President Duterte of the Philippines for Dummies

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Re: President Duterte of the Philippines for Dummies

Postby Sounder » Sun May 28, 2017 6:36 am

Thanks minime. I hope to have something useful along those lines for the Questioning Consciousness thread. Still have to find my mojo though.


AD wrote...
You might need to read more carefully and/or you might be making disingenuous arguments


I always need to read more carefully, and yet it still seems to me that my response directly addresses your assertion that I am a supporter of the Strongman (as I try to sidestep ugly truths).


Sounder wrote...
What gives you the right or inclination to call me a supporter of that man?

I do not have a just privilege to call for the overthrow of another countries leader. What gives you that privilege?

Would you expect ISIS, the western proxies that they are, to be less brutal, or to kill fewer drug users, or to rape fewer women?

Why do you support them?

AD wrote...
Says a supporter of the Strongman as he tries to sidestep ugly truths...


A response to...American Dream, you are taking this thread title way too seriously.

Which is a joke on dummies from the OP.

And dummies we are if we get a rosey feeling of self-righteous anger in reading that pap designed to inflame our reactive minds.

And sidestepping ugly truths? Where is the show of horror and disgust in regard to the aftermath of the Libya operation?

I remember my disgust and horror when that was going down. The Libya thread was filled with calls for the leaders removal. Total disgust until Starman Skye stepped in to try to introduce a little sanity. No response. Even Alice chimed in with support. I now regret that I did not participate and ATM intend to put put a fly in any ointment of warmongering sentiment that is attempted to be spread in this new instance of imperialist housecleaning.

How is that for being disingenuous and sidestepping ugly truths, AD?
All these things will continue as long as coercion remains a central element of our mentality.
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Re: President Duterte of the Philippines for Dummies

Postby JackRiddler » Sun May 28, 2017 11:45 pm

WTF does Libya have to do with this?

Death squads are murdering hundreds in the streets in a "war on drugs," Duterte brags about killing people himself, talks about killing three million, and if only the Western media apologized for him instead of condemning him, you lot would have the equally Pavlovian response of (correctly, in this case) condemning him as a murderer and maniac - no doubt also deciding that he's a puppet of the globalists.
Last edited by JackRiddler on Mon May 29, 2017 9:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: President Duterte of the Philippines for Dummies

Postby Sounder » Mon May 29, 2017 7:23 am

WTF does Libya have to do with this?


Thanks Jack, glad you asked. When the Libya events went down I was intimidated by the consensus into silence. Yet I knew at the time that overthrowing the leader of the richest most stable country in Africa could only cause untellable amounts of suffering. It has, and I thought that maybe this might curb the warmongers apatite for awhile because of embarrassment at the results. But no, we immediately turn to Assad and identify him as the next ‘really bad man’ that must be removed from power. There is a bit of a disconnect between what the consensus considers 'good' for another country and the actual 'good' that results from the meddling of various types, don cha think.

Death squads are murdering hundreds in the streets in a "war on drugs," Duterte brags about killing people himself, talks about killing three million, and if only the Western apologized for him instead of condemning him, you lot would have the equally Pavlovian response of (correctly, in this case) condemning him as a murderer and maniac - no doubt also deciding that he's a puppet of the globalists.


You want to keep this thing all about Duterte, but the people of the country are the ones that will be abused and die at the hands of western proxy forces.

The scare words around Duterte enable the proxy forces and their orders of magnitude greater death dealing inclinations, just as they did for Libya and still do for Syria.

The pavlovian dig is hardly worth a response but I will say this. These wars are about resource control. Stealing. Theft. The scare words are merely a cover for that theft.
All these things will continue as long as coercion remains a central element of our mentality.
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Re: President Duterte of the Philippines for Dummies

Postby Elihu » Mon May 29, 2017 7:38 am

So if Trump were murdering your pals Duterte style, you might not worry about it per se?


the slanderer-in-chief. your subtlety at misdirection is masterful. for the record some of us, and i don't think sounder would think me wrong for including him in this group, are contemplating a world where political murder has come to an end, not converting people over to your pious side of getting the job done. what a capitalist pig you are. always thinking about your job security.
But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” John 16:33
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Re: President Duterte of the Philippines for Dummies

Postby JackRiddler » Mon May 29, 2017 4:24 pm

Sounder » Mon May 29, 2017 6:23 am wrote:
WTF does Libya have to do with this?


