Yea, my mother i law also says that Barcelona, Spain was really safe at night during the dictatorship, with military police on every corner. That does not make it right, or even a good thing. Safety for the sake of safety is not a solution.
To play devil's advocate: Drugs and the criminal networks supported by drugs are a massive problem in the Philippines. Police are too weak and too corrupt to deal with it, but this is a solution that works, even if it does offend our first world sensibilities.
So can we kill corrupt cops as well then? I mean if we are going to go full circle, lets just kill everyone we dont agree with. That will solve all our issues! /s
Killing suspects on sight does offend my first world sensibilities as it offends anybody with a spark of reason and anybody who gasp the concept of moral.
A state that does kill random citizens has no legitimacy. states are formed by individuals in order to ensure they are not subject to random violence or violation of their rights. If a state can't or does not want to guarantee that nobody has any reason to respect the state. If police men kill random people because they think they deal drugs, the ordinary citizen has every right to kill police men because they think the police thinks they deal drugs. (or their fellow country men) In such a state of affairs, what's the purpose of a state? What's it's legitimacy? It doesn't have any. A complete lack of any institutions and anarchy would protect everybodys rights better.
I think I understand why people agree with this course of action. I get why at some point you'd be for a proper cleanup of the place you live in.
The main problem I see with it though is that soon someone will say you are a drug dealer. Or that weird people are coming to your house. Or that at some point the actual evil people will arrange drug deals near people they want to get rid of. And then you'll really want a fair process. If you start a red scare equivalent, then suddenly every neighbour may be a communist.
> To play devil's advocate: Drugs and the criminal networks supported by drugs are a massive problem in the Philippines. Police are too weak and too corrupt to deal with it, but this is a solution that works, even if it does offend our first world sensibilities.
To play devil's advocate: Jews and other degenerates are a massive problem in Germany. Police are too weak and too corrupt to deal with it, but this is a solution that works, even if it does offend our first world sensibilities.
Everything else aside, how would that method even work to combat criminal networks? Wouldn't the criminal networks simply use this law to legalize their own murders by labeling everyone they murdered "drug user"?
It's actually not that insane from the perspective of a local voter who has nothing to lose and has a miserable crime-ridden existence.
It's not qualitatively different from disenfranchised workers voting for Trump. It's the nuclear option for people who have no way to profit from the existing system. It just so happens that life is much, much easier in the US so there is no need to consider actual violence when thinking about going nuclear.
Calling it insanity is not only overly dismissive and chauvinistic, but also not helping in any way furthering understanding.
If you want to solve a problem you have to understand it first and foremost. Just calling it insanity is therefore not only not helpful, but harmful as others might take up that world view and stop caring for a real solution.
I do not have a solution, but am trying to understand how people can be so miserable (be it workers in US voting for Trump, German people voting AfD or people in the Philippines seeing this as a viable option/solution to their problem, when it probably even isn't such).
I can understand being desperate and taking desperate measures. But killing? I am so not able to understand it - even while I am trying to find rational reasons/explanations.
this is not remotely like voting for Trump. and it doesn't "so happen" that life is easier in countries with functioning (if deeply flawed) justice systems than it is in ones where corruption and vigilantism rule; there are pretty good reasons for why that is.
It's insane. The country will descend into chaos because the rule of law will be replaced with the rule of the gun, and the gangsters are better at that game.
Also the president is probably headed for the Hague.
The more I think about, the more I get inclined to believe that this guy has indeed to be on some drugs himself in order to do what he just did. Or that others need drugs to get in a state of thought in which this president happens to persist naturally due to madness!
(You do notice that most of the graphs lower down the page have a sharp uptick towards the far right ?!? especially "Violent Victimisation at School", "Prevalence of Mass Killings", "Rate of Death in Genocides and Other Killings", "Wars > 1000 Deaths/Year" whilst things like "Rape and Sexual Assault", "Physical Abuse", "Sexual Abuse" show a small uptrend)
The "democracy vs autocracy" graph seems disingenuous, as it shows the _sum_ of scores and not the mean. If the number of democracies has been increasing, the graph may show the same trend it shows without the democracies actually being better. And the biggest shift in the graph happens, unsurprisingly, when the USSR falls, which switches the score of all its countries from one side to the other.
Even more frightening is how widely supported Duterte and his death squads are in the Philippines. He has strong ties to the Davao Death Squad which operated whilst he was mayor of Davao City, and the Philippino public largely supports the executions.
I think that's the most concerning part of this (and other concerning but slightly less insane potential leaders around the world) - that the public can be so easily convinced that this is a reasonable choice.
Is it that the craziest plans standout against the two regular options? Or that the regular options hedge their bets and don't appear to adequately address issues concerning the masses?
Very often, the "conventional" options in a democratic republic end up representing competing visions of how to address the issues that matter most to elites (not necessarily the upper class alone, but the upper and middle classes -- which together are still usually a minority of the population -- and maybe the upper end of the working class), who in normal times are often the vast majority of participation in the political system. They often have less contact with the bulk of the working class (including the nonworking poor) and their concerns, which when things get especially intolerable for that class, and their immediate interests get most divergent from the elites, opens up a big opportunity for unconventional populist alternatives (often including exploitive totalitarian demagogues, though positive reform-oriented uplifting populism also happens at times, sometimes competing with the other kind.)
That was my first thought as well, but then I realized normal people aren't just waiting with stow away guns waiting for the day they can go on a killing frenzy. The type who are like that are possibly connected to drug as wells (as either addicts or part of the criminal machine) which means they are more likely to go into hiding lest they be killed themselves.
Yes, maybe some murderers will slip under the radar, but the numbers so far look good. Only 30 deaths over the country (that's no killing frenzy) and 952 people have surrendered to the authorities. I'd say it's working
"then I realized normal people aren't just waiting with stow away guns waiting for the day they can go on a killing frenzy"
No, it seems that unknowingly, the "normal people" were waiting for the people with guns, and all of them together were waiting the right time, which is now!
"Only 30 deaths over the country (that's no killing frenzy) and 952 people have surrendered to the authorities. I'd say it's working"
Who gives you the figures? As I understand, the president's opposing figures, including journalists, were targets for some time already! ...for being drug dealers or addicts, allegedly. It's safe to assume that the ones that left to live have to really impress the president with their reporting.
How did we collectively let this happen? Yes, I'm sitting on a very comfy armchair while jerking off a unicorn so that the galley of VCs can have their fill of unicorn jizz.
Not directly related to Phillipines, but an actual Bay Area addict case question...And honestly, I'm not sure of individuals current state (no arrest records)...
Young female from out of area (some state) comes (homeless) to a town known for downward spirals.
Arrested 20+ times over 2 years, mainly around meth addiction, but seriously mental.
Local people reach out to family/friends of said individual via social media expressing concern, no response.
Individual continues to flail.
County (in California) refuses to adopt Laura's Law -- incarnation of adults with repeat mental issues -- lack of budget.
Who is responsible for the individual and why?
Addicts need a will to want to recover. Some are hell bent on escape regardless.
What is the right social/safety net?
Relevance to post: many people in this community and similar are tired of people throwing their life away and expecting a safety net.
Maybe you accept the person needs 20 mg (just a number) of meth to get through a day and put them up in a simple room and board situation. Toss in routine mental help. Something where the society provides the person with a means to live without becoming desperate for a fix.
The fact that people in the richest country in the world are still having this debate is appalling to Canadians and Western Europeans.
Americans will be the last on this ship, but part of living in a prosperous 21st century society means giving up some liberty (in the form of taxes, limited access to guns, suffering additional government bureaucracy) for the knowledge that getting sick should never be a death sentence regardless of your income level. Neither should poverty. Universal Basic Income WILL happen. After that, anyone who is still unable to provide for themselves and stays homeless needs medical support beyond financial support, because the incidence of mental health issues amongst the homeless is huge. Finally, addiction should be treated like a health issue also.
