Duterte, Citing Hitler, Says He Wants to Kill 3 Million Addicts in Philippines

[Flagg]

You're a dick Flagg but you've got balls.

Duterte and the rest of his ilk can't be allowed to win. We can't give them, or let them have, anything more. He and people like him around the world - either through the systematic buckling of the neoliberal paradigm thus the resulting discontent that they, through parallel-evolution, are harnessing simultaneously... or through some loose but semi-coordinated movement (he has professed his love to China and Russia... for some reason people are saying Putin is somehow assisting Trump's campaign... is this just Russophobia or is there something else to it?) - are gaining ground. People can't allow them to go further. People like him are the result of mistakes, global mistakes, local mistakes, post-colonial mistakes, islander regionalistic mistakes in the case of Duts, etc. But ugh. Like Farange, they emerged from discontent over the pigfuckers but what they'll do is something worse than pigfuckery. We're all gonna be porkchops when they get through with us.

As a consequence of his stupid Mugabe/Idi Amin/Chavez-like rhetoric that makes me, a guy who got a Murcan militarist jingoist fuckface to wish I get super-herpes before he threw racial slurs at me, wince and grimace. While his fanbase are sharing such insightful critiques of US policies from fucking Assadists. Jesus Christ. This is loathesome.

Meanwhile people I know, Chinese-Filipinos, who've gone abroad are playing this model minority card and being fucking Uncle Toms drinking the anti-immigration and "what racism those whiny minorities and irritable people of color are shouting about nothing" kool aid. Utterly disappointing.

Yeah, my sister in law who still has family there is all "Hurr hurr, it's not as bad as the international media is portraying it." But since she's a genuinely nice person who lives with my half-brother (he's a tool, politically) in Kuwait, I'm willing to assume she doesn't have all the information. Plus I think her extended family are probably up Duterte's ass or something, I dunno.

[Flagg]

So my sister in law is drinking the Duterte kool-aid. I'm sure it's because she lives in Kuwait with her husband/my redneck brother.

But she literally said, after me mentioning Duturde, that "He's really passionate about the war on drugs and misspeaks sometimes. But he's got a good heart."

I'd say "well lets rip it out and take a look" but she's always been so kind and asks about my health and stuff. Still, the banality of evil.

[Shroom Man 777]

Gloria, Oriental Mindoro — The riding-in-tandem killers who gunned down 51-year-old Citizens Crime Watch (CCW) regional chairperson, Zenaida M. Luz, last Sunday night in this town turned out to be two junior police officials – one of them a bemedalled municipal police chief, the top police official in this province revealed yesterday.

Senior Superintendent Christopher C. Birung, provincial director of the Oriental Mindoro Police Provincial Office (PPO), said murder and direct assault against agents of persons in authority charges are set to be filed against Senior Inspector Magdalino G. Pimentel, Jr., of the First Maneuver Platoon of Oriental Mindoro Police Public Safety Company (PPSC) based in San Teodoro; and Inspector Markson S. Almeranez, chief of police of Socorro town, this province.

Birung said he has instructed Chief Insp. Ruel Lito T. Fronda, Gloria chief of police, to file charges after Pimentel Jr. and Almeranez, while riding in tandem on a motorcycle and in civilian getups, allegedly shot and killed Luz in front of her house in Barangay Maligaya, here, around 11:40 p.m. Sunday.

Fronda said a police mobile team responding to a distress call received from Barangay Captain Dionido Quitain of nearby Barangay Banutan at 11:30 p.m. chanced upon Luz on the pavement and the two assailants fleeing the scene on a motorcycle.

The police mobile team chased the fleeing duo, but upon reaching Barangay Quinabigan, in the adjacent town of Pinamalayan, one of the suspects fired at pursuing lawmen, prompting a shootout in which the suspects were wounded and cornered.

