Bongbong Marcos:Have you experienced “ZONA”?

 

ZONA During Martial Law

The military operation of Marcos’s Presidential Security command was commonly known and dreaded as a “zona,” which was not unlike the feared practice of the kempeitai during the Japanese Occupation of rounding up the people in a locality and arresting the persons fingered by a hooded informer.

This was practiced regularly by the dreaded Marcos security men in the San Miguel neighborhood, near Malacanang palace, right after the martial law declaration.

Male residents were rounded up and brought to the nearby San Miguel church patio and were ordered to line up against the church walls. The palace guards would order the men to strip to their underwear and  then interrogate them.

The apparent objective of  Marcos’ security was to determine whether any of the San Miguel residents pose any security threat to the nearby Palace occupants. This happened quite regularly.

We personally experienced the dreaded zona.

 

From The Facebook Wall Of Bongbong Marcos 

“President Marcos is dead. He cannot defend himself against scurrilous attacks against him. I have not known him to have sent people to a Siberian concentration camp like Stalin, or to extermination camps such as Auschwitz like Hitler, or to killing fields like Pol Pot, or to mass graves like Saddam Hussein.”

Juan Ponce Enrile

On September 21, 1972, Marcos issued Proclamation 1081, declaring martial law over the entire country. Under the president’s command, the military arrested opposition figures, including Benigno Aquino, journalists, student and labor activists, and criminal elements. A total of about 30,000 detainees were kept at military compounds run by the army and the Philippine Constabulary. Weapons were confiscated, and “private armies” connected with prominent politicians and other figures were broken up. Newspapers were shut down, and the mass media were brought under tight control. With the stroke of a pen, Marcos closed the Philippine Congress and assumed its legislative responsibilities. During the 1972-81 martial law period, Marcos, invested with dictatorial powers, issued hundreds of presidential decrees, many of which were never published.
Like much else connected with Marcos, the declaration of martial law had a theatrical, smoke-and-mirrors quality. The incident that precipitated Proclamation 1081 was an attempt, allegedly by communists, to assassinate Minister of National Defense Enrile. As Enrile himself admitted after Marcos’s downfall in 1986, his unoccupied car had been riddled by machine gun bullets fired by his own men on the night that Proclamation 1081 was signed.From countrystudies

Sept. 22, 1972 (Friday)
Before 9 p.m. Then Defense Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile, on his way home to Dasmariñas Village in Makati, is “ambushed by communist terrorists” who peppered one of the cars in his convoy with bullets. Enrile escapes unharmed.
He would later admit at a press conference with Fidel Ramos in February 1986 that the ambush had been staged. He and Ramos were part of the Rolex 12, the group of military advisers who had helped Marcos plan martial law. From INQUIRER

Never Forget!

Gaddafi And Imelda: Comical Quotes

MANILA, Philippines (March 2011) – Ilocos Norte Rep. Imelda Marcos, the former First Lady who once acted as a bridge between Libya and the Philippines, said she understands what embattled Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi is going through due to her own experience.

“I could not blame him, because I have been fighting too… [through] so much pain and persecution to uphold truth and honor,” she said. From ABS-CBN

The first one to come to my rescue was [Muammar] Gaddafi, who said he was willing to post bail for me even if it were 10 times higher. Even Saddam Hussein sent his foreign minister to ask if there was anything I needed.From TIME

“Democracy means permanent rule.” —Col. Muammar Gaddafi

Former First Lady Imelda Marcos and Colonel Muammar Gaddafi share a light moment in this 1974 video still, when Mrs. Marcos went to Libya in order to “beard the lion in his den”.

“A woman has the right to run for election whether she’s male or female.”—Col. Muammar Gaddafi on women’s rights

 ”My decision (to run) was triggered by the economic crisis we now experience … I want to remove our people from our economic crisis by using the wealth of the late president Ferdinand E. Marcos.” — on running for president, February 1998, quoted in a Reuters article 

 “Because of biological defects, a woman’s place is in the home.”—Gaddafi on women’s rights.

“This is the reason why I have decided to run — so that I can manage the Marcos wealth properly for the direct benefit of the people.” — on running for president, February 1998, quoted in a Reuters article 

“Nobody can complain if we ask pregnant women to make parachute jumps.”—Col. Gaddafi after women expressed outrage over his comments that women were defected.

“I was born ostentatious. They will list my name in the dictionary someday. They will use ‘Imeldific’ to mean ostentatious extravagance.” — cited in an Associated Press report, April 1998 

Gaddafi Finally Joins The World’s Most Exclusive Club!

 

“Welcome To the World’s Most Exclusive Club!”

” When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants,despots and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it–always. ” Mahatma Gandhi

After 42 years in power in Libya, Muammar Gaddafi met his demise Oct. 20. TIME takes a look at other dictators who have been overthrown by their own people.

Calling it their Independence Day, Libyans took to the streets Oct. 20 to cheer the demise of the leader who had ruled them for 42 turbulent years. Muammar Gaddafi was reportedly killed when rebel forces finally captured his hometown, Sirt, where the last remnants of the Gaddafi regime had held out amid weeks of grueling, grisly fighting.