Now you can say that "it's not fair" that some people will end up pulling more from the collective pot of funds than others. But that's society. It's not about fairness. It's about every life being worth something, and having the potential to put something back into society after their recovery.
UBI will not happen. Not because free money are not good for the people — they are. Not because everyone will suddenly get lazy and stop working — they won't.
Because UBI is unsustainable and won't last more than a year. There is not enough money for any plausible scenario. That's why.
And yes, let's give people "free" money and do nothing about hugely overpriced and corrupt healthcare system, education and things. In fact, let's introduce new obligatory payments for everyone!
Who, do you think, might be the most interested in lobbying for _that_?
There's more than enough wealth in society to redistribute it from the top 1% to the bottom 50% and give them a living wage.
Yeah, the Koch brothers would only be worth 5 billion instead of 40, but somehow I don't think their lifestyle will be altered in any way shape or form.
I expect this is probably an unpopular opinion on a forum for entrepreneurs
I upvoted you because you're right with regards to UBI as it's argued for in places like this forum. The same arguments were true the first time these ideas were proposed when it was called Social Credit. However, I suspect that replacing patchwork welfare and social programs with a simplified negative income tax[1] or expansion of the earned income tax credit is a plausible path that could lead towards something like a UBI. This would be welfare-level support, not provide a 'living wage', and not pay out money to anyone who was earning above a basic threshold (at which point they would be paying a positive income tax, just like today).
Once something like this is in place I could see the needle being moved over time if the sort of automation that machines give us in the coming decades really is categorically different from the sort of automation that machines have given us in the past 2 centuries (debatable).
I despise bureaucracy as much as the next person, but replacing welfare programs with negative income tax will not work. There are just too many people and too little money. Welfare programs are specific and target select audience; targeting broad audience will just spread the money to wafer-thin levels.
Concerning the automation and sudden increases in productivity — but this was exactly the very same promise that full-scale Communism was expected to deliver in Soviet Union. It was reiterated in internal propaganda endlessly (I still remember that). As every ex-Soviet person knows well, the full-scale Communism (with free basic income, fully automated factories and cities of the future) was promised as early as 1980. Now it is called "post-scarcity".
It wasn't delivered then, and I doubt it will be delivered this century.
In the USA, it is entirely possible to institute a reasonable UBI, on the order of $10k/adult with some fractional amount for their dependents.
The question is politics: it'd also require scrapping most of our current welfare programs and instituting Scandinavian levels of taxation. This ends up goring {Republican,Democratic} {donors,clientele demographics}, so I agree that's presently an impossible lift in the USA, but that's a matter of politics, not economics.
I'm with you on fixing our broken healthcare and educational systems, but if you think that's any more practicable than a UBI, I've got a free government subsidy to sell you.
You either get Scandinavian welfare and taxation, or (very modest) UBI without any welfare, but still Scandinavian taxation. Will $10000/year cover any medical expenses? It is barely enough for food.
Also, taxes in Scandinavia (I lived in Denmark) are not that high. True, there is 50% tax, but no other hidden payments like social security or medical insurance. And medicine and education are free. I'd rather run business with 50% tax and no bureaucracy and no social security payments than pay all this.
One of the most expensive and problematic countries to run businesses is France. Scandinavia is piece of cake compared to France.
You forgot something about society. It's about civility and the coming together to make every persons life better than if there were no joint society. It is, fundamentally, a value proposition at the individual level for every single part of society. A society that fails that basic tenant will fail.
"Giving up liberty.." No. Liberty doesn't mean anyone has the right to harm other people. We should be encouraging more liberty, not less. We are not and should not ever be the Soviet Union. The Bolsheviks said the exact same things you are saying -- almost exactly. And no, it won't be different this time. Man is man.
Suffering additional government bureaucracy? No way. It's interesting because I would bet you're opposed to government surveillance yet you are unopposed to increasing the power and thus the tyrannical potential of government. Those things are one in the same.
In a freshman dorm room late at night, we've all had the discussion that communism would be good if it were implemented correctly. However most of us grew up. We realize that human nature will never change no matter how many rainbows we wish upon. Every single time some perfect society attempt has been made, it turned into millions of dead people. Increasing the power of government is to increase the potential for tyranny.
Reminds me of a conversation I had as a teenager visiting Michigan while I was growing up in France. A friend asked: "What's France like? Don't you guys have less freedom?"
This was in the post-Iraq War context when Freedom fries became a thing. Still, I was baffled. And wondering why I wasn't allowed to buy a beer...
There is a middle ground between Joseph Stalin killing millions in Siberia, and dying homeless on the street in San Francisco because you can't afford your HIV medication.
And it looks like Canada, Switzerland, or The Netherlands. Utopias? Hardly. And that's not the point ("Utopia" is a black-and-white concept. The world is gray). The point is incremental improvements forward, sometimes 2 steps forward and 1 back (e.g. turns out legalizing prostitution doesn't automatically eliminate human trafficking. But it doesn't mean the idea is bad, just that it's not enough on it's own.)
You are correct, I am against warrantless government surveillance. But again, middle ground. Why can I not be against blanket all-encompassing communication surveillance with no oversight, but for regulation that protects my drinking water from factories dumping untreated waste? Or are you trying to tell me that it's both or neither? Because if so, I do not want to live in your Randian Utopia.
Having lived in Vancouver's downtown east side, and spent time in the neighbourhoods of various Western European cities that have high addict and homeless populations, I find your moral superiority breathtaking.
These addicts and homeless have access to:
* 3 meals a day at various food banks
* Safe injection sites to decrease disease risk as a result of intravenous drug use
* Universal health care for when any of the above fails
* A sympathetic and protective police force that ensures people do not hurt themselves or others.
As a result I've never felt unsafe living there like I do when I wander through San Francisco.
Is the system perfect? No. The legacy of conservative governments meant that mental health assistance budgets were severely cut, and so there are a lot of people on the street that really need more government help, not less.
And let's not even get into the fact that Vancouver has most of the homeless population of Canada because it's the only city in the country where you can be homeless through the winter and not die from exposure.
Most people are tired of at least something that we have collectively agreed on. That's what democracy is. Just because it would benefit me personally (as an educated employed person) to remove the safety nets (and related taxes) doesn't mean I would want that.
We set up safety nets, and people abuse that. We set up extremely complicated (often lobbied) tax codes, and big business are the only ones able to abuse that. Am I okay with it? Not really. But voting for some pompous populist asshole is not a better alternative. We're of course talking about the Philippines here and nothing else.
Addiction is not a crime, it's a symptom of a mental health issue or a social problem. Treat it as such to fix it.
> many people in this community and similar are tired of people throwing their life away and expecting a safety net.
That's a really disgusting approach to treating human life. These people aren't "throwing their life away", they're broken and in need of help. Why is it unreasonable to expect a society to look out for its weak and vulnerable?
> Why is it unreasonable to expect a society to look out for its weak and vulnerable?
It's perfectly reasonable.
But bullets are cheaper than care and that's why bullets rather than care fit so much better in the narrative expounded by populist leaders.
Conveniently, bullets also allow you to get rid of people that oppose you and that works better if you have a group that you've labeled 'ripe for extermination'. Then all you have to do is make people in group 'B' look like the people in group 'A'.
Everyone is ultimately responsible for themselves. You can't help someone that doesn't want to be helped and isn't willing to take responsibility for themselves.
Not directly related to Phillipines, but an actual Bay Area addict case question...And honestly, I'm not sure of individuals current state (no arrest records)...
