for the citizens' bill of rights, such as the number of days an accused can be detained without filing any charges against him and even includes warrantless arrests.

At the Senate, its version is no different, by way of categorizing terrorist acts. Now even work stoppage is considered a terrorist act, as arson, Internet hacking are. Worse, the Villar bill proposes to place in the hands of the President, who happens to be Gloria Arroyo, a terrorist of the first order, by way of her policies against political dissenters and rallyists, curtailing their constitutional freedoms unconstitutionally, the implementation of the anti-terror policy, with the National Security Adviser, who is Norberto Gonzales, known to be more than willing to sell the country's sovereignty down the river and who sees legitimate dissent from opposition forces as destabilization acts, as well as rebellion and moves to topple the Arroyo government, advising the President....

And notice that the Villar bill is all about punishing what he sees as terror acts - including just threats, without a person actually having committed any act of terrorism. Where does one draw the line?

This is being packaged as an anti-terror bill, with Villar, and his counterpart in the House claiming that “We must never allow the nation to be held hostage by terrorism, then we must not give terrorists enough elbow room to sow fear and panic.”

Yet nothing in that bill says anything about measures in preventing the genuine terror attacks, such as, for instance, preventing the entry of terrorists through the front and back doors, stopping the establishment of terrorist training camps with the JI terrorists training Filipino recruits, providing the military and police the right intelligence infrastructure, with the intelligence budget given directly to the military and police whose expenses would, however, have to be liquidated and explained to a body, not just the President, as there must always be counter checks.

It is a most stupid anti-terror measure that is moreover certain not to be effective in curbing terrorist attacks.

What is more certain is that if passed, Gloria Arroyo will definitely misuse this law to justify her crackdown on her political foes.

What we don't need right now is an "anti-Opposition" bill.