Winding Down
The After-Visit Report
from 
JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
I haven't touched base with JU for some time, but that's another story. This here's the real story...
Filed: 30/ May / 05, Subic Bay, Philippines
Most of us are already abreast on what’s taking place in Iraq – both good and bad basically because of US troops being committed there. Inversely, the official absence of US forces in Southeast Asian countries make for less “newsworthy” coverage of terrorist activities in that region. Not very many, therefore know enough of terrorist activities in Southeast Asia , much less understand its significance viz-a-viz the current war.
As I drive through the Waterfront, here in a former US Naval base called Subic Bay, a 3-hour drive from Manila for a final sojourn before my flight out, I try to collect my thoughts on my visit to reflect on some needed answers to questions like what the heck has a group called Abu Sayyaf got to do with the US ?
When the names of the countries Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines reach the ears of the average American, idyllic views of South Pacific Bali Hai immediately comes to mind and until recently with incursions of Al Qaeda- sponsored hostage-taking and bombings which selectively target Westerners and Christians widely spread by the media, one readily feels like avoiding the whole region altogether, which is really the intent of all these explosions – to keep the Muslim population isolated not only from Western/ Christian influence but even moderate Islam in order that Muslims be exposed solely to a Wahabbi type of Islamic Fundamentalism – one that can help turn out a factory of suicide bombers and have some left over for export. The objective isn’t really to hurt the US militarily but to keep its influence away from the region while building a base from amongst the most populous Muslim nation in the planet – Indonesia.
Indonesians themselves, especially those among the academe, are uneasy about the situation and are wary about rabble-rousing Muslim clerics as well as antsy about what it perceives as US war policies in the Middle East and Asia. To them, “Bush and Bin Laden – they’re both fundamentalists!”- seems to be a recurring theme. Yet two other things may be of serious concern:
One is the role of paramilitary units in the Indonesian Army who were veterans of the frustrated East Timor campaign . (Predominantly Christian East Timor obtained its independence from its former colonizer, Portugal, only to be militarily occupied by Indonesia thereafter. The former Megawati government acceded to UN-sponsored elections which gave back East Timor its independence to the frustration of this paramilitary unit.) Supposedly disbanded, this unit cannot be accounted for, as well as the increasing number of military adventures exhibited by a resurgent Al Qaeda group, Abu Sayyaf . Could not elements from this paramilitary unit invoking the same anti-Christian ideology be part of a resurgent Abu Sayyaf?
Number Two concern – all these past incidents display an unmistakable pattern that point to terrorist cells in Indonesia and Malaysia as the source of terrorist activity in Southeast Asia. Majority of terrorist attacks have been carried out protective of the Muslim populace in Malaysia and Indonesia and indiscriminately among the mostly Christian population of the Philippines. In Indonesia, the major attacks involved the bombing of the Philippine embassy in Jakarta, the Bali bombing victimizing a significant number of Australians and the recent bombing of the public market in the Christian-dominated town of Tentena in the island of Sulawesi – all carried out with the same code of conduct in carefully sparing the Muslim populace. Malaysia’s singular link has been the tourist-frequented island of Sabang from where the first Abu Sayyaf hostages were kidnapped starting the whole wave of terrorist activities in Southeast Asia . One glossed-over detail in this incident was why the Abu Sayyaf took the extra effort ( using a Penta Volvo outboard motor with several gasoline tanks as provision) to bring the hostages to the island of Palawan, a Philippine territory several hundreds of nautical miles away, then take more hostages from a resort there before holing up in southern Philippines when it could’ve easily hidden them in Malaysian territory ? It doesn’t make any sense unless they wanted to avoid embarrassing their Malaysian sponsors and project an image to the world that would scare Christians and Westerners from the southern territory they want to dismember from the Philippines.
If we lay all these past terrorist incidents in a timeline, it would be traceable to the founding of Jemayah Islamiya,(JI) an Al Qaeda-inspired regional network, in Malaysia whose goal has been and still is to carve out a separatist Islamic state out of territories held from parts of Indonesia, Malaysia and southern Philippines. The trial of Al’Bashir, the popular Muslim cleric who espoused JI is ongoing in Indonesia but not concluded. Arms cache from retreating Abu Sayyaf fighters have been found in Southern Philippines with Malaysian markings.