Young female from out of area (some state) comes (homeless) to a town known for downward spirals.
Arrested 20+ times over 2 years, mainly around meth addiction, but seriously mental.
Local people reach out to family/friends of said individual via social media expressing concern, no response.
Individual continues to flail.
County (in California) refuses to adopt Laura's Law -- incarnation of adults with repeat mental issues -- lack of budget.
Who is responsible for the individual and why?
Addicts need a will to want to recover. Some are hell bent on escape regardless.
What is the right social/safety net?
Relevance to post: many people in this community and similar are tired of people throwing their life away and expecting a safety net.
This is probably a relatively gentle precursor to what we're going to see happen over the next few weeks or months in the south of the country as the same 'wild west' approach is applied to the Abu Sayyaf problem.
What an idiot. The highest government official calling for extra-judicial killing of citizens should lead to a single indictment. What's really disturbing is that this guy got voted in.
well you're right, but as a side note multiple US presidents have authorized target killings in an undeclared war in countrys that are not part of this "war" with civil casualties .... and both got reelected ....
I'm from germany, we're helping because our government does nothing in stopping the use of Rammstein Airbase as drone satellite uplink. So we are also partly responsible. :(
That's true but besides the point. Imagine Obama, Bush or Clinton calling on national TV for the killing of all drug addicts and pushers.
> I'm from germany, we're helping because our government does nothing in stopping the use of Rammstein Airbase as drone satellite uplink. So we are also partly responsible. :(
I don't want to be euphemistically. But i've seen several public interviews of all of them where they justified killing people they claimed to be terrorists. While numbers showed that a majority are actually civil victims.
You can not really compare that, but i honestly think thats even worse. At least officially the philippines only kill THEIR PEOPLE people that damage THEIR society.
It's not far from it, only they use the word 'terrorists'. Which is even more vague. And of course they kill indiscriminately whoever happens to be in a given targeted area.
*Ramstein. The band name is actually an unintentional misspelling and was apparently originally called Rammstein-Flugschau (again with the misspelling; referring to the air show disaster in 1988 that killed 70 and injured hundreds).
People are not responsible for those they didn't vote for. I know, must be a German thing, but how am I responsible for those sick bastards I disagree with, even if most of the others agree? My persuasion powers are limited.
Sadly history is not a morality play. In it immoral actions are often rewarded and idealists suffer shitty fates. I think that idiot is the wrong insult here (tyrant, cruel, despicable, scum and many others are all fine).
But we live in a world in which Saudi Arabia is chair of the UN human rights council ...
Laws, rights, constitutions - they mean a lot less when no force is capable or willing to enforce them.
I think it is entirely appropriate for the ruler of a country who instead of attacking the root cause of corruption in that country decides to give license to his population to go and kill each other instead.
> But we live in a world in which Saudi Arabia is chair of the UN human rights council ...
Ugh. I had to go and look that up to make sure you weren't pulling my leg. Sorry for not trusting you.
He is idiot if he does not achieve his goals. If his goals are western democracy - then he is indeed an idiot.
If his goal is strong Philippines under El Presidente that conveniently shares the same name as him ... he is on the right way.
I know I am cynical as a person nearing the age of 350 but after the drug dealer "threat" is dealt with, the corrupted (and his opponents) may as well be his next extrajudical targets.
In every impoverished area there are some local feudal bigshots that do what they please and can get away with anything. Give the poor licence to kill them ... and they will elect you to your grave and beyond.
Democracy does not mean human rights or rule of law ...
> During the campaign, Duterte said 100,000 people would die in his crackdown, with so many dead bodies dumped in Manila Bay that fish there would grow fat from feeding on them.
This isn't a joke. This is real. What a sick bastard.
Tell that to those who are tired of not being safe in their own homes because of the drug lords. Of course it's easy to say he's sick when you live in a civilised place with police protection.
I'm sure if the entire country was heavily armed and bullets were handed out like sweets the situation would calm right down very quickly. The US arms industry would be happy to provide them with a nice bulk discount.
We are talking about the Philippines. The guns do come from the US. The entire country is heavily armed -- compared to most countries -- especially Mindanao. Bullets are widely available. Some people would say this is exactly why the situation is not going to calm down and certainly not quickly.
You seem very sure and I can't think of why you imagine this would work.
Give everyone a license to kill, give everyone a gun, and after that you think everything would just sort itself out? Do you believe that only the right people will survive and then everything will be fine?
Absolutely no risk of a violent degradation into chaos, looting, riots?
I've never liked using /sarcasm tags, but I have to concede they are sometimes necessary. Unbelievable as I find it, some people really do think that way.
Ah bummer, you are right, I missed the sarcasm. It's definitely a sentiment I have come across before though, and it always strikes me as an odd world view.
And killing a large number of people is going to turn the country into a civilized place with police protection?
If you're not safe in your own homes because of the drug lords you don't have a drug lord problem, you have a law enforcement problem and a corruption issue.
Civilization does not magically arrive by killing a large number of people (and probably plenty of them innocent).
History has proven that doing away with all the uncivilised people makes a society better.
When the uncivilised people control a large amount of money, they control the power, and there's simply no hope of just fixing corruption as you propose.
I think what this guy is proposing will prove to be a good idea with time, and you have his time as a mayor as an example. Even if a few innocents die. To make an omelette you have to break some eggs.
Think of African or American colonisation for example. Local opposition had to be removed.
Think of the war on drugs in the USA, which was a covert operation to kill blacks.
Etc
>Does that mean we will have to get rid of the killers as well? They're uncivilized people as well, after all.
No they are not. They earned the right to kill drug lords and junkies through democracy. With all due respect did you read the article? This isn't some kind of evil tyrant, that guy earned his position through the electorate because he's been using that plan to do away with scum in his own city and it worked well. Citizens are looking forward to cleanse their country and that's what they'll do, I hope.
Sorry for the brevity as I am typing this from my mobile.
> Think of African or American colonisation for example. Local opposition had to be removed.
Right, let's just say that that is probably not the strongest argument you could have made.
> Think of the war on drugs in the USA, which was a covert operation to kill blacks.
That's an interesting alternative reading. The 'war on drugs' was a misguided attempt at solving a societal problem through confrontational means. Roughly what the article is all about.
It's also an abject failure, and a textbook case of why these things do not work long term. Kill all the criminals is only a good idea if don't want to have a civilized country.
> No they are not. They earned the right to kill drug lords and junkies through democracy.
Ah ok. That makes them lily white.
> With all due respect did you read the article?
Yes. Now with the same respect: Did you study history? At all?
> This isn't some kind of evil tyrant, that guy earned his position through the electorate because he's been using that plan to do away with scum in his own city and it worked well. Citizens are looking forward to cleanse their country and that's what they'll do, I hope.
Oh, you hope. Well, I hope with you. But the fact is that rather than having a bunch of drug criminals and junkies we will now have a population with a large fraction involved in extra-judicial murder. That's not necessarily a preferably situation over the original one and it leaves in place the biggest problem the country had to begin with: corrupt government officials and police force.
See, when you tackle a problem you should tackle the root cause, not the symptoms.
> Sorry for the brevity as I am typing this from my mobile.
That's fine. I'm not sure more of it would make it any better.
> > Think of African or American colonisation for example. Local opposition had to be removed.
>Right, let's just say that that is probably not the strongest argument you could have made.
Are many of those countries being run better now?
One of my older servants here in Guatemala used to speak fondly of the "genocidal" general Rios Montt. During his time, she said, things were so safe. If someone robbed you, say, grabbed a purse, he'd be shot on the spot! Even now, I hear people express desire for summary execution. They're just so sick of the shittiness of these countries that due process doesn't get consideration.
