Wipe that smirk off the faces of terrorists!

Some published photos yesterday of self-confessed Manila "bombing" plotter Saifullah Moklis Yunos were offensive. They showed the 31-year old subcommander of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) still smirking as he was led away from court, after pleading guilty before Manila RTC Judge Lucia Purugganan who had warned him he faced a possible death penalty.

Yunos acknowledged he had helped plan the attacks and "wire" the explosives in the December 30 "Rizal Day", 2000, bombings in Metro Manila, in which 19 were killed and more than a hundred injured, some of them grievously maimed for life. Most of the dead were slain (12 passengers) on the Light Rail Transit train which was blown up, while seven others died in other bombings across the metropolis, including a bus packed with commuters.

Yunos, whose group is linked with the Jemaah Islamiyah, the Indonesian-based terrorist outfit whose members are on trial for the brutal Bali bombings (which killed more than 200 hapless tourists and revelers) in Kuta, appeared "unrepentant", our reporter wrote yesterday, during his 30-minute arraignment.

His cohorts include the now internationally-notorious "Hambali" (Riduan Isamuddin), an Indonesian charged for the bombings by our justice department, and other terrorists, including the already previously convicted Fathur Roman al-Ghozi; Abubakar Bafana Faiz, a Malaysian; Alim Pangalian Solaiman, MILF; and other MILF suspects, namely Zainal Paks, Salman Moro, Ustadz Said and Mohomad Amiror.

And we’re still letting the Malaysian government help tout renewed "peace negotiations" with the MILF? We’re all-time wimps and suckers – no wonder the terrorists are continuing to smirk, and outright guffaw at us.

When our surrender gang, which includes some in the media, vehemently push the envelope on making "peace" with the MILF, they invite more trouble. The terrorists interpret our constant waffling and compromising as weakness – which it is – and this emboldens them to launch more outrages like those in the Davao airport and wharf as well as in GenSan and in Zamboanga.

Do you recall how many children, even babies, were blown to bits in that LRT bombing in the year-end of 2000? Kids on their way to school or an outing, women enroute to market?

Those of us who’ve been scores of times on the battlefield, or seen the carnage wrought by street-to-street combat in wartorn urban settings, ought to be inured to the sight and smell of death by the thousands. I’ve seen friends fall, in fact, on either side of me in those KZs or killing zones.

Yet, there’s something far more reprehensible in a terrorist assault. Those embroiled in war know what they’re in for. In contrast, the terrorist converts by treachery, peaceful sortings into charnel houses of sudden death and tragedy.

Those who’ve hi-jacked Islam into "representing" their vicious cause are no more solicitous of their fellow Muslims. Last Monday, the Financial Times published a poignant photo of bowed black-veiled Shia women, their eyes showing only through the slits, but depicting the depths of their grief over the 52 fellow-worshippers and kinfolk slain in last Friday’s suicide-bombing of a mosque in Quetta, Pakisan, on the Afghan border. The police subsequently arrested 20 suspects involved in the plot, both Pakistani and Afghan Sunni Muslim hardliners, linked to the Taleban.

Equally painful and poignant was a front-page photo in The Sunday Telegraph of London, of a beautiful, brown-haired Chechen girl, hardly out of her teens, in a simple khaki uniform (she’d posed as a Russian air force soldier). The fair-skinned girl lay on the ground as if asleep, but her lower portion had been blown away – the photo only hinted at that. She was one of the two women suicide-bombers who blew themselves up last Saturday (July 5) at the entrance of an open-air rock festival on the outskirts of Moscow.

The Muslim terrorists had detonated bombs strapped to their waists after suspicious security guards had barred them from entering the concert being held at the Tushino airfield, west of the Russian capital. Eighteen people, including the guards, died, and 30 more were wounded. If the two women had gotten in, the death toll would surely have been more horrendous. There were 40,000 young people inside, enjoying the music of some of Russia’s top rock bands at the annual Krylya "Wings" festival. The bands played on, it was reported, even as the dead and wounded were being carried away "with many in the audience oblivious to the carnage".

Terrorism is so evil there can be no compromise with it. No surrender. It is a cannibalistic mockery which devours its own children.

* * *

When we left London the other day, a mini . . . well "war" was already brewing between Italy and Germany. The hostilities started Tuesday a week ago when Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, during ceremonies in the European Parliament attending his assumption to the presidency of the European Union (it was Italy’s turn at the helm for the next six months) was heckled by a German MEP (Member of the European Parliament) named Martin Schulz and tartly responded that the German would be well-suited to play the role of a Nazi concentration camp kapo (commander) in an Italian movie currently in the making. The chamber many of those leftwing, Green Party members already intensely disliked Berlusconi, erupted into an uproar of protest over the Nazi jibe. Berlusconi huffed and retorted that the German’s hectoring manner had been an insult to him, and to his people.

In due time, Mr. B, bombarded from right and left, garnering a week of damaging headlines even in some of his own country’s media, apologized, or at least semi-apologized to the European Parliament (but not to Schulz) and to German sensibilities via Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

Yet, no sooner had the once-tight "axis" (which had started with Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, I must remind all) been semi-repaired than Italy’s volatile and obviously less-than-diplomatic Tourism Minister (would you believe?) jumped into the breech.

Taking his cue from his boss’s truculent stance, Tourism Chief Stefano Stefani published a letter in La Padiana, the newspaper of the very rightist Northern League party (a member of Berlusconi’s ruling coalition) in which he trashed Germans in general.

Fulminated Stefani: "We know the Germans well – those stereotyped hyper-nationalistic blondes, who have been indoctrinated . . . to feel top of the class whatever the situation." He added: "They noisily invade our beaches." (I culled this translation from yesterday’s Financial Times and suspect the Italian version was even spicier. I’m also constrained to add that I’ve nothing against blondes, although I think brunettes have all the fun.)

It must be noted that Stefani was once married to a German, who apparently was not happy to be his Hausfrau and apparently they split. He was even more sarcastic about Schulz, commenting that "Schulz . . . probably grew up taking part in noisy burping contests after drinking gigantic amounts of beer and gorging himself on fried potatoes."

After participating in my past, far less sedate youth in no less than three Oktoberfests in Munich, ingesting disgusting amounts of beer, roaring Solang der Alte Peter, Heute Blau und Morgen Blau, Schutzenliesel, Ein Prosit and Der Treus Husar in those huge beer tents, arms linked with lederhosen-clad strangers, on the Theresienwiese, a meadow under a gigantic statue of Bavaria, a bronze lady 98-feet tall, I can understand Commendatore Stefani’s ire. But what a thing for a Tourism Minister to say! German tourists represent 40 percent of foreign visitors to Italy, and the FT reports that, last year, they spent about 8.8 billion euros or US$10 billion there!

In any event, German Kanzler Schroeder, who had thought the matter closed, threatened to cancel his planned holiday in the Marche region of Central Italy – in angry protest. Susmariosep. Bela Anda, Chancellor Schroeder spokesman, said it best: "This is a blanket insult to all Germans who like to holiday in Italy!"

The European Union appears to be in tatters. And we Pinoys are the ones usually tarred by Europeans as being fractious, naughty, anarchic and childish. I guess the human race has problems, everywhere – whether blonde, auburn, carrot-topped, brunette, or bald-headed.

And to think the EU’s planners believed that switching to the euro as a common currency for more than 300 million Europeans would unite Europe. What they accuse the United States of is true, alas, everywhere. Nationalism will always raise its head, ugly or handsome, or otherwise. It’s a fact of life which can never be erased by any international treaty, world convention, international court, or the romantic idea of globalism.