How about the Christian-dominated Philippines ? Is the country really the pushover the terrorists have concluded it to be ? Good question. As I sit here in Moonbay Pier, Subic Bay with some medics and local officials watching Bobby Soul of the former Platters crooning out “Only You” in his inimitable style, I pose the question and gather the answers.
Leadership, the People and Politics Filipinos are one of the most hospitable people in Asia. One could almost say hospitable to a fault. My weight gain and frequent dyspepsia from the many times I’ve been fed everytime I enter a household will testify to that. Majority naturally take to foreigners as welcome visitors from a better land from whom they will eventually learn as to how to better their own lives. I don’t really know if it’s colonial mentality having had 300 years of Spanish colonization, not to mention the 50 years of American occupation that followed later interspersed with 3 years of Japanese rule. The downside of this hospitality was the ease with which ill-intentioned foreigners could exploit and abuse the situation, of which their history can show a lot of examples involving their dealings with ugly Americans .
Playback. The 70’s was a turbulent period where a counter-consciousness to the colonial mindset became the fare. Suddenly, values were questioned and an inward-looking nationalism flowered. Then came the fragile democracy’s first encounter with Dictatorship when a stage-managed bombing of the opposition party’s convention eased the way to the establishment of a Martial Law government. Twenty years of that was enough to restructure social institutions to foster a culture of corruption reaching its pinnacle with the teetering Philippine economy and the lavish lifestyle of Imelda Marcos. (To this day, rumors of her using a herb to cause Ferdinand Marcos to be dialysis-dependent as she poised to take over the reins of power refuse to die). The country gave birth to Asia’s and its First People Power Revolution in 1986 which booted out the Dictator Marcos for exile in Hawaii where he eventually passed away.
Filipinos are also readily forgiving, also to a fault. To the present day despite glaring evidences that point to the Marcoses treating the Philippine Treasury as their piggy bank, no conviction in the Philippine courts has succeeded, although court cases filed against them abound. The toppling of the Dictator was followed by a series of coup d‘etats (about 7 of them) which all failed due to lack of support from the populace. After two People Power Presidents, the opposition, which included the diehards from the previous Martial Law government , found an ally in a charismatic action film star Erap Estrada. After successfully launching his bid as the 13th Philippine President, the opposition in particular and Filipinos in general were treated to a 2nd wave of institutionalized corruption and the spectacle of a sitting President using a pseudonym to maintain a bank account which steadily grew in millions from largesse from gambling and an illegal numbers game , not to mention percentages from a host of significant government transactions.
Well, you gotta hand it to them. Even if Filipinos are described as being resilient as the bamboo whenever a typhoon blows over, they also have their breaking point. They found their second wind of courage and mustered their numbers to bring about a 2nd People Power Revolution where the civilian populace and the Philippine military joined hands until the then Vice-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo(GMA) got sworn in by their Supreme Court Chief Justice as the next Philippine President.
Erap is now under house arrest and despite attempts by the opposition to mount their own version of People Power and other destabilization plots, Filipinos voted favorably for a continuation of a GMA Presidency. After 5 years , Filipinos’ lives inched on with little improvement and the present government reeling from the heritage left by 2 Presidential crooks and despite finding heavy resistance in instituting reforms, managed to score some victories in fighting corruption and for the first time after a looong time, increased its tax collection significantly.
The Legal Opposition, the New People’s Army (NPA), the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and Jemayah Islamiya intrusions in Philippine territory.
When one defines the legal opposition in the Philippine political scenery, personalities from the past corruption-laden Presidencies still come to fore, anchored by their loyal voter base and name recall. Surprisingly, the leftists, whose teach-ins first galvanized popular support against the former Dictator, failed to make political gain of the democratic space that ensued and distanced itself from the post-Martial Law government opting to support armed struggle instead. During the 2nd People Power Revolution, the Leftists again distanced themselves from the transforming democratic landscape and opted again for armed struggle and consistently stayed on the wrong side of history. The headlines that followed bannered the fratricidal wars that ensued between factions within the Philippine Left that hammered each other with assassinations – Mafia style. The little legal representations they had in government had to do with radical changes in the Philippine Constitution that allowed them as a minority group congressional seats so long as a minimum voter requirement would allow. Now, the Philippine Left are squandering this chance by making allies of the old Opposition – the very faces they helped boot out during the First People Power Revolution. It does make them look like confused kids out for a power grab rather than the principled idealistic figures they originally pictured themselves to be. Approval of the Anti-Terrorist Bill as well as the proposed National ID system are expected to drag on due to this opposition Alliance.