I don't think many of these countries are very capable of attacking the root problems (which seems to mostly be just sheer incompetence at every conceivable level). At least not on any useful timeframes. It's almost certainly a better deal for them to become protectorates/colonies of properly run countries. Maybe on a 50-year term.
Your snark and arrogance aren't helping your case here.
It's fairly obvious you have no frame of reference to judge the people that elected this president, for better or for worse, and what conditions have led them to such measures.
You'd be surprised what thoughts enter your mind when you live in conditions with constant danger and stark prospects. But you'd have to have experienced it, which you obviously haven't.
Your ability to articulate does not make you any more right.
Really, this whole thread is a testimony to how easy it is to slide into a dictatorship or fascism.
The only time when morality matters is when it is challenged. If you de-humanize others - no matter who - you are also de-humanizing yourself and that road leads fairly directly into hell.
I've spent enough time with people who spent time in those hells to recognize the prelude to one.
I strongly suggest you study up on the person of 'El Presidente' a little bit more before you come out in defense of this person. A couple of hours reading might sway you to the position that this person is going to cause absolutely nothing but trouble (and in fact, is already causing it).
>>> History has proven that doing away with all the uncivilised people makes a society better.
>> Citation fairly urgently needed
> colonisation for example. Local opposition had to be removed.
Think of the war on drugs in the USA, which was a covert operation to kill blacks.
Umm.. I'm assuming I'm misreading this. It sounds like you have just claimed that colonisation and an operation to kill blacks in the US were both ways to do away with uncivilised people and make society better(?!?). What did you mean?
> No they are not. They earned the right to kill drug lords and junkies through democracy.
Nuremberg Trials, and thus the international community, said otherwise. Being given the green light or the order to commit crimes against humanity by your government doesn't mean it's right or absolvable.
Regarding crimes against humanity
>Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity can be committed during peace or war. They are not isolated or sporadic events, but are part either of a government policy (although the perpetrators need not identify themselves with this policy) or of a wide practice of atrocities tolerated or condoned by a government or a de facto authority. Murder, massacres, dehumanization, extermination, human experimentation, extrajudicial punishments, death squads, forced disappearances, military use of children, kidnappings, unjust imprisonment, slavery, cannibalism, torture, rape, and political or racial repression may reach the threshold of crimes against humanity if they are part of a widespread or systematic practice. [0]
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Had some really embarrassing cyber issues,ran into some bad guys as well but my strong will to resolve my problems eventually paid off when i bumped into this black hat hacker, he can handle social network hacks, emails and school grade hack he is the reason i believe in the whole hacking stuff and he is my personal hacker at the moment cuz we don't lose such important contacts. Professionalism, discretion and work rate is top class.Hit him up at pyramideye.hack@outlook.com ...You would be amazed at what you'd experience.He is kinda picky though so make sure of the reference.Barry referred you.You are welcome.
I live in Singapore. There are 1000s of Filipino's in Singapore, during the election 1000s of Filipino's flew back just to vote for him.
They really want their country cleaned up. Have you ever been there. His city before he cleaned it up, you could not safely walk down the streets, you would be stabbed in broad daylight. Now you can safely walk down the streets at night without being mugged.
Call him sick all you want, guy is bloody awesome from where I'm standing.
Philippines is a corrupt mess at all levels of society. The electorate is desperate and has opted for a ruthless strongman after decades of disappointments. They say Mussolini made the trains run on time.
My college history professor used to postfix that saying with "...because if they weren't, they'd shoot the conductors." Never figured out if he was joking or not, actually.
It's a great example of "be careful what you wish for". Trains on time, then 30 million people die in a war you helped forge, then your country becomes destroyed. I'll happily live with the late trains.
RE this crazy drug policy: very, very bad things happen when rule of law breaks down and we go into vigilante justice. Moral arguments aside, how many innocent people have died because of this already? It's an absolutely horrible idea.
Strongmen don't usually make things more efficient by diktat. If you want to have a population that takes no risks and does the absolute minimum, just threaten to shoot them for screwing up.
In Japan they run on time too, because if they don't, the conductors commit Seppuku (or quit the job in shame) by their own choice.
So progress and a functioning society is possible without coercing or scaring people into obedience. What is needed is a cultural shift and it can only start from the schools. If you look at the Japanese school system, every other aspect of their society becomes an obvious consequence.
Addicts in Asia are not the same as in west. They are worst. They will do anything to get drug. They will get into your house, put knife on your throat and take your money and jewelry. Police can't do anything because they are lazy and corrupt, unless there's a body.
Why you say they will kill random stranger? They kill an addict. Prisons don't have space anymore because gov don't have budget. You are welcome to go to my country and get mug by them. Your view will change.
Addicts are humans, too. We're not talking about killing an addict in self-defense. We're talking about being explicitly told to seek out and murder addicts.
Addicts create more problem to our society here. They killed innocent people just to buy stupid drug.
You can choose to kill bad people or let it slide. The latter will cause more problem to society. Prison will do nothing. This is not scandinavian country.
Might fight the causes for the addiction instead of the symptoms? Sounds like an idea? But hey, your approach worked great in Cambodia that time in the 70s..
Who will verify that the person they killed is truly an addict and not the CEO of a company competing with the killer's company or the killer's wife secret lover?
There's a reason each country has an official justice system.
> are you fucking stupid? An addict doesn't look like ceo.
Sigmund Freud and Thomas Edison used cocaine regularly. Nietzsche used opiates. William S Burroughs liked morphine a little too much. Erdos regularly used amphetamines. Hundreds of famous actors and actresses were and are addicts. Thousands of college students will use amphetamines prescribed by doctors to complete their school work, a number of them will end up addicted. Thousands of elderly men and women in America are addicted to their pain medications and probably don't know it.
It's almost as if people who commit crimes against another person should be charged and brought to trial so innocent people aren't murdered in the streets.
PS: Mike Lindell, Joe Roberts and John McAfee are/were CEOs and were active addicts.
A Venn diagram of people who are addicts and people who commit crimes against others isn't a circle.
People who commit crimes against others should be charged and have their case heard in a court of law. Not be shot in the street. Doesn't matter if this is Camden, Detroit, Skid Row, Vancouver or the Philippines.
That's exactly what every big war nation does, except usually OUTSIDE their own country, with people they have no relation with.
Not saying it's good, but if a country decides to kill its own people to fix some problems, that is somehow suddenly a huge topic while other nations invade other countries and kill more civilians than terrorists?
It happens every other day. when not today then yesterday. This issue is widely ignored at first, and then used for political statements when suiteable.
There is barely objective media coverage about this in western countries as well.
Edit:// also this guy does exactly what he was voted for. while the war nations do what they want without democratic process
They're literally allowing ordinary citizens to kill random people on the street without consequences.
Besides, the reason these people are violent is that they are desperate and mentally unstable. Their state is a failure of society, you can't fix it by just outright murdering people.
How long until Trump says something like, "He's a bad guy -- really bad guy. But you know what he did well? He killed drug dealers. He did that so good. They didn't read them the rights. They didn't talk. They were pushers. Over."
Are we making the leap that Trump supports killing drug addicts? We could invoke Hillary if we want with her famous statement, "What difference does it make?"
This has nothing to do with Trump or American politics. Not a single candidate in the US has called for the extra-judicial execution of drug dealers or users. Trying to draw an equivalence to Trump is absurd.
As a non-American I find the Trump/Hillary rhetoric extremely weird. Many "liberals" seem to think Trump is Adolf Hitler reincarnate (which is absurd -- he's just a populist). Many "conservatives" seem to think Hillary is an "SJW" (which is equally absurd -- it's evident a lot of her more progressive stances are window dressing rather than deeply held convictions).