Upon their arrest, Pimentel was wearing a bonnet and hoodie jacket while Almeranez was wearing a facemask and a wig to disguise himself. They also yielded a Caspian .45-caliber pistol with Serial No. 910204 and a Bersa Thunder .380-cal. pistol with Serial No. 679021.

Almeranez, a native of Sta. Mesa, Manila and who graduated fifth in PNPA “Tagapamagitan” Class of 2013, was even awarded as outstanding police commissioned officer by Director-General Ronald de la Rosa in Calapan City last September 8.

[Sea Skimmer]

This all strikes me as nothing but another case of elect a King syndrome, something any democracy is at risk of, but which really plagues the developing world. Plus Trump now.... The exact details are a bit new, but in terms of people unquestioningly going along with it all, even when they know it's wrong, it's exactly what a monarchy was about.

[Shroom Man 777]

Trigger warnings and content notes and advisories and all that.

PHILIPPINES IN PHOTOS: Police van runs over protesters

Cue apologists going oh but the protesters were rowdy, oh but in America cops use excessive force too, blah blah blah.

Not entirely Duterte related but... the country is going nuts.

[Flagg]

Man it's crazy. I hate to make the comparison, but my sister in law is still like, "Oh, no big deal!" and I have to wonder if Germans in the late 1930's and onward living abroad or even in der Fatherland thought that way about the treatment of the Jews. Because according to her Duturd is like the second coming of Jeebus and no one is really getting hurt unless "they start it". But to her credit, she is living abroad. Still, I've lost all respect for her morally.

[Shroom Man 777]

Everyone (well, a large and very vocal segment of the population) is pretty much like that.

[Simon_Jester]

Basically, for democracy to function for any length of time without falling into "elect a king syndrome" as Skimmer very succinctly called it...

You need a concept of something I've heard called "civic responsibility." The idea if the government does nasty shit, or if people working for or with the ruling elite do nasty shit, you should do something about that, because it's a serious problem. If the citizenry is content to sit back on the couch eating potato chips and saying "what can you do, if the government is oppressive that's just the way things are, we're all victims," then that is literally how Hitler ends up in charge. Seriously, that was a major reason the Nazis were able to take over in Germany, because the average German seemed to have virtually no concept of, you know, not supporting a bunch of Nazis just because they happened to be the dominant political party. As soon as they took over, nearly everyone started trusting them and listening to them, even at a time when their iron fist of oppression had several fingers still under construction and they could have been stopped in principle.

The Philippines seem to be suffering a related version of the problem- the idea that if the government is actively murdering people without trial and son on, that is okay, because they're in charge and what can you do?

It is basically impossible to stop autocrats from taking over the state, unless the bulk of the population accepts that they SHOULD stop autocrats from taking over the state. You can get a temporary democracy when an unpopular regime is thrown out of power, but that's not the same thing as a permanent democracy.

[Shroom Man 777]

Ever since forever, we've had advocates and activists - including students - being disappeared. Officers involved in "counterinsurgency" operations get medals while facing allegations of torturing and disappearing captives - a few do get imprisoned for these charges... but their batchmates and subordinates end up becoming generals and in politics and such.

Criticizing and calling shit out and protesting gets the usual responses of eyerolls and scorn and "if you don't like it then leave" or "if you're not in a relevant position then you're irrelevant and stfu." There are a few of us who continue speaking out, who refuse to be silent, either just to our circles, in conversations in meatspace or real life, others with the means do it in the streets.

But plainclothes pigs will keep an eye out for you.

"Civil responsibility" and consideration for others is important for development and cohesion and progress. But people are in love with thinking that all it takes is "discipline" and they misappropriate and misquote Lee Kuan Yew quotes to justify their autocrat fetishes (they conveniently ignore Lee Kuan Yew's diss of the Marcoses...).

For fucks sake people, "discipline" as in fear of punishment is like... a basal form of order, even in children's mental development we know for a fact that higher levels of understanding are attained when they figure out that things are right and wrong because they consider how it affects others, going beyond fear of punishment or "discipline."