The New People’s Army to which the Philippine Left are sympathetic to, have limited their activities to the fratricidal assassinations tearing the Left apart, aside from ambuscades on remote soft military targets which have presently dwindled down. Contacts with the MILF or its predecessor, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) that started in the ‘70’s weakened as of the current anti-terrorist campaign. For an MILF backgrounder, here’s a link to my previous report.Link
The existence of Malaysian and Indonesian terrorist cells did not escape review from the Philippine government which has decided to combat the problem on their southern border on two levels :
Diplomatic representations with the Organization of Islamic Countries to which the Phil. Government was granted observer status initially by virtue of its Muslim population in its southern border and with ASEAN to which Malaysia and Indonesia are accountable as regards regional trade and security matters.
Militarily, the Abu Sayyaf fighters sent by Al Qaeda’s southeast asian clone, the Jemayah Islamiya were no match for the Philippine Army, long schooled in jungle warfare , who trounced the Abu Sayyaf until the death of its spokesperson, Abu Sabaya in an ensuing seacraft battle. The MILF standing army which were previous government concessions from agreements establishing the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) were careful not to expose their sympathies for the Abu Sayyaf retreating fighters who sought refuge in their territory, lest the “terrorist” tag be applied to them and they would have to face the superior divisions of the Philippine Army.
Analysis. Terrorist bombing activities have abated since the deaths of the Abu Sayyaf commanders in a prison hostage-taking activity. See link.Link The absence of suicide bombers (so far)in this part of the world may not be culturally related but more in keeping with the ease with which terrorists were able to infiltrate their targets during an earlier period, uncertainty of sustaining prolonged terrorist activities due to unpredictable logistical lines and lack of reinforcements (recruits).
As the targets hardened in Philippine territory, a lull in bombing activities was observed. (The latest in Sulawesi Island is in Indonesian territory). Focus should remain on sniffing out terrorist training activity remaining on Philippine territory – whether under the cloak of the MILF or independent thereof. Movement studies show the shift of possible training activity in the Indonesian side close to the Philippine border. The buildup of a C-130 capable landing strip on the southmost Philippine island of Basilan is a good calibrated and flexible move.
Scenario: Lull time is training time in preparation for a second wave of more sustained fighting where the goals may be to induce the US to commit its forces in the region, force collateral damage to Indonesians and southern Philippines and recruit more fighters from
among the Muslim population in Indonesia. Fighters showing potential may be tapped for Iraq, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, or even the US. MILF standing army may join the fray if activities increase to buy time for a rehearsed diplomatic scenario with ASEAN and OIC wherein territorial boundaries dismembering the southern tip of the Philippines will be drawn in exchange for a ceasefire. Separate regional armies for the bordering regions of Indonesia and Malaysia will hold ground (the host countries’ armies would collaborate), declare alliance with the Muslim brothers in southern Philippines and the new Islamic State of Jemayah Islamiya will be proclaimed. Voila! An Asian Iran extending Al Qaeda’s global reach.
Recommendations:
(a)The constitutionality of another standing army (MILF) other than the Armed
Forces of the Philippines within Philippine territory should be challenged before
Philippine courts.
(b) Independent trade and investment activity should increase in southern Mindanao
(c) The pilot project of the proposed national ID system should start in southern
Mindanao, to include the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM)
(d) Increased independent inter-Faith activities(whether trade or technology-related)
led by Imams and the Indonesian academe should proliferate in the region.
(e) Independent scrutiny on the accountability on former Indonesian paramilitary
members should be encouraged within and/or without Indonesia.
(f) Continue hardening of possible terrorist targets in Philippine territory .
(g) US to maintain independent fraternal contacts with the respective militaries of the southeast asian risk countries.
Nowhere did I mention turning this area into another Iraq, but hey, if some freaks really want to do so, I’m sure they can make up a nice excuse for it.