Trump is an opportunistic buffoon, Hillary is cold and calculating. But both really just want power at any cost. The differences are not even remotely as significant as voters seem to believe. Sure, they hold opposing views, but neither of them is a saint and neither of them is going to openly do stupid drastic things like telling civilians to murder other people in the streets.
I agree with everything you say, apart from a part at the end.
> ... and neither of them is going to openly do stupid drastic things like telling civilians to murder other people in the streets.
Sure, that's valid. But while I'm no fan of Hillary, she is, as you said, cold and calculating, which I posit as the major difference between the two. Trump is hotheaded and impulsive, and while we'll never see him (knock on wood) condone senseless killing in the street, he HAS expressed a plethora of outlandish statements (later retracted), so little out of his mouth surprises me.
This does not oppose your description of the two, other than Trump can say ~anything, Hillary won't.
To be quite honest, yes, I could see him say that. But only because he seems to have little inhibition to say whatever comes to his mind without thinking of how people will react to it. But I couldn't see him enacting such policies. That's the important differentiator IMO. Let's also not forget being a president is slightly more involved than just saying things to make them happen.
True but what presidential nominees are willing to say has very little to do with what they will do if elected. The biggest danger of Trump is probably that he doesn't seem to have any consistent agenda.
Clinton seems rather straightforward: you can look back at her political career and what she did as Secretary of State to figure out where she's headed; you have no such luxury with Trump.
Wow, think about it. On one side we have Elon Musk, who wants to build a city on Mars, make interplanetary travels quick and cheap and he's doing it, there are people who want to kill you for your skin or hair colour. There is PM of Portugal who decriminalised drugs (saying: "drugs break families and relations, and so is facebook. We're not going to ban facebook") and there is a president who kills drug addicts, people in US, UK waste 1/3 of their bought food, Venezuela doesn't have water supplies in hospitals. Truly brave new world.
>You have made tremendous strides in the area of scientific and technological development. But America, as I look at you from afar, I wonder whether your moral and spiritual progress has been commensurate with your scientific progress. It seems to me that your moral progress lags behind your scientific progress. Your poet Thoreau used to talk about "improved means to an unimproved end." How often this is true. You have allowed the material means by which you live to outdistance the spiritual ends for which you live. You have allowed your mentality to outrun your morality. You have allowed your civilization to outdistance your culture. Through your scientific genius you have made of the world a neighborhood, but through your moral and spiritual genius you have failed to make of it a brotherhood. So America, I would urge you to keep your moral advances abreast with your scientific advances
This extreme policy also comes with an amnesty program if you surrender to police, with rehab, work and welfare. It's how he cleaned up Davao by disappearing gangsters and offering the ones left this olive branch program.
China and Indonesia dissappear thousands of addicts and criminals every year too the only difference is it's not advertised in the media as a killing free for all. This guy also gave Indonesia the green light to go after Abu Sayyaf kidnappers basically inviting them to invade those autonomous islands.
As usual, mostly western commentators sitting on their high horses pointing and pontificating with no idea of local context or understanding.
First of all, Duterte was elected overwhelmingly with a clear mandate of using brute violence to clear out drug dealers. He was clear about it and he is delivering on that mandate. I have to accept, he has made a PR error by not calling them terrorists. At which point, he will be sold drones that can also wipe out families in addition to the druggies.
The fact is, you do not get radical progress pandering to western styled hypocritical democracy or "human rights". It's the reality. A harsh one. Of course, I will not be so "logical" if I happen to be at the receiving end of such needed reform. But hey.. it's what life is.
At least, no set of drug dealers are at greater risk because of the colour of their skin.
PS: I am speaking like a man living in a country where some not so nice things will be needed to be done if we are going to ever progress.
Hitler was also democratically elected. What will happen in the Philippines now is that anyone who any grudge with anyone will just kill that person and label him a drug dealer.
Labeling him a drug dealer won't be easy because its difficult to prove that he dealt drugs. The logical thing to do would be to label your victim a drug user instead. Far easier to simply plant some drugs in their house, kill them and collect your medal for saving society.
You really think the main reason people aren't grudge killing each other because they are afraid of getting caught ? Look at the murder case % that goes unresolved even in the US - IIRC it was ~40% ? If you wanted to kill someone and were smart about it's probably not that hard to do - unless it's your spouse or something similar that makes you an obvious suspect - in which case it will also look suspicious to anyone investigating if you killed your wife because she was a drug dealer.
I suspect that very few murderers study the murder case solve rate in their local area before murdering someone they hold a grudge against.
On the other hand, if the President of a country says to kill drug dealers and addicts, quite a few people will go ahead and do that, thinking that it's now justified.
Actually his final rise to power came through back room shenanigans with Hindenburg when the popular support of the national socialist party was way below 50% of the voters.
The article title says drug addict. Which is far easier. Drank 2 beers instead of one every day => shoot. "I loved my neighbor (not) but he was an addict." Sad face.
> The fact is, you do not get radical progress pandering to western styled hypocritical democracy or "human rights". It the reality. A harsh one.
So what's the progress towards then? A totalitarian dictatorship that murders people? That's hardly progress of any sort. I'm quite happy to stay on my high horse if that means arguing for the rule of law and basic decency, both things which Duterte has thrown out the window in his quest to rid society of 'problems' by getting vigilantes to murder people.
Hating on democracy and human rights because they're 'Western' (and usually by extension 'Imperial') really annoys me. It's a stupid, petty argument that is continuously peddled by figures in non-Western countries as a justification for doing whatever they like.
>It's a stupid, petty argument that is continuously peddled by figures in non-Western countries as a justification for doing whatever they like.
Thomas, you may not not realise you have just written a one line thesis for the justification of colonialism.
"You brutes have no idea to run a society. We'll come show you how"
Of course, you most likely do not think in such nasty terms however, that is the translation.
You're a 20 year old Aussie (I checked your website). You know the history of your country so I will not have to educate you on the result of preventing people "doing what they like" with regard to their culture and customs.
Are you/your ways superior to the people that voted him to do EXACTLY what he is doing? You called his one week old government "totalitarian". Forgetting he was elected for a 6 year term. Is that system they like stupid and petty too? Or should they come take instructions from you? Your country?
Austrália and US are a great example of democracy and miscegenation. Bad lucky to the "rhodesian people", they didn't killed enough natives to win the land and Institute "democracy".
I don't think anyone is claiming superiority either way. Britain just voted brexit in free elections mainly for stupid reasons.
The point is, there are two patterns here which should be of concern: a popular leader calls for violence and vigilante style justice. In the long term this a non-stabilizing policy and likely to do a bit of economic damage. The second is that I give it a fifty-fifty that Duarte will run through a legislation that will turn him into a president-for-life. These types of scenarios usually go bad, take Zimbabwe for example.
I'm not saying 'going tough' would not work in the short term - but there is no reason the president should concentrate on this single issue except to stir popular support. Just removing crime won't make rhe all other problems go away. I would claim 'going tough' is the ultimate cop out move by any statesman since it removes attention from other problems and does not help build anything new.
> Thomas, you may not not realise you have just written a one line thesis for the justification of colonialism.
The point is, how do you rebut this without using human-right thesis ? If enlightenment is to be discarded, why should people not invade your country and reduce its population to slavery ?
> Thomas, you may not not realise you have just written a one line thesis for the justification of colonialism.
> "You brutes have no idea to run a society. We'll come show you how"
And you've just proved my point about democracy and human rights being dismissed as Western colonialism.
What's your alternative to democracy and human rights? A dictatorship that can have anyone it dislikes executed?
Colonialism might have been what brought democracy to many parts of the world - but the two are not one and the same (in fact, colonialism was regarded by many in Europe as being opposed to human rights and democracy). Many former colonies have tossed democracy and the rule of law out the window before - and it hasn't worked particularly well.