Thanks Jack, glad you asked. When the Libya events went down I was intimidated by the consensus into silence. Yet I knew at the time that overthrowing the leader of the richest most stable country in Africa could only cause untellable amounts of suffering. It has, and I thought that maybe this might curb the warmongers apatite for awhile because of embarrassment at the results.


Okay, so you you might have been a bit of a sucker at the time of the European-U.S. attack on Libya. I was not. I spoke my mind, for all the fat good it did. It kind of fits that you're now signalling suckerdom with regard to Duterte. Why should we care? More to the point, are state-sanctioned death squads murdering hundreds of people on the street in the Philippines? Did Duterte make public statements saying he's killed many people and is ready to kill 3 million more? Has his government broken off negotiations and escalated the war against Communist rebels, who obviously do not have Western support? Yes, yes and yes. Do you care to contest any of that, or are you going to treat us to more irrelevancies?

Evil comes in more flavors than those endorsed by the Western propagandists whom you say intimidate you from speaking. (Seriously, what stops you from speaking? Should I call you a snowflake?) There is no talk about a Western intervention in the Philippines. Quite the opposite, Duterte now has the endorsement of the Leader of the Free World. If the Western media are appalled, so what? They're right about a lot of things - that's easy. So is RT, all the propaganda outlets get many things right and even with intentionally made-up disinformation the ideal is to include mostly true facts if possible. (Never mind the spambots dispensing made-up "fake news" stories, a trivial phenomenon by comparison to the corporate and state propaganda factories.) Adopting an opposite stance to whatever one or another of the propaganda flavors hold has no relation to actually thinking for yourself.

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Re: President Duterte of the Philippines for Dummies

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Nov 13, 2017 11:17 am

Trump laughed as Duterte shut down questions. "You are the spies," Duterte said, referring to press. "Hah, hah, hah," Trump said laughing. "You are," Duterte repeated. (per WH pool)


177 journalists have been killed in the Philippines since 1986, making it among the deadliest countries to be a journalist.

Hah, hah, hah.


White House says Trump, Duterte 'briefly' discussed human rights but Philippine spokesman says they didn't
http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/12/politics/ ... 04AMVODtop


Activists in the Philippines greeted Trump this weekend by burning a 13-foot effigy of him wearing a swastika-shaped Hitler costume.
Image


Now, he is dead. He is one of more than 7,000 Filipinos who have been killed in Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs.



Image

Inside Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs — Part 2, the human toll

Jose Abad Consuelo helped put up the Christmas lights at his church last year. He was a recovering drug addict, volunteering in the Bagong Silang neighborhood of metro Manila.

Now, he is dead. He is one of more than 7,000 Filipinos who have been killed in Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs.

Bagong Silang means newborn in the local language of Tagalog. The title was bestowed on the neighborhood when thousands of squatters from downtown Manila were relocated there in the 1970s. The village of hope is now infested with drugs and murder runs rampant. Locals say the bloodshed has increased drastically since Duterte came into power.

Roni Jarabelo, standing next to pots and pans piled on an outdoor countertop, points at the place where Consuelo was shot.

He was a "former user, just like me," Jarabelo says. He lets out a subtle, nervous laugh.

Consuelo had been cleaning up his act. The man, in his 50s, loved children, which is why he was attracted to this place -- an open-air kitchen area burrowed between a few homes -- where community children often congregate. Those children are nestled in the dirt and playing with small neon toy guns as Jarabelo describes his friend's death. Their mother lobs a motorcycle helmet on a little boy's head and smiles. Father Gilbert Billena, the priest at their church, says the scourge of murder is so pervasive that the children's play consists of imitating hitmen. In this case, the mother encouraged it. He shakes his head.

