Manila detains ship for arms smuggling

Manila detains ship for arms smuggling
Web posted at: 8/22/2009 7:52:5
Source ::: REUTERS

MANILA: Philippine authorities have seized a Panama-registered cargo ship and its crew after the vessel was found to contain crates of assault rifles when it docked at a local port without prior notice, officials said yesterday.

Customs and coast guard officials boarded the 5,421 gross ton ship on Thursday and found five crates containing 50 Israeli-made Galil assault rifles, they said. Ten empty crates were also found.

The ship came in to the Mariveles port, northwest of the capital. “The ship just docked at the port of Mariveles without any prior notice, which made port and customs officials suspicious,” said coast guard spokesman Armand Balilo.

The ship was bound for Batangas province south of Manila from a port in Turkey based on a map found on board. Authorities are investigating whether it was transporting firearms to illegal syndicates, local warlords or militant groups. “These guns are the primary weapon of the Israeli army,” Balilo said. “This is dangerous if it falls into the wrong hands.”

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Swedish weapons bought by Venezuela in the 1980s at a FARC guerrilla camp in Colombia, and claiming that Venezuela was arming the FARC?!

Turned out, though, that they found old guns from twenty different countries at that camp. And they never took their wild accusation back, the fuckers, nor did our corpo/fascist press attempt to correct this goddamned lie about Venezuela.

And here is Israel--if Colombia's screwball logic is to be believed--doing the same thing--arming some group of troublemakers or criminals somewhere; not an authorized shipment (apparently); probably just privateer weapons traffickers, stealing state of the art Israeli military weapons and profiting nicely in the trade. (Or in any case that's what Rotters wants us to believe.) (The Philippine authorities also seem a bit...I don't know...wide-eyed about this? 'Oh, dear, weapons! Tsk, tsk! What if they got into the wrong hands?!')

The world is awash in weapons--the U.S. being the worst culprit in this. In fact, U.S. tax dollars, funneled to Israel as military aid, probably bought those multiply-profitable rifles. War and killing are our only growth industry. Very saddening. We could have been a better country.