But no, people are idiots.

[Simon_Jester]

And discipline, at least in English, isn't even about how people behave for fear of punishment, it's about those higher level things we talked about.

A child who is afraid of being punished and therefore doesn't do anything is NOT a well-disciplined child. Because as soon as an unexpected situation arises, they will not react correctly. They will either be useless and helpless, or they will turn into a wild animal.

So it is even more idiotic than you say, because "IRON DISCIPLINE" doesn't actually just involve whoever is in charge punishing people insanely harshly because they piss him off. Even the Chinese Legalists had this figured out, and that was like 2500 years ago.

[Shroom Man 777]

Yeah, even stiff-asses like Confucius had lots to say about conscientiousness and stuff being the root of whatever discipline they were instilling. Which they apply to everything, even in (especially in) the martial arts. It's not due to fear but due to becoming better and helping and shit.

But no, others don't get that because they are just mal-appropriating misunderstood mismatched concepts that they think will work... it's some post-colonial cargo cult thing. Scream about decadent liberal values from the West... while persecuting a drug war devised during the Nixon-era...

It's like how those homophobic regimes in the third world go on about LGBT tolerance as some evil foreign western conspiracy-agenda, even though their pre-Christian histories had lots of LGBT non-binary stuff... and then they cite the erosion of their local values and say that it was "Adam and Eve... not Steve." Because Adam, Eve and Steve are such indigenous non-western names. K.

[His Divine Shadow]

Apparetly Duterte is choosing China over the US. I am thinking he'll regret that decision in time.

[Flagg]

Apparetly Duterte is choosing China over the US. I am thinking he'll regret that decision in time.

Why? China is closer, on a seemingly unending rocket upward towards unending prosperity, and unless I've missed something, never brutally occupied the Philippines, at least not within the last 100 years.

The only other country I could see them hitching their wagon to is South Korea, but if Kim Jong Un has an ingrown dickhair he may decide to flatten Seoul with the massive amount of artillery he has pointing at it starting WW3 (as unlikely as that sounds, it still sounds kind of likely).

You could say Australia but they are on their unending quest to get rid of anyone darker than Vanilla Ice and getting Paul Hogan cast in any American movie rated NC-17 and under.

No, I can see why China seems like, and may be, a good ally.

[His Divine Shadow]

Let's say we have about 180 degree different view on china.

Corrupt, unstable, doctored growth figures for decades so nobody knows for sure anything, and now failing growth with ever more signs it's a giant with feet of clay. An already extremely regressive society with massive problems ahead of it is falling back into ever more extreme fascism and nationalism. The educational system is a complete joke focusing soley on test scores and creating people with worthless diplomas. There's extreme capital flight out of the country. Acts schizophrenic and unpredictable in foreign policy, it pursues insane policies like the china sea nonsense which gains them nothing and only alienates potential allies, to the point vietnam is approaching the US for closer military ties out of fear of China and hindering their great belt project by scaring the people it wants to attract.

I see China as a kind of a massive bumbling mess and every day I learn more of it and every day I am surprise it's lasted this long.

[Flagg]

Let's say we have about 180 degree different view on china.

Corrupt, unstable, doctored growth figures for decades so nobody knows for sure anything, and now failing growth with ever more signs it's a giant with feet of clay. An already extremely regressive society with massive problems ahead of it is falling back into ever more extreme fascism and nationalism. The educational system is a complete joke focusing soley on test scores and creating people with worthless diplomas. There's extreme capital flight out of the country. Acts schizophrenic and unpredictable in foreign policy, it pursues insane policies like the china sea nonsense which gains them nothing and only alienates potential allies, to the point vietnam is approaching the US for closer military ties out of fear of China and hindering their great belt project by scaring the people it wants to attract.

I see China as a kind of a massive bumbling mess and every day I learn more of it and every day I am surprise it's lasted this long.