Filed: 30/ May / 05, Subic Bay, Philippines
Most of us are already abreast on what’s taking place in Iraq – both good and bad basically because of US troops being committed there. Inversely, the official absence of US forces in Southeast Asian countries make for less “newsworthy” coverage of terrorist activities in that region. Not very many, therefore know enough of terrorist activities in Southeast Asia , much less understand its significance viz-a-viz the current war.
As I drive through the Waterfront, here in a former US Naval base called Subic Bay, a 3-hour drive from Manila for a final sojourn before my flight out, I try to collect my thoughts on my visit to reflect on some needed answers to questions like what the heck has a group called Abu Sayyaf got to do with the US ?
When the names of the countries Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines reach the ears of the average American, idyllic views of South Pacific Bali Hai immediately comes to mind and until recently with incursions of Al Qaeda- sponsored hostage-taking and bombings which selectively target Westerners and Christians widely spread by the media, one readily feels like avoiding the whole region altogether, which is really the intent of all these explosions – to keep the Muslim population isolated not only from Western/ Christian influence but even moderate Islam in order that Muslims be exposed solely to a Wahabbi type of Islamic Fundamentalism – one that can help turn out a factory of suicide bombers and have some left over for export. The objective isn’t really to hurt the US militarily but to keep its influence away from the region while building a base from amongst the most populous Muslim nation in the planet – Indonesia.
Indonesians themselves, especially those among the academe, are uneasy about the situation and are wary about rabble-rousing Muslim clerics as well as antsy about what it perceives as US war policies in the Middle East and Asia. To them, “Bush and Bin Laden – they’re both fundamentalists!”- seems to be a recurring theme. Yet two other things may be of serious concern:
One is the role of paramilitary units in the Indonesian Army who were veterans of the frustrated East Timor campaign . (Predominantly Christian East Timor obtained its independence from its former colonizer, Portugal, only to be militarily occupied by Indonesia thereafter. The former Megawati government acceded to UN-sponsored elections which gave back East Timor its independence to the frustration of this paramilitary unit.) Supposedly disbanded, this unit cannot be accounted for, as well as the increasing number of military adventures exhibited by a resurgent Al Qaeda group, Abu Sayyaf . Could not elements from this paramilitary unit invoking the same anti-Christian ideology be part of a resurgent Abu Sayyaf?
Number Two concern – all these past incidents display an unmistakable pattern that point to terrorist cells in Indonesia and Malaysia as the source of terrorist activity in Southeast Asia. Majority of terrorist attacks have been carried out protective of the Muslim populace in Malaysia and Indonesia and indiscriminately among the mostly Christian population of the Philippines. In Indonesia, the major attacks involved the bombing of the Philippine embassy in Jakarta, the Bali bombing victimizing a significant number of Australians and the recent bombing of the public market in the Christian-dominated town of Tentena in the island of Sulawesi – all carried out with the same code of conduct in carefully sparing the Muslim populace. Malaysia’s singular link has been the tourist-frequented island of Sabang from where the first Abu Sayyaf hostages were kidnapped starting the whole wave of terrorist activities in Southeast Asia . One glossed-over detail in this incident was why the Abu Sayyaf took the extra effort ( using a Penta Volvo outboard motor with several gasoline tanks as provision) to bring the hostages to the island of Palawan, a Philippine territory several hundreds of nautical miles away, then take more hostages from a resort there before holing up in southern Philippines when it could’ve easily hidden them in Malaysian territory ? It doesn’t make any sense unless they wanted to avoid embarrassing their Malaysian sponsors and project an image to the world that would scare Christians and Westerners from the southern territory they want to dismember from the Philippines.
If we lay all these past terrorist incidents in a timeline, it would be traceable to the founding of Jemayah Islamiya,(JI) an Al Qaeda-inspired regional network, in Malaysia whose goal has been and still is to carve out a separatist Islamic state out of territories held from parts of Indonesia, Malaysia and southern Philippines. The trial of Al’Bashir, the popular Muslim cleric who espoused JI is ongoing in Indonesia but not concluded. Arms cache from retreating Abu Sayyaf fighters have been found in Southern Philippines with Malaysian markings.