"I invited these family and victims (to the church). I also feel what they feel," Jarabelo says of the people who live in the cement home, including the children. He says he is angry. He knows they are, too.

Duterte, who came into office almost a year and a half ago, has followed through on his campaign promise to purge the Philippines of drug users. He publicly endorses killing drug users, and critics say his leadership has led to a soaring murder rate.


Duterte's strategy of "instilling fear" has disproportionately impacted impoverished Filipinos, explains Father Billena.

"The victims who are the drug dependents are now the victims of these killings. They are the sacrificial lamb of this war on drugs," says Billena.

The Philippine National Police (PNP) deny extrajudicial killings, chalking the deaths up to self-defense. Their official goal is to get drug users to surrender which would allow them to avoid jail and prosecution. More than one million drug users have turned themselves in, says the PNP. They encourage self-identification with house-to-house operations that were once led by the PNP and are now led by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency. The government promises treatment services for those who turn themselves in -- but that does not always happen.

Jarabelo surrendered as a drug user, but he didn't surrender to the government; he surrendered to the church, two months before Duterte became president. Since then he has become an advocate, helping those who have lost family members to the drug war.

"I confess to them that I am a drug user, to the community and the church. And now they accepted," Jarabelo says.

Jarabelo finds solace in the fact that he did not turn himself into the Duterte government. That would have given them a "lead," he says. Middle-of-the-night murders often follow after Filipino drug users turn themselves in. That was the case for Elizabeth Navarno's husband. The pedicab driver was killed by a hitman just months after he admitted to being a drug user. The masked gunman came to their door one night, while he was fixing their TV, and fired off shots that also killed their five-year-old son.

"I first heard shots fired, there were two shots and the first thing that I saw was my son falling and then my husband falling," says Navarno. As she speaks, she shows no emotion. The murder happened 10 months ago.

gettyimages-614100970.jpg
Inmates watch as drug suspects are processed inside a police station on October 12, 2016 in Manila, Philippines. DONDI TAWATAO/GETTY IMAGES
Navarno reflects on the carnage as her children crawl all over her in their small home, deep in Manila's slums. You have to climb three rickety, wooden ladders and dance around fleets of cockroaches to get there. She was eight months pregnant with one of the kids -- Frankie -- when she lost her husband and son. She keeps a photo of them tucked inside her wallet.

"I always remember what happened, but I try to set aside those thoughts for my children. If I keep thinking about them, how am I supposed to move on and feed my children and work for their future," she says.

When asked about the case, the police did not deny allegations that habitual drug users are targeted.

"The question to the family is, is that person still violating the law?" Carlos asks.

We asked: if a person continued to use drugs, they should be killed?

"If they continue to push drugs, then definitely we will perform our mandate. That's the problem. When they were invited they were reached out and they voluntarily surrendered. They said they want to change, they had been recorded and said they wanted change. After a few month what did they do? They didn't change," said Carlos. "They still continued doing the nefarious act, the illegal act. It is not an amnesty for them to say that we have surrendered and yet they continued the illegal act."

Filipinos recount murders on one street corner after the next. Their descriptions rarely bring tears. A conversation about someone being shot sounds more like a conversation about a child falling off of a bike. Murder has become a matter of fact.

"I see this culture of impunity where nobody has been punished because of this war on drugs, where in the life of a person is very cheap, so it has no value anymore," says Father Billena. "We are numb because of the situation. Even the families themselves are afraid of filing criminal case in the court."

Last year, the International Criminal Court's lead prosecutor suggested that the government could be investigated on charges of crimes against humanity. Nothing has happened yet. In August, the murder of a teenager was caught on camera. The video footage defied the police account of a shootout instigated by the 17-year-old. This led to the Senate opening an investigation.

Yet for thousands of other victims, a sense of helplessness outweighs their thirst for justice. This is evident in a trip to the cemetery with Navarno. Her feet grow slippery as she wades through muddy puddles, candy wrappers, wilting flower petals, and animal feces to visit the tombstones of her husband and son. Roosters wander with her along the narrow paths, screeching loudly. Navarno and her children make this trip every Sunday. But when she gets there one of the stones is missing.