The US seems to have a lot in common in very, very, broad strokes.

But regardless, The Philippines, Duturd in particular, may be drinking the Chinese Kool-Aid, I don't know. I'm no expert on China, I only know what the vastly inferior to reality US News channels tell me, which is that China is ascendant. If Duturd believes that, then I can see why he'd rather throw in with them than the US which brutally occupied the Philippines for decades or god forbid the Japanese, who somehow managed to do worse in less than half a decade of occupation.

[mr friendly guy]

Let's say we have about 180 degree different view on china.

That's for sure. The only thing I will say is that it makes more sense for a country like the Philippines to engage in "Finlandization" than hitching a on the bandwagon of one power over the other. I guess Duterte must really hate the US criticism of him.

Corrupt, unstable, doctored growth figures for decades so nobody knows for sure anything, and now failing growth with ever more signs it's a giant with feet of clay.

Every time someone mentions how Chinese growth figures must be fake, I point out figures China cannot fake. That is

a. Trade with other nations (which are growing ), so unless its major trading partners like the EU, US etc are all in a conspiracy to make China look good....

b. Energy usage and pollution - > while not a 100% correlate with economic growth (for example services may net more money with less energy usage than manufacturing), China's energy usage has continually increase. Another way of looking at it is carbon emissions, which until the last 2 years had been rising (and its fallen despite higher energy use because of them using less carbon intensive energy sources, the main one being hydro, but nuclear is also making inroads).

So unless China churns out energy for no apparent reason, you know just for the sake of it, chances are they are generating economic activity of some sort. This of course becomes less valuable a marker as China transitions to making services a larger part of its economy (like developed nations), more efficient energy use etc, but for now increase energy usage is a still good indicator of increase economic activity.

An already extremely regressive society with massive problems ahead of it is falling back into ever more extreme fascism and nationalism.

Depends on what you mean by regressive. I am sure my own country would look socially regressive compared to Finnish standards.

However in terms of other measures in its society, lets say technology adoption and development. Its quite progressive. For years they were good adopters, but now that they have more money, they're putting more money into R & D. There are some areas they are ahead. For example development of certain nuclear reactors like pebble beds whereas the country invented the pebble bed reactor, Germany is hell bent on destroying its nuclear industry, or research into thorium reactors being another case of nuclear.

I can use a non nuclear example is them being the only country to use pig's corneas for transplants since there is a shortage of human corneas (currently medicine uses pig's valves for transplant).

Lets use another marker of progression. Size of private companies, not state owned enterprises, private companies. If private companies can make it big, its society can't be that regressive at least on an economic aspect.
Lets start with the behemoth Ali Baba (hey wasn't he the guy with the 40 thieves). This company does more sales than Ebay and Amazon combined. Its not me saying it, its Forbes saying it. http://www.forbes.com/sites/walterloeb/ ... c1e9a42393
Another example - lets say Lenovo, the world's largest PC maker. What, Lenovo's Chinese? When Polish colleague actually asked that when I told him this.

The educational system is a complete joke focusing soley on test scores and creating people with worthless diplomas.

So they do gender studies courses. Jokes aside, their number of publications are second to the united states, which kind of makes sense since they are the second largest economy after the US. No this is not Chinese propaganda saying it, its the Nature index saying this. You know, Nature.

For some reason an education system focus purely on test scores sure seem to churn out good things, like the world's fastest supercomputer. You know, that one made out of 100% indigenous components (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunway_TaihuLight) Lets compare to Europe shall we, whose education system I assume isn't solely dedicated to test scores.
https://www.top500.org/list/2016/06/

The top 4 European supercomputers are Piz Daint (Switzerland), Hazel Hen (Germany), Pangea (France) and JUQUEEN (Germany) all of which either use Intel chips or manafactured by IBM, you know, NON European sources. Now Europe has also got ARM, but that's based in Britain, and with a Brexit coming.....

There's extreme capital flight out of the country.