It took a little more than three weeks for American forces to topple the Iraqi regime in late March and early April 2003. But by the time U.S. Marines helped an Iraqi crowd topple a statue of dictator Saddam Hussein in Baghdad’s Firdos Square on April 9, the man himself was long gone, having melted into the chaos of his collapsed regime.

In its May 7, 1945 issue, TIME wrote of Adolph Hitler, “If he were indeed dead, the hope of most of mankind had been realized. For seldom had so many millions of people hoped so implacably for the death of one man.”

Unlike the mystery surrounding the death of Adolph Hitler, the end of Benito Mussolini was indisputable. He was captured and executed by communist partisans near Lake Como in April 1945. His body was hung upside down in the Piazzale Loreto in Milan.

 In the four-years of Pol Pot’s rule, the terror campaign he waged led to the deaths of nearly a quarter of Cambodia’s seven million people through execution, torture, starvation and disease.

 The self-proclaimed Ugandan President-for-Life ruled the country for far less time than he had hoped, but the eight years of his tenure were filled with gross human-rights violations, ethnic persecution — tens of thousands of Ugandans of Indian origin were forced out — killings and unbridled corruption.

 The archetypal African dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, a military officer, rose to power in the Congo by displacing populist, left-leaning leader Patrice Lumumba. Burnishing his nationalist chops, he renamed the resource-rich, strategic former Belgian colony “Zaire,” a pronunciation of a local Kikongo word for “the river that swallows all rivers.” Mobutu swallowed all his country’s politics, building a highly centralized state where power radiated from his presidential palace and tales of his nepotism and corruption — including Concorde-borne shopping trips to Paris — were legion.

Nicolae Ceausescu, absolute ruler of Romania for 24 years, oversaw a repressive regime known for having the Eastern bloc’s most feared secret police. Throughout the 1970s he squandered $10 billion in loans from the West, and, in 1981, set the unrealistic goal of repaying that debt by 1990. By the end of the decade Romania was the only country in Europe where hunger was widespread and where malnutrition was on the rise.

In September 1972, following a failed assassination attempt on one of his chief aides, Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in the Philippines. Marcos, who had been elected president in 1964, exaggerated the threat of Communist revolutionaries, and used that to justify shutting down the press and arresting several of his political opponents. Initially Marcos did good for the country as an autocrat: inflation dropped and government revenue increased. But widespread cronyism and corruption — including the siphoning of billions of state funds into Marcos’ Swiss bank account — undermined his legitimacy. His glamorous wife, Imelda — she of the shoe closet — seemed to embody the regime’s brazen excess.The 1983 assassination of Benigno Aquino, Jr., Marcos’ chief political rival, galvanized the opposition even further. Hoping to quell international criticism, he staged snap elections in 1986 — a move that backfired as a result of the violence, intimidation and coercion he deployed. Abandoned by his closest rivals, Marcos fled the country several weeks later, paving the way for the rightful winner — Aquino’s widow Corazon — to take power. Marcos died in exile in Hawaii three years later, but his wife, son and some of his old allies still wield influence in the Philippines’ unpredictable democracy.

“Welcome To Our Club, Colonel Qaddafi!” Imelda

 

Reports that Muammar Gaddafi is ‘dead’… Muammar Gaddafi ‘killed’ in gun battle

Reports say that toppled leader and the head of his armed forces have both been killed, following the fall of Sirte.Al Jazzeera

 

 

Tripoli, Libya (CNN) — Revolutionary fighters have captured deposed Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, Libyan television said Thursday, citing the Misrata Military Council.

 

 Forces loyal to Libya’s transitional authorities capture former Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi in the battle for Sirte, their commanders say. BBC

 

 

” When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants,despots and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it–always. ” Mahatma Gandhi

Did They Share The Same Shoes In Tripoli?

Goodbye, my loyal friend.

Warning To Bongbong Marcos: “In The End Dictators Always Fall!”

” When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants,despots and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it–always. ” Mahatma Gandhi

Imad Moustaf, a rebel fighter who said he witnessed Qaddafi’s death, told GlobalPost’s James Foley that Qaddafi was shot in the head and near his heart on the outskirts of Sirte. Moustaf said the former leader had been hiding in a hole surrounded by bodyguards.  From CBS News

“Down with Mubarak, Down with the Regime”.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we got him,” US administrator Paul Bremer told journalists in Baghdad, to loud cheers from Iraqis in the audience.
Saddam Hussein was found in a tiny cellar at a farmhouse about 15km (10 miles) south of his hometown Tikrit. From BBC

Did they share the same shoes in Tripoli?

In the face of mass demonstrations against his rule, Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos and his entourage are airlifted from the presidential palace in Manila by U.S. helicopters.
Elected in 1966, Marcos declared martial law in 1972 in response to leftist violence. In the next year, he assumed dictatorial powers. Backed by the United States, his regime was marked by misuse of foreign support, repression, and political murders. In 1986, Marcos defrauded the electorate in a presidential election, declaring himself the victor over Corazon Aquino, the wife of an assassinated rival. Aquino also declared herself the rightful winner, and the public rallied behind her. Deserted by his former supporters, Marcos and his wife, Imelda, fled to Hawaii in exile, where they faced investigation on embezzlement charges. He died in 1989.