"Sir, did you see a tombstone here?" Navarno asks a man who worked at the cemetery. "It is gone."

She stands there, seemingly paralyzed, as his eyes dart around the grounds. He rushes from one corner to another and finally finds the engraved plaque propped up against a wall a few yards away. It had fallen from the tomb and been pushed aside. Right now, Navarno's family doesn't have enough money to buy the cement to secure it back into place.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/inside-rod ... -part-two/


Philippines President War on Drugs Has Left Thousands Dead
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40237&p=623367&hilit=duterte#p623367



Image
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: President Duterte of the Philippines for Dummies

Postby American Dream » Mon Feb 26, 2018 11:10 pm

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/91 ... r-of-Davao

Kill a Communist and Receive £340, Philippines Leader Duterte Tells Nation

Belinda Robinson
February 16, 2018
Express


THE PHILIPPINES president has offered a £340 bounty for each communist rebel killed by government forces in a bid to save on the state’s anti-insurgency costs.

Image
Getty, Rodrigo Duterte has offered a £350 bounty for each communist rebel killed by government forces.


Rodrigo Duterte also said the communists are easier to hit than birds because they have bigger heads.

His latest crass remarks, which the government issued to reporters yesterday, came after human rights groups condemned him this week for saying troops should shoot female communist guerrillas in the genitals to render them “useless”.

Mr Duterte said in a speech to troops at an air base in central Cebu city, referring to New People’s Army guerrillas: “You kill an NPA today and I’ll pay you 25,000 pesos.

“I was computing that if this drags on for four years, … it’ll be very expensive because it’s war. If I’ll just pay 25,000 for a life, I can save about 47 percent.”

His comments drew laughter from the crowd.

There was no elaboration on how he came up with those figures and whether or how the government would pay for claimed kills. Backing up his offer, the brash-talking president encouraged state forces to go for the kill.

Mr Duterte added: “If you work really hard to crawl across the forest, you’ll surely be able to shoot even just one. If you can shoot a bird above you, then how much more an NPA whose head is so big?” Once again, his remarks made the crowd laugh.

However, his incendiary comments encourage government forces to commit war crimes instead of instilling a culture of accountability in accordance with international law, Human Rights Watch said.

Carlos Conde of the US-based rights group said: “Duterte’s pronouncements normalise the idea that government security forces can do as they wish to defeat their enemies, including committing summary executions and sexual violence.”

The president has controversially joked about the gang rape of a murdered Australian missionary. And he boasted about his womanising ways spurred on by Viagra.

Reports suggest that about 3,800 people have been killed by police since he was elected in 2016, some were attacked by vigilantes who had permission from the police.

Mr Duarte has even bragged about taking part in murder himself, alongside police, when he was mayor of Davao.

The volatile president turned up the rhetoric against communist guerrillas after peace talks brokered by Norway collapsed last year when he protested against continuing rebel attacks on government forces.

When a rebel leader recently warned that the guerrillas could kill one soldier a day, Mr Duterte countered by threatening to kill five rebels daily and offering to train tribesmen as militias and give them bounties to slay the insurgents.

Mr Duterte is already under international criticism and is facing a preliminary investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for thousands of deaths in the war on drugs he initiated after becoming president two years ago.

He has lashed out in his response, including asking why the ICC was focusing on him when atrocities were unravelling elsewhere.

Mr Duterte, a former state prosecutor, then talked about Muslims fleeing from violence and persecution in Burma.

He said: “There are Rohingyas who are being slaughtered, but they only chose to indict me. OK, you asked for it, let’s have a trial. I will cross-examine you.”


**

Philippines' Duterte Swiftly Condemned for Misogynist Order to Shoot Women 'in the Vagina'

https://www.alternet.org/philippines-du ... d-misogyni

AlterNet, Feb. 12, 2018

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte issued a vicious order to his soldiers, telling them not to kill female rebel fighters but instead to shoot them in the vagina.