Jesus Christ. This is like analysing a sporting match and concluding China is losing because of the goals kicked against it, and ignoring goals its scored. Maybe you might want to compare this figure to foreign investment into the country, otherwise this is just so blatantly flawed analysis, you would be able to see how stupid it is if the topic wasn't China.

Acts schizophrenic and unpredictable in foreign policy, it pursues insane policies like the china sea nonsense which gains them nothing and only alienates potential allies, to the point vietnam is approaching the US for closer military ties out of fear of China and hindering their great belt project by scaring the people it wants to attract.

You do realise that Vietnam's relations with the PRC have been far from ideal since the Sino Soviet split right?

I see China as a kind of a massive bumbling mess and every day I learn more of it and every day I am surprise it's lasted this long.

Let me guess where you get your information on China from. Spacebattles right?

[His Divine Shadow]

Actual people living in China mostly.

[mr friendly guy]

Actual people living in China mostly.

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-china-blog-37570965

Chinese people optimistic about the future, says Pew survey
By Stephen McDonell
BBC News, Beijing
6 October 2016

At a time of Brexit and talk of a wall between the United States and Mexico, it seems the Chinese are embracing international engagement.
They think their country's power is rising, that their living standards will keep improving, that corruption is being cleaned up and that air pollution should be fixed even if it means slowing down economic growth.
These are the views which have emerged from a broad survey from Washington-based the Pew Research Center.
Elsewhere there is fear and uncertainty. Here optimism trumps all.

So those people in China talking about Chinese universities churning out useless diplomas, are they doing gender studies or postmodernism courses?

BTW - the author Stephen McDonell used to work for Australia's ABC and I would characterise him as a China basher, although you can see he tries to do what journalists are supposed to do, ie be objective because its kind of in the ABC's charter. BBC of course is a China bashing new source, so if they kind of point this out, its hard to claim bias as I know some people will.

[His Divine Shadow]

All kinds of people.

[Flagg]

Hey you 2, calm down.

We'll solve this spat with a duel.

Flame throwers at 5 paces!

[His Divine Shadow]

I'm sorry, I'll calm down, sorry for shouting.

[Shroom Man 777]

Nope, the Chinese acted in bad faith in trying to island-grab and I worry that Duterte's making nice of them will give them the wrong lesson, that their strong-arming approach was successful. I really hope it's the opposite, that the Chinese leadership was relieved that Duterte gave them a safe exit, that they did feel pressure from the soft-power moves of the disputants (I do hope so) that were being encouraged by the US (China fears US encirclement) and so they got the carrot to avoid the stick... just as we ourselves decided to go for the carrot instead of the stick the Chinese are offering...

So the Chinese gave billions of dollars in aid money. Who knows what kind of strings are attached.

[mr friendly guy]

Nope, the Chinese acted in bad faith in trying to island-grab and I worry that Duterte's making nice of them will give them the wrong lesson, that their strong-arming approach was successful. I really hope it's the opposite, that the Chinese leadership was relieved that Duterte gave them a safe exit, that they did feel pressure from the soft-power moves of the disputants (I do hope so) that were being encouraged by the US (China fears US encirclement) and so they got the carrot to avoid the stick... just as we ourselves decided to go for the carrot instead of the stick the Chinese are offering...

So the Chinese gave billions of dollars in aid money. Who knows what kind of strings are attached.

You do realise every other claimant with the exemption of Brunei have done the same strong arm tactics right?

Island grabbing? The ROC got in there early and the PRC was a latecomer, but damn the Philippines got there in the middle but found it quite costly, especially when their ally, South Vietnam grabbed one of the Philippines islands while the soldiers were celebrating a birthday. Allegedly South Vietnam pried them with prostitutes.
In more recent times (1999) the Philippines crashed a ship into Second Thomas shoal to create a poor man's artificial island. Its still there now with Philippines soldiers occupying a dilapidated ship.