> You know the history of your country so I will not have to educate you on the result of preventing people "doing what they like" with regard to their culture and customs.
Well, Australia isn't an authoritarian regime, is it? I'd say that having elections with the government's power constrained by a constitution is going quite well.
> Are you/your ways superior to the people that voted him to do EXACTLY what he is doing? You called his one week old government "totalitarian". Forgetting he was elected for a 6 year term. Is that system they like stupid and petty too? Or should they come take instructions from you? Your country?
Of course I think my political beliefs are superior - that's why they're my political beliefs. I don't go around supporting a political ideology I believe to be inferior. It just so happens that extrajudicial executions are fundamentally opposed to my belief in the goal of a liberal democratic society.
I didn't call Duterte's government totalitarian - I agree that one week is not long enough. But if he's still asking for drug dealers and addicts to be murdered in a year I'll happily call him authoritarian, totalitarian, etc.
I understand he was elected for a six year term. That doesn't justify disregarding the rule of law (the same rule of law that make those elections every six years), nor does it morally justify murder.
The Philippines shouldn't be forced to take instructions from Australia - but that doesn't magically make criticism disappear. I'll criticise Duterte all I like, and I hope the Australian government criticises him too in the future.
Let's get to some definitions here. Is a country democratic if it has local elections and at the same time segreggate their own and drone other nations - while removing democratically elected presidents ?
> Is a country democratic if it has local elections and at the same time segreggate their own and drone other nations - while removing democratically elected presidents ?
I assume you're referring to America. And my answer would be that yes, as abhorrent as segregation, drone strikes and backing coups in other countries is, that doesn't nullify the elections held within that country. It's still a democracy.
So You're agreeing with me that this is bullshit and US is not a democracy? After all, Obama was elected to halt Wars and we are on the brink of WWIII. You vote but don't get what you elect. Now, if we add big money to the sum, I would say the American polítical regime is the worst in the world.
No, actually I said that the US is still a democracy.
People voted for Obama and they got Obama. Obama may have said what he wanted to do in office back in 2008 and then not been able to achieve those things, but that doesn't make the US undemocratic. That's how representative democracy works - you vote for representatives, not policies.
Well Filipinos voted for this President who was very clear on his policues and they got him and he is doing what he promised. Democracy right though perhaps not to everyone's taste. What is then the objection?
Well, I object to the policy itself in the first place. Extrajudicial executions, regardless of whether or not a popularly elected president encourages (or even orders) them, are fundamentally contrary to the rule of law and basic human rights.
Edit: Additionally, extrajudicial executions are a sign that Duterte doesn't respect the law. If he continues to encourage vigilante killings, there is precedent for him to encourage law breaking in other areas. Who's not to say there won't be electoral laws being flouted?
Do you think the American political regime is worse than Venezuela's? Vietnam? Thailand? Brazil? Libya? I think the majority of people would argue the list of superior systems is 90% shorter than the list of inferior.
People supporting Trump (right wing), people supporting Bernie Sanders (left wing) and BLM (both) don't agree with this. But yeah, you have a great piece of America's population that got a lot from this world-wide regime.
If you're calling the political system in the United States a 'regime', then both Sanders (as a legislator) and Trump (as a member of both parties and donor) are both a part of it. Both Sanders and Trump support the American political system as much as Clinton.
To be fair, he is referring specifically to a liberal democracy, which isn't just "democratic".
By the way, I hope you realize this borders Ad Hominem. Does the US have it's issues that it needs to solve? Yes. Does that somehow void out argument that extrajudicial killings are okay? No.
As many others have pointed out, the difference is you have BLM here and Atlantic articles that point out drone strikes publishing in the US, and there is some movement (although, not as rapid as many of us would wish for) on the ground to make things better. With extrajudicial killings, it seems reasonable to assume that if there will be evil, it can be easily covered up by the powers that be, labeling critics as drugees and moving on.
One of the things about the West and the US is that you even hear about our ills and evils, while countries like China and Russia stiffle criticizing voices within their own populace. That gives the appearance of "hypocrisy" while to me, it is more like evidence of a freedom of press that we should be proud of.
> As many others have pointed out, the difference is you have BLM here and Atlantic articles that point out drone strikes publishing in the US, and there is some movement (although, not as rapid as many of us would wish for) on the ground to make things better
Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lybia, Syria. I disagree with you that any of these events created a better ground for the next one. I would say exactly the opposite, as the US govt started to drone even their own citizens.
Again, we aren't perfect saints, and we have evils that we need to fight from certain politicians and yes segments of the population who are ignorant to the effects of our "foreign policy". I'd even argue the anti-interventionist rhetoric of Trump and Sanders is part of why they are popular, so that group of pro-interventionist, I-Don't-Give-a-Fuck-About-Non-Americans group is quickly shrinking.
But the entire point of my comment, which you seem to have filtered out in your reply is that you read in popular US media about these issues, from many in the US mainstream press. Where in Russian media will you hear about the Crimean invasion? (A negative perspective, at least) Or the plight of Tibetan monks in China?
The world isn't black and white, but the idea of liberal democracy I think is a worthy ideal, even if we fall short of it precisely with what we have done in the Middle East, towards left-ist governments in South America. At the very least, the fact we can even have this conversation is a testament to the (possibly degrading) freedom of speech that we are lucky to have in the US and one that seems to be waning now in Philippines specifically.
> At the very least, the fact we can even have this conversation is a testament to the (possibly degrading) freedom of speech that we are lucky to have in the US and one that seems to be waning now in Philippines specifically.
I'm sure some agencies of your country already knows (or may know, if they need/want) that I don't think good stuff about this "western" democracy and the US intervention in other democracies. This is not freedom of speech. This is terror.
"Are you/your ways superior to the people that voted him to do EXACTLY what he is doing?"
Yes, people might have supported him to get results in a serious matter, but people did not (and neither they had the competence to) specify the details. Could he instead tell the masses to rattle out the drug dealers and the junkies so the law enforcement could apprehended them for future trials? No, here was a call for mass murder, plain and simple! Do the killers have to prove that the killed were drug dealers? Are the killers known at all? (You know, to be hold accountable if it happens that their victims had nothing to do with drugs?) We're talking about the difference in the means to the same desired end of drug problem. An important difference!
West has all the right to "pontification" since only the West has thus far delivered a high standard of living coupled with respect for human rights.
There are no shortcuts, there is no magic authoritarian fairy dus you can apply and leapfrog the West, we have tried it all and it always ended in disaster. We have seen time and time again, both in our societies and in the developing world, that authoritarianism is self-sustaining and despite initial success will always lead to reduced political competition and an economic and social standstill.
You can do whatever you like in your countries and vote madmen, but we will always condemn such moves, we will always refuse to abed them and we will were always proved right. The cry of colonialism is exactly what these mad men need to stay in power and you are uneducated enough to fall for it.
>West has all the right to "pontification" since only the West has thus far delivered a high standard of living coupled with respect for human rights.
I'm not sure if you are being sarcastic. But I am sorry to inform you that "development" of the west was borne out or slave labour. It is just that simple.
The was did not get developed in the past 50 years. I know, it sounds so shocking, but it is true.
In 40 years when countries are going to be invaded for industrial pollution (that's if the concept o countries still exist) the "west" and people like you would be stating, " you can be developed industrially without polluting the environment".
The facts may be unpleasant, but they remain fact.
I am from Latvia. We did not own any colonies and we were slaves ourselves. But we are democracy and we are for rule of law. We have quite high standard of living. And this standard of living was not created by slave labour or oil. Don't fall for politicians who blame everything on West. You have been independent for some time already. Killing of people without a trial will not make Your country any better. It will make it worse.