“There’s a new order coming from the mayor, ‘We will not kill you. We will just shoot you in the vagina,’” he said in a speech to about 200 of his soldiers, according to the Guardian. He said women would be "useless" without vaginas.

The president reportedly said the word "vagina" repeatedly throughout the speech, eliciting laughter from the crowd. But his office later redacted the word from its transcripts of the event.

"Duterte['s] latest nasty remark openly encourages violence against women, contributes to the impunity on such, and further confirms himself as the most dangerous macho-fascist in the government right now," said Rep. Emmi de Jesus, a representative with the women's group Gabriela. "He has further presented himself as the epitome of misogyny and fascism terribly rolled in one."

Duterte has previously made derogatory and violent comments about women, including seeming to sanction rape. Some of his defenders have said he's just being "funny."

Under his leadership, the Philippines has seen a brutal war on drugs characterized by widespread violence and human rights violations, according to Human Rights Watch, which estimates that more than 12,000 people have been killed under the policy so far.

Carlos Conde, a Philippines researcher for Human Rights Watch, said Duterte's statement “encourages state forces to commit sexual violence during armed conflict, which is a violation of international humanitarian law.”
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Re: President Duterte of the Philippines for Dummies

Postby American Dream » Sun Mar 04, 2018 9:01 pm

President Trump Suggests Executing Drug Dealers

“The drug dealers, the drug pushers, they’re really doing damage,” Trump said at an opioid event at the White House Thursday. “Some countries have a very, very tough penalty — the ultimate penalty. And by the way, they have much less of a drug problem than we do.”

“If you shoot one person, they give you life, they give you the death penalty,” Trump said. “These people can kill 2,000, 3,000 people, and nothing happens to them.”

...Trump has also previously praised controversial Philippine President Roderigo Duterte, who has led a massive extrajudicial crackdown on drugs in his country that has left thousands dead. Last year, Trump called Duterte and told him he has done an “unbelievable job on the drug problem.”


http://time.com/5181830/president-trump ... od-crisis/
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Re: President Duterte of the Philippines for Dummies

Postby American Dream » Mon Mar 05, 2018 10:25 pm

America’s Indefensible Alliance With The Philippines

By Rhonda Ramiro and Azadeh Shahshahani, Guest Writers

Image
Former U.S. President Ronald Reagan with former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos on Sept. 16, 1982.

The burgeoning alliance between President Donald Trump and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte appears destined to become the 21st century version of the Ronald Reagan-Ferdinand Marcos alliance.

That union in the 1980s allowed the Marcos dictatorship to last 14 years, despite Marcos’ notoriety for murdering over 3,000 people as well as jailing 70,000 and torturing 34,000 of his political rivals and other innocent people. Reagan stood by his Filipino ally to the bitter end, even granting Marcos asylum in Hawaii when it became clear that “people power” would soon topple the unsustainable dictatorship. According to Reagan, granting a haven to Marcos and 90 of his family members and close associates was “in the best interests” of U.S.-Filipino relations. Those interests included a network of some of the largest U.S. military bases in the world at the time.

Such die-hard support for a brutal dictator was immoral back then.

Knowing the legacy of trauma that the Marcos dictatorship inflicted on the Filipino people and the country as a whole makes supporting the admittedly fascist upstart dictator Duterte completely unjustifiable today.

When Reagan took power in 1980, Marcos had already been ruling the Philippines under martial law for eight years, with the full support of former Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter. Reagan’s support for an additional six years meant Marcos and his military could rack up more human rights abuses with impunity.

Today, Duterte is well on track to surpass the body count of his self-proclaimed idol. An estimated 13,000 people have been killed in the war on drugs; 113 activists have been killed under the U.S.-designed counterinsurgency program of the Philippine government; and more than 400,000 people have been forcibly displaced due to the Philippine military’s aerial bombing of Marawi City and nearby communities of indigenous people throughout the southern island of Mindanao, under the guise of the war on terrorism. At the rate Duterte is going, this could mean the murder of 52,000 more people over the remainder of his six-year term.