Land reclamation? Philippines did their own on Thitu Island, what you guys call Pagasa. It has an airstrip which extends beyond the natural boundaries of the islands at least since the 90s. Malaysia reclaimed Swallow Reef in 2003, turning it from 6 hectares to 35 hectares, whilst Vietnam started around sometime after 2010, before China started in late 2013.

Shooting each other's fishermen? Yep, they pretty much do that with the Philippines causing a fatality in which its own National Bureau of Investigation recommended charges being filed against its coast guards.

Other claimants are also using strong arming tactics, and in a lot of cases they did it first. Its just that strong arm tactics can work when its a stronger power doing it on a weaker one. However when the weaker one does it first, it just gives the stronger one an excuse/ justification to do the same thing, and do it harder.

And I very much doubt China gives a shit about the court ruling, which presumably if what you mean by the "soft power moves", when other great powers have done so previously - the UK ignored the same court in a ruling against it brought by Mauritius in 2015, Russia ignored this ruling in 2013 when it found in favour of the Netherlands, and the big daddy of them all, the USA ignored the International Court of justice in 1986 in a ruling in Nicaragua's favour. Note it was Permanent court of arbitration which heard the above cases including the Chinese one, and which is of questionable power, but the US ignored a different court, the ICJ which actually has power. Article 94 of the UN charter states that members must comply with the ICJ's ruling or else it can be brought before the security council. The US not only ignored the unfavourable ruling, but then vetoed resolutions when the matter was brought up in the security council.

Fuck, even Australia tries to ignore the Permanent Court of Arbitration with our maritime dispute with East Timor, and despite pretensions of shirt fronting Putin, we aren't anywhere near those powers.

[Shroom Man 777]

None of those things you cite give any good reason to make nice with China. Also, the difference with the island reclamations is that the Chinese activities are way further from their mainland, on islands much closer to the PH.

The fact that the other squabbling disputants are making overtures with each other to try and do something about China's disproportionate strongarming means something. Not that much, because realistically ASEAN's members are all hypocrites, but still.

[mr friendly guy]

None of those things you cite give any good reason to make nice with China. Also, the difference with the island reclamations is that the Chinese activities are way further from their mainland, on islands much closer to the PH.

Well I did argue for a Finlandization strategy rather than a make nice with China strategy, however it is very hypocritical in principle for one to complain about someone else using a particular tactic if you did it first. To paraphrase John Sheridan, we did exactly what they were trying to do to us, only we did it better.

Second point, why does distance from Chinese provinces matter? If we apply this logic, China gets the Paracels because its closer to Hainan than Vietnam, and not because they actually settled the islands. The US also loses its claims to islands such as Jarvis Island (around 2200 km away from Hawaii, rounded down), Baker Island (3000 km from Hawaii), Wake Island (3500 km away from Hawaii) etc and Japan loses the claim on Okinotorishima (1766 km away from Japan). Meanwhile the furthest Spratley Island from China's Hainan is around 1500 km. Note from its from Hainan, not from the Paracels which are closer.

And before someone says, "ah, but the islands the US claims aren't closer to anyone else is disputing it," then I will point to Bajo Nuevo Bank (1080 km from Florida and 720 km from Colombia, and disputed by those countries). No matter how you spin it, its essentially one rule for the West and its allies and one rule for China.

The fact that the other squabbling disputants are making overtures with each other to try and do something about China's disproportionate strongarming means something. Not that much, because realistically ASEAN's members are all hypocrites, but still.

That's unlikely to happen, not when Cambodia is in China's pocket, others are somewhat neutral because they don't have a stake in the game eg Thailand, and others who have more disputes with each other, eg Malaysia who disputes a few islands with China, but disputes an entire state (Sabah) with the Philippines as well as a few islands. Heck the previous administration and Duterte both continue this claim on Sabah. It makes more geopolitical sense for Malaysia to let the Philippines and China duke it on while sitting on the sidelines.