How about the Christian-dominated Philippines ? Is the country really the pushover the terrorists have concluded it to be ? Good question. As I sit here in Moonbay Pier, Subic Bay with some medics and local officials watching Bobby Soul of the former Platters crooning out “Only You” in his inimitable style, I pose the question and gather the answers.
Leadership, the People and Politics Filipinos are one of the most hospitable people in Asia. One could almost say hospitable to a fault. My weight gain and frequent dyspepsia from the many times I’ve been fed everytime I enter a household will testify to that. Majority naturally take to foreigners as welcome visitors from a better land from whom they will eventually learn as to how to better their own lives. I don’t really know if it’s colonial mentality having had 300 years of Spanish colonization, not to mention the 50 years of American occupation that followed later interspersed with 3 years of Japanese rule. The downside of this hospitality was the ease with which ill-intentioned foreigners could exploit and abuse the situation, of which their history can show a lot of examples involving their dealings with ugly Americans .
Playback. The 70’s was a turbulent period where a counter-consciousness to the colonial mindset became the fare. Suddenly, values were questioned and an inward-looking nationalism flowered. Then came the fragile democracy’s first encounter with Dictatorship when a stage-managed bombing of the opposition party’s convention eased the way to the establishment of a Martial Law government. Twenty years of that was enough to restructure social institutions to foster a culture of corruption reaching its pinnacle with the teetering Philippine economy and the lavish lifestyle of Imelda Marcos. (To this day, rumors of her using a herb to cause Ferdinand Marcos to be dialysis-dependent as she poised to take over the reins of power refuse to die). The country gave birth to Asia’s and its First People Power Revolution in 1986 which booted out the Dictator Marcos for exile in Hawaii where he eventually passed away.
Filipinos are also readily forgiving, also to a fault. To the present day despite glaring evidences that point to the Marcoses treating the Philippine Treasury as their piggy bank, no conviction in the Philippine courts has succeeded, although court cases filed against them abound. The toppling of the Dictator was followed by a series of coup d‘etats (about 7 of them) which all failed due to lack of support from the populace. After two People Power Presidents, the opposition, which included the diehards from the previous Martial Law government , found an ally in a charismatic action film star Erap Estrada. After successfully launching his bid as the 13th Philippine President, the opposition in particular and Filipinos in general were treated to a 2nd wave of institutionalized corruption and the spectacle of a sitting President using a pseudonym to maintain a bank account which steadily grew in millions from largesse from gambling and an illegal numbers game , not to mention percentages from a host of significant government transactions.
Well, you gotta hand it to them. Even if Filipinos are described as being resilient as the bamboo whenever a typhoon blows over, they also have their breaking point. They found their second wind of courage and mustered their numbers to bring about a 2nd People Power Revolution where the civilian populace and the Philippine military joined hands until the then Vice-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo(GMA) got sworn in by their Supreme Court Chief Justice as the next Philippine President.
Erap is now under house arrest and despite attempts by the opposition to mount their own version of People Power and other destabilization plots, Filipinos voted favorably for a continuation of a GMA Presidency. After 5 years , Filipinos’ lives inched on with little improvement and the present government reeling from the heritage left by 2 Presidential crooks and despite finding heavy resistance in instituting reforms, managed to score some victories in fighting corruption and for the first time after a looong time, increased its tax collection significantly.
The Legal Opposition, the New People’s Army (NPA), the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and Jemayah Islamiya intrusions in Philippine territory.
When one defines the legal opposition in the Philippine political scenery, personalities from the past corruption-laden Presidencies still come to fore, anchored by their loyal voter base and name recall. Surprisingly, the leftists, whose teach-ins first galvanized popular support against the former Dictator, failed to make political gain of the democratic space that ensued and distanced itself from the post-Martial Law government opting to support armed struggle instead. During the 2nd People Power Revolution, the Leftists again distanced themselves from the transforming democratic landscape and opted again for armed struggle and consistently stayed on the wrong side of history. The headlines that followed bannered the fratricidal wars that ensued between factions within the Philippine Left that hammered each other with assassinations – Mafia style. The little legal representations they had in government had to do with radical changes in the Philippine Constitution that allowed them as a minority group congressional seats so long as a minimum voter requirement would allow. Now, the Philippine Left are squandering this chance by making allies of the old Opposition – the very faces they helped boot out during the First People Power Revolution. It does make them look like confused kids out for a power grab rather than the principled idealistic figures they originally pictured themselves to be. Approval of the Anti-Terrorist Bill as well as the proposed National ID system are expected to drag on due to this opposition Alliance.