More: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/op ... 9e56b9cae1
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Re: President Duterte of the Philippines for Dummies

Postby American Dream » Mon Mar 12, 2018 4:09 pm

Death to Drug Dealers: Trump Threatens to Ramp Up Drug War, Praising Efforts in Philippines & China

President Trump has reiterated his calls for the U.S. to impose the death penalty on drug dealers, praising countries like the Philippines, China and Singapore that ...

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Re: President Duterte of the Philippines for Dummies

Postby Jerky » Tue Mar 13, 2018 12:57 pm

B-b-but Hitlery did the Lib-ee-yuh!

Fucking moron probably doesn't know fact one about what went down in Libya. Most of the people who whine loudest about it don't, in my experience.

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Re: President Duterte of the Philippines for Dummies

Postby American Dream » Wed Mar 14, 2018 8:50 am

Broadside for the Trump Era: The U.S. War on Drugs — From Its Origins to The Age of Trump

A compact, printable summary of the US War on Drugs by historian Jeremy Kuzmarov.


Cautious Reform and Wholehearted Repression

The administration of Barack Obama, who said he had “bigger fish to fry than marijuana users,” took cautious steps to modify the War on Drugs. His Justice Department issued guidelines to federal prosecutors calling on them to pursue relatively minor charges against nonviolent drug offenders. Obama, however, perpetuated a program where the military provided equipment to local police forces. In the international realm, his administration also continued policies that led Latin American leaders at the 2012 Summit of the Americas to link the U.S.-financed War on Drugs to corruption and savage violence among the drug cartels. Many of the weapons provided by Obama’s $1.3 billion Plan Mérida for Mexico, unveiled in 2009, actually bolstered the arsenal of the cartels responsible for grisly violence, which recruit their enforcers from among U.S.-trained police and military officers.

The advent of the Donald Trump administration in 2017 brought open and official support for a militarized police state both at home and abroad. Trump’s Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, has reversed the Justice Department’s sentencing guidelines, instructing prosecutors to pursue “the most serious” charges, those that carry the harshest sentences. It is a formula for filling the jails, overwhelmingly with African American and other minority defendants. And Trump’s own expressed attitudes go further. He has gone so far as to praise Filipino leader Rodrigo Duterte, whose police forces have killed and tortured thousands of drug suspects in a campaign that has aroused the world’s moral indignation.


https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3684-b ... e-of-trump
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Re: President Duterte of the Philippines for Dummies

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Mar 14, 2018 12:30 pm

Philippines Withdraws from International Criminal Court
Last Updated: March 14, 2018 8:16 AM
VOA News
FILE - Philippines' President Rodrigo Duterte gestures during a news conference at the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Pasay, metro Manila, Philippines, Nov. 14, 2017.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte says he is withdrawing the Pacific nation from the International Criminal Court, which has begun a probe into accusations of crimes against humanity involving Duterte's deadly anti-drug crackdown.

Duterte's office released a written statement Wednesday that Manila is "withdrawing its ratification of the Rome Statute effective immediately," referring to the 1998 treaty that created the ICC. He said the ICC probe amounted to "baseless, unprecedented and outrageous attacks on his person as well my administration."

Amnesty International criticized Duterte's move.

“This is a misguided and deeply regrettable move by President Duterte, and the latest signal that powerful individuals in the Philippines are more interested in covering up their own potential accountability for killings than they are in ensuring justice for the many victims of the country’s brutal ‘war on drugs," Amnesty's Regional Director for Southeast Asia and the Pacific James Gomez said.“Fortunately for those victims, Duterte’s announced withdrawal comes too late to stop the ICC’s preliminary examination and the Philippines’ obligations towards the court.

FILE - The entrance of the International Criminal Court is seen in The Hague, March 3, 2011.

The Hague-based tribunal announced last month that it had opened a preliminary examination of a complaint filed last year by a Philippine lawyer over the president's anti-drug campaign, which has left 4,000 dead since Duterte took office in 2016. Human rights activists say Duterte's vow to kill thousands of illicit drug dealers have led police to carry out extrajudicial killings of suspected dealers and users.