In the last century The west has not only engaged in 1 but 2 global wars. Then topped that by holding the world hostage with nuclear annihilation. In addition to engaging in a variety of proxy wars in developing countries where they liked to install puppet dictators. All of this in the name of democracy.
And let's not even get started with the bullshit in the Middle East.
The west has no grounds to state they respect human rights when history clearly shows they do not.
"Like was pointed out, drug dealers are free to surrender. And some have done so."
How is this an answer to preventing the worse of what currently is? The extrajudicial killings in the name of wiping out the drug problem can (and I presume that it also will) be abused to whatever means. If murder was present before, this president just made it a whole lot easier! "Killed? Oh, well! Probably just another bunch of drug dealers who didn't surrendered when they had the chance." Is this what you're supporting?
> As usual, mostly western commentators sitting on their high horses pointing and pontificating with no idea of local context or understanding.
Or maybe they do understand but simply do not agree with either the methods or the goal.
> First of all, Duterte was elected overwhelmingly with a clear mandate of using brute violence to clear out drug dealers.
This goes well beyond drug dealers (and even then it is not the way).
> He was clear about it and he is delivering on that mandate.
Could not care less about whether or not he was clear about it. Wrong is still wrong.
> He was clear about it and he is delivering on that mandate. I have to accept, he has made a PR error by not calling them terrorists.
Hard to tell if you're sarcastic or not, going on the assumption that you're not.
> The fact is, you do not get radical progress pandering to western styled hypocritical democracy or "human rights".
No, you'll get progress by giving everybody a license to go out and kill anybody they don't like on a pretext. That's going to make life so much better.
> It's the reality. A harsh one. Of course, I will not be so "logical" if I happen to be at the receiving end of such needed reform. But hey.. it's what life is.
It need not be. And if you're already hedging your position then I guess you too understand that this is not a solution, only more trouble.
> I am speaking like a man living in a country where some not so nice things will be needed to be done if we are going to ever progress.
Mass murder of citizens is never 'progress'. Especially not if the context is a corrupt police force that makes other avenues less likely to work. Then you go and fix the police force, you don't hand out a 'license to kill' to the population at large.
But you're taking issue with us on our 'high horses' criticizing it and that should be respected.
People have voted for dumb things many times in the past, in my opinion this is one of those times. Might or majority do not automatically make right.
If you 'clean up' a city or a country by extra-judicial killings that makes the cure no better than the disease.
If the country has a corruption issue the solution is not to go and kill people without due process. This is attacking a symptom, leaving the root cause un-examined and so will not solve the problem in the longer term.
I'm merely criticizing your criticism (the loop goes on). I didn't say you did not have the right to criticize.
People declare others who win stupid while claiming to to be democrats. That is hypocrisy.
While I similarly think people are stupid, I am not a fan of popular democracy. I believe my position is consistent with my belief. I am criticizing the hypocrisy of being democrat only when you get what you want.
Democracy is far from perfect. So it is perfectly ok to use democracy but to always be suspicious of that which gets decided democratically.
That's not hypocrisy, it is simply the best adaptation to reality that I can come up with.
And it has nothing to do with 'getting what I want', if NL will vote massively for Wilders in the next election (our local light-weight populist get-rid-of-all-Islamists-and-our-problems-will-magically-disappear politician) then I will consider that a failure of democracy.
Not because I don't get 'what I want' but because it will likely cause great harm to my country.
By the next election cycle given the way social media and the 24x7 news cycle are evolving into just pointless reaction and counter-reaction, voting will be restricted to those who can pass an exam. Like getting your drivers license and being allowed on the road.
We will have a new definition of what an elected govt is. And the commentators here can get back to thinking about things that aren't way above their pay grade.
This is an old and well-discussed question. I'll quote from Alexis de Tocqueville's "Tyranny of the Majority" (1835):
> "If it be admitted that a man possessing absolute power may misuse that power by wronging his adversaries, why should not a majority be liable to the same reproach? Men do not change their characters by uniting with one another; nor does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with their strength. For my own part, I cannot believe it; the power to do everything, which I should refuse to one of my equals, I will never grant to any number of them."
Democracy requires that while the majority rules, the minority also have rights. Majoritarianism (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majoritarianism ) is similar to democracy, and some of its proponents argue is more democratic.
I disagree with that viewpoint. I do not respect a vote for autocracy, though of course this is abstract as my respect means nothing to those who voted that way, and I can do nothing to change things.
A democratic process must allow the minority at some point to be a majority. If you kill off the minorities, which yes, includes those accused of drug dealing, then there is no democracy. (And no, the frequent US policy of stripping the franchise from felons is not democratic.)
Ok, let's look at this on an even playing field, which should be very doable with the atrocities befalling the US and somewhat indiscriminate killing of African Americans.
Note: I'm not American and don't live in the US.
African Americans have been killed by police, imprisoned as almost a racial policy (often resulting from petty drug offenses). So let's say there are an equal number of people killed on each side. 30 African American's in the past week (not true, but let's just make it simple) and 30 Philippine Drug Dealers.
Two wrongs. Why is America better? It is attempting to face the tragedy and stop the killing.
In the Phillipines, what is preventing somebody from killing their neighbor, and saying "he was a drug addict" with no evidence?
What 'radical progress' are you expecting from the killing of drug addicts? Unless, you consider a pile of dead bodies 'progress'. If the Phillipines were 'drug free', would that be 'radical progress'? If so, how? How would it change the rest of the country? The lives of the people?
> Why is USA better? It is attempting to face the tragedy and stop the killing.
Is America attempting to stop the killing? I must have missed a chapter. Last time I've checked Obama was mourning the police officers who were killed and no national mourning was declared for the 500-600 corpses left by the police. And last time I've checked there is also still no trial for which Arabs get to die in Middle East under drone strikes. And 95% inmates in USA have used a plea bargain, which means no trial has occurd to prove whether they were guilty or not. Did I mention the Civil Asset Forfeiture program? Did I mention that even if we right the 3 examples above, the financial imbalance means that the poorer people are not properly representated in legal situations, in votes, and in the economy?
I'm flummoxed the we, in the age of the full information, still take USA as a mere candidate when we talk about human rights. We can't compare USA to anything, their track record is too low.
No national mourning has been declared for "500-600 corpses" because we don't mourn criminals, thugs, people who reach for guns when confronted by police, people who resist arrest, etc. You act as if the police did a raid on Google and pulled all the black employees out and shot them execution style. That sort of thing is definitely not happening.
> because we don't mourn criminals, thugs, people who reach for guns when confronted by police
1. 1 in 3 black people killed by police in 2015 were identified as unarmed [1].
2. In the current example, the black victim didn't resist arrest.
3. Those 500-600 weren't criminals, because you can only say they're "criminal" after a fair trial (oh, sorry, that's something to do with "human rights", if only you could understand what that means).
4. "Not mourning criminals" or not treating them as humans is the primary reason why USA is not compliant with human rights. The reason why it is important to treat assumed criminals as humans is in my point #5.
5. The reason why people resist arrests is because they have absolutely no trust that the judiciary system will judge them fairly. Today, an innocent would rather die than enter the judiciary system [2].
[2] Innocents are cornered into plea bargain, which is 90% of the criminal cases in USA - It means for 90% criminal cases, there was no formal proof that the accused was guilty. I know, they're black, male, muscular and poor, right!? But that doesn't mean they're guilty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plea_bargain
So, once again, you "don't mourn criminals, thugs and people who reach for guns when confronted by police", except you ought to mourn the innocent, the weak and the people who are mugged by police, and you should do that because the police also does it to white people, and you have even fewer organizations to defend against that.