The New People’s Army to which the Philippine Left are sympathetic to, have limited their activities to the fratricidal assassinations tearing the Left apart, aside from ambuscades on remote soft military targets which have presently dwindled down. Contacts with the MILF or its predecessor, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) that started in the ‘70’s weakened as of the current anti-terrorist campaign. For an MILF backgrounder, here’s a link to my previous report.Link
The existence of Malaysian and Indonesian terrorist cells did not escape review from the Philippine government which has decided to combat the problem on their southern border on two levels :
Diplomatic representations with the Organization of Islamic Countries to which the Phil. Government was granted observer status initially by virtue of its Muslim population in its southern border and with ASEAN to which Malaysia and Indonesia are accountable as regards regional trade and security matters.
Militarily, the Abu Sayyaf fighters sent by Al Qaeda’s southeast asian clone, the Jemayah Islamiya were no match for the Philippine Army, long schooled in jungle warfare , who trounced the Abu Sayyaf until the death of its spokesperson, Abu Sabaya in an ensuing seacraft battle. The MILF standing army which were previous government concessions from agreements establishing the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) were careful not to expose their sympathies for the Abu Sayyaf retreating fighters who sought refuge in their territory, lest the “terrorist” tag be applied to them and they would have to face the superior divisions of the Philippine Army.
Analysis. Terrorist bombing activities have abated since the deaths of the Abu Sayyaf commanders in a prison hostage-taking activity. See link.Link The absence of suicide bombers (so far)in this part of the world may not be culturally related but more in keeping with the ease with which terrorists were able to infiltrate their targets during an earlier period, uncertainty of sustaining prolonged terrorist activities due to unpredictable logistical lines and lack of reinforcements (recruits).
As the targets hardened in Philippine territory, a lull in bombing activities was observed. (The latest in Sulawesi Island is in Indonesian territory). Focus should remain on sniffing out terrorist training activity remaining on Philippine territory – whether under the cloak of the MILF or independent thereof. Movement studies show the shift of possible training activity in the Indonesian side close to the Philippine border. The buildup of a C-130 capable landing strip on the southmost Philippine island of Basilan is a good calibrated and flexible move.
Scenario: Lull time is training time in preparation for a second wave of more sustained fighting where the goals may be to induce the US to commit its forces in the region, force collateral damage to Indonesians and southern Philippines and recruit more fighters from
among the Muslim population in Indonesia. Fighters showing potential may be tapped for Iraq, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, or even the US. MILF standing army may join the fray if activities increase to buy time for a rehearsed diplomatic scenario with ASEAN and OIC wherein territorial boundaries dismembering the southern tip of the Philippines will be drawn in exchange for a ceasefire. Separate regional armies for the bordering regions of Indonesia and Malaysia will hold ground (the host countries’ armies would collaborate), declare alliance with the Muslim brothers in southern Philippines and the new Islamic State of Jemayah Islamiya will be proclaimed. Voila! An Asian Iran extending Al Qaeda’s global reach.
Recommendations:
(a)The constitutionality of another standing army (MILF) other than the Armed
Forces of the Philippines within Philippine territory should be challenged before
Philippine courts.
(b) Independent trade and investment activity should increase in southern Mindanao
(c) The pilot project of the proposed national ID system should start in southern
Mindanao, to include the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM)
(d) Increased independent inter-Faith activities(whether trade or technology-related)
led by Imams and the Indonesian academe should proliferate in the region.
(e) Independent scrutiny on the accountability on former Indonesian paramilitary
members should be encouraged within and/or without Indonesia.
(f) Continue hardening of possible terrorist targets in Philippine territory .
(g) US to maintain independent fraternal contacts with the respective militaries of the southeast asian risk countries.
Nowhere did I mention turning this area into another Iraq, but hey, if some freaks really want to do so, I’m sure they can make up a nice excuse for it.