Police have denied the charges, insisting they only shot armed suspects in self-defense during legitimate anti-drug raids.

https://www.voanews.com/a/philippines-d ... 98018.html
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: President Duterte of the Philippines for Dummies

Postby Sounder » Wed Mar 14, 2018 12:56 pm

B-b-but Hitlery did the Lib-ee-yuh!

Fucking moron probably doesn't know fact one about what went down in Libya. Most of the people who whine loudest about it don't, in my experience.


Yes you are offensive Jerky, but your kung-fu is no good. So keep flailing, it looks good on you. Almost like a dance.

Stupid people whining about death and Libya, geez it's just population control and that is a good thing, right?
All these things will continue as long as coercion remains a central element of our mentality.
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Re: President Duterte of the Philippines for Dummies

Postby American Dream » Mon Sep 10, 2018 8:58 pm

Duterte’s Killing Season Opens Fire on the Left

Bong S Sarmiento
August 18, 2018


Asia Times

Tactics used to target Filipino drug suspects are now being deployed against leftist activists and alleged supporters of an outlawed communist movement

Image
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in military garbs., Reuters


Last year, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte threatened to bomb the schools of indigenous lumad people in mountainous areas of the southern island of Mindanao for allegedly teaching communism to students.

The threat represented a violent reversal for the tough-talking leader, who famously said on the campaign trail in 2016 that if elected he would become the country’s first “leftist president.”

Upon taking office, the Mindanao native prioritized pursuing peace with the leftist Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed wing New People’s Army (NPA). Formed in 1969, the NPA has been at war against the government ever since.

Duterte’s peace initiative, like those of his predecessors, quickly fell apart amid new firefights between rebels and government troops. Last year, Duterte abandoned the peace effort and designated both the CPP and NPA as “terrorist organizations”, a punitive upgrade from their previous classifications as “illegal organizations.”

The shift has opened the way for a new offensive against the country’s leftists, a campaign of harassment some see as an extension of his brutal war on drugs. The anti-drug drive has resulted in as many as 16,000 deaths, many in police shoot-outs with alleged drug suspects, according to rights groups.

In January, Duterte vowed to pursue left-wing organizations for allegedly acting as fronts for the outlawed communist movement. Weeks later, Duterte stirred a backlash for his unbridled threat to “shoot in the vagina” female NPA fighters.

Duterte’s crude and violent threats against communist rebels has put leftist activists and ethnic minority lumad communities situated in known NPA-controlled territories spread across Mindanao in the government’s firing line.

In December, eight lumad tribe members were killed during a military operation against the NPA in Lake Sebu town in South Cotabato province. Authorities later closed the village’s school on suspicion that it was teaching communism to students.

The Save our Schools Network, an umbrella group of child-focused nongovernmental organizations and church-based groups, has documented 225 military “attacks” on lumad schools since last year.

John Timothy Romero, spokesperson for the Center for Lumad Advocacy, Networking and Services (CLANS), a civil society group, said 33 formal and non-formal lumad-run schools in Central Mindanao have been closed by authorities since last year, affecting nearly 4,600 primary and secondary school students.

Local military officials accused the schools of teaching subversion and communism, and justified the closures because they lacked proper Department of Education licenses. Romero denied the schools were used to propagate communism, although he admitted that NPA rebels have a presence in the affected areas.

“We’re operating in remote mountain areas where communist rebels are around, but that does not mean that we are NPA supporters. We are just caught in the war between the military and the NPA,” he said.

A local court in Northern Luzon, an area where the NPA is also active, ordered the arrest of four prominent leftists – Satur Ocampo, Teddy Casino, Rafael Ocampo and Liza Maza – on murder charges. Mariano served as Duterte’s agrarian reform secretary until last year, while Maza currently heads the government’s National Anti-Poverty Commission.

The court junked the murder case against the four on August 13 due to insufficient evidence.

Ryan Amper, spokesperson for the Stand for Human Rights Mindanao group, stressed the crackdown against leftists, human rights activists and environmental defenders is part and parcel of the Duterte government’s rising political persecution.

Amper says that “Oplan Tokhang”, Duterte’s anti-drug policy that has morphed into a seemingly unmitigated killing spree against illegal drug users and pushers, is now being deployed against left-leaning activists, community leaders and lumads who resist big mining and plantation operations in Mindanao.

“We have verified incidents where the military knocked on the houses of suspected NPA rebels or supporters and asked them to surrender,” Amper said. He said in several cases those identified as NPA supporters, including some who opposed big mining operations, were eventually killed by unidentified gunmen.

Amper’s group has recorded at least 140 killings of activists and lumad tribal leaders, allegedly perpetrated by state agents, since Duterte came to power.

Duterte’s anti-drug drive has killed at least 4,075 in legitimate police operations, according to official data up to March 2018. Over 16,000 potentially related deaths recorded through the end of 2017 were classified as “cases under investigation.”

Oplan Tokhang was derived from the two Visayan words “toktok” (knock) and “hangyo” (plead). With tactics derived from Duterte’s Davao City when he served as mayor, the operations involve police officers knocking on the doors of alleged drug suspects and pleading for them to surrender and undergo rehabilitation.

Amber says those tactics have been transformed into “political tokhang”, whereby over 600 mostly leftist activists in Mindanao have been slapped with allegedly fabricated charges, mostly by the military, since Duterte assumed power in June 2016. “This political tokhang is meant to silence the dissent of activists and community leaders,’ Amper said.

Amper blamed the growing number of cases filed against activists on the Inter-Agency Committee on Legal Action, which was created by the Philippine National Police and the Armed Forces of the Philippines in October 2017. The mechanism aims to strengthen intelligence-gathering, investigations, prosecutions and monitoring of perceived “threat” groups in the country.

Captain Arvin Encinas, spokesperson of the 6th Infantry Division based in Central Mindanao, denied accusations that the military has filed fabricated charges against those critical of the government or its associated business interests.

“Our charges are backed with evidence,” he said. Encinas also acknowledged that there has been a surge in cases filed against believed militants and community leaders since the military intensified its operations against the NPA in response to Duterte’s call to “crush” the insurgents.

The allegedly “manufactured” charges filed against suspected communist rebels and their activist supporters include murder, frustrated murder, serious illegal detention, alarm and scandal, public disorder, grave coercion and obstruction of justice, among others.

So far, the government has sought to declare over 600 individuals as “terrorists” in the mounting crackdown against the communist movement under the Human Security Act of 2007, which critics said puts named persons on a virtual “hit list” for state agents.

From a high of 25,000 combatants in the 1980s, the military estimates there are now around 3,700 NPA guerillas under arms, mostly operating in Mindanao, a region prone to various types of insurgencies.

The military hopes to reduce the NPA’s numbers by half this year through programs that include payments for surrendered firearms and livelihood assistance schemes that help fighters transition to live peacefully in mainstream society.

For Amper and others, Duterte’s regime is laying the groundwork for mass arrests and even political killings by filing false charges against political dissenters.

Activists are fighting back through protests. Last month, a lumad group barricaded the entrance of the Department of Education in Central Mindanao with a coffin bearing the remains of their dead tribal leader, Pakingan Gantangan.

Gantangan died of cardiac arrest on July 21 while participating in a months-long picket protest seeking permits for dozens of schools serving lumad communities that had been closed by the government for operating without licenses. They recently dismantled their picket after reaching an agreement with education officials.

Gantangan’s daughter, Jolita Tolino, a volunteer teacher for the school operated by CLANS in their remote community in Sultan Kudarat province’s Kalamansig town, was arrested by the military earlier this year on charges of murder and frustrated murder. Her family claims the charges are fabricated.

Bong S. Sarmiento is a Filipino journalist based in Mindanao, Philippines. His experience and fieldwork has earned him several journalism awards and nominations over the years.


http://www.atimes.com/article/dutertes- ... -the-left/
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