Of course they weren't all criminals. Many of them were, though, you know, from prior arrests/crimes. Like this recent "victim" (or angel as some would have us believe): sex offender, arrest history, felon, gun in pocket, struggling against police trying to keep him on the ground, reaching for gun. But no, he's portrayed as some beloved member of the community and family man. Five kids, but basically homeless. Right.
If people stopped resisting and had some respect for officers, there would be far fewer fatal shootings. If a police officer tells me to do something, I do it. That's how it works. Black people, from certain black subcultures, start in with, "Nah man why you fuckin' wit me." I really don't understand why you want to protect the dregs of society and black society who don't know how to act, rather than help improve black communities, help them educate and advance and rid themselves of their most violent and counterproductive subcultures that reward unlawful and disrespectful behavior and keep them ignorant. As a black person, you're far far far more likely to be killed by another black person than a cop. Fine, disarm the cops and move to the hood. See how wonderful it is.
Yeah, I think if people could go on a ride along with police in a troubled community at two in the morning they'd be singing an entirely different tune.
If the police showed respect for the lives and rights of the people in the community that they are policing, there would be far fewer people resisting and disrespecting them.
Right, all the gangbangers and thugs want is respect from the police! Thanks for the laugh. Honestly though, I'm sure the police try to be as respectful as they can be at first. But because of things like BLM, they don't have a chance, since a cop even stopping and talking to a black person now is considered horrible racism. And probably speaking politely and respectfully would be considered patronizing or something. However you want to spin it. Police aren't here to be your friend. They are here to keep you safe. As evidenced in Dallas, they will even protect those so vehemently against them. But I personally don't think they should be obligated to show respect for people who don't respect themselves or others, which unfortunately, is a rather large percentage of some of these unfortunate communities where you probably wouldn't last a day.
If officers feel threatened, if you're aggressive, if you reach for something in your pocket, disobey them -- it certainly can turn out that way. The overwhelming majority, it may surprise you, take no pleasure in having to fire on someone. They want to go home to their families after work. I grew up in Phoenix, AZ -- I cannot step foot in South Phoenix for fear of my life. That's the truth. Their job is not to make the life of unruly and unlawful people easier, no matter what race they may be. And saying you're black as proof of something is only proof of confirmation bias.
Saying I'm black means I expect a very different approach and treatment from the police than you're typical, granola eating white liberal. I don't live in South Phoenix so why am I treated as if I do everywhere else in this country?
You do a great disservice to all the (and there are so many) black people out there who got educated, got good jobs, built families, and realized that most people honestly don't care what color they are, when you say that you're treated so poorly everywhere in the country. I'm sorry but it's nonsense. We have a black president for god's sake.
You have expectations of police as a black man, why wouldn't they have expectations of every person they stop, based on color, shoes, accent, everything. That's part of their job. You're basically saying you're justified in having a preconceived notion of how police will treat you based on your color and theirs, yet they shouldn't? When it could save their lives? Maybe some black people (i.e. the black people who don't live in the neighborhoods where these shootings go down, but spend all their time writing posts about it on Medium), should try a different approach when they've done nothing wrong and are talking to an officer: be kind and respectful and helpful. Don't be defensive and argumentative and offended. Black people who have their shit together and got out of bad neighborhoods are not getting regularly killed by police. Come on.
> Maybe some black people (i.e. the black people who don't live in the neighborhoods where these shootings go down, but spend all their time writing posts about it on Medium), should try a different approach when they've done nothing wrong and are talking to an officer: be kind and respectful and helpful.
I know a couple of very kind, respectful and helpful people who have been stop-and-frisked for being black and in public. They stopped visiting a mutual friend because it happened regularly traveling in his neighborhood.
They are treated differently for no fault of their own, despite being kind, respectful and helpful. There is a reason people are angry about the difference in treatment.
To give an example: When I traveled to visit a friend, I chose to stay at cheap hotel in a not so well to do area of town. I can carry my own and never felt unsafe. Apparently, the cops stake out that hotel regularly for drug deals and prostitution. I was stopped for an hour and interrogated because "Why would a white boy from out of state be staying at a place like this? Tell me about your history with prostitution. Are you _sure_ there are no drugs in your vehicle?" I was let go after my story checked out.
I felt targeted and no longer safe, because the cops had already painted a mental image of me as someone who dealt/used drugs or was involved with prostitutes and were looking for evidence to back up their presumption. I didn't feel safe leaving at night, because what if I was stopped and arrested for something I didn't do? "Why would a white boy be out at these hours in this neighborhood if he wasn't up to no good?" Those false charges would stick with me forever and I could lose my job.
I can only begin to imagine what it must feel like to be the target of actual racism with the implied assumption of being guilty until proven innocent.
> You do a great disservice to all the (and there are so many) black people out there who got educated, got good jobs, built families, and realized that most people honestly don't care what color they are, when you say that you're treated so poorly everywhere in the country. I'm sorry but it's nonsense. We have a black president for god's sake.
> Black people who have their shit together and got out of bad neighborhoods are not getting regularly killed by police. Come on.
You'll still encounter racism as a black person in America, even in the race blind techno-optimist meritocracy that is the technology sector. [0]
I'd have a lot more questions about the people in your anecdote and the circumstances. I guess they were lucky to escape with their lives. Probably they are on a kill list somewhere and eventually the Secret Racist Police Club will deal with them.
Actually, I think you understand perfectly. You gave a great example of how the way you looked and where you were and when you were there raised suspicions in people who have to be suspicious as part of their job. Why wouldn't it?! The cops were at that hotel, for a reason, and you looked out of place there. To me, it's totally reasonable. And why would you feel unsafe after that? They are trying to find the bad guys and get them off the street. You were in a bad area at a bad hotel. If someone would have tried something, they'd have been there to help you.
I was reading a Medium article by a black tech guy who was complaining about "every day I get on the metro and I'm the last one anyone wants to sit by, I'm always worried about what I'm wearing, I feel uncomfortable" -- yeah, welcome to my world, I'm white and neurotic and often I'm the last one anyone sits by too. I wonder why, is it the beard? Do I look grumpy? I'm always thinking people are looking at me, judging me. That I look weird in my clothes or something. This is totally normal. Everyone experiences these kinds of things and thoughts. I've been stopped by police too. The difference is that many black people are raised believing the police are their enemy and want to hurt them and that white people are racist. It's like Christians reading in the bible that people will mock them for their beliefs and when they're mocked they see that as proof that Christianity is true. It's confirmation bias. The way it seems to me, a police officer can't even speak to a black person these days without people assuming he's racist. So black people can assume about police, but police can't assume about black people. When I think about all the times I've been pulled over, stopped, talked to, I just think, wow, if I was black I could totally just say it was racism. I wasn't driving poorly -- he's racist!
Of course you'll encounter racism in America, no matter what color you are. Hard to believe, a lot of people hate whites! To imagine that all the police get together like mustache-twirling villains to plot ways to ruin the afternoons of normal black people walking somewhere is just preposterous. And if black people do get stopped more, then you have to wonder if it's because the cops are just totally racist or because of their experiences in the line of duty. But let's not wonder that. It's probably racism. Otherwise it would require black people and black communities having to change -- and that would be horrible and racist to even suggest.
Tragedies that have been wildly pumped up by various elements, to even more tragic results.
I've already seen three or four black men killed by other black men just this morning on the Boston news, and that's just since yesterday. Nobody is out in the streets over that.
Yes they are. Organizations like Stop the Violence have been protesting and marching for years. But these are black victims killed by black criminals in black neighborhoods so the news doesn't care and doesn't report on it.
> As usual, mostly western commentators sitting on their high horses pointing and pontificating with no idea of local context or understanding.
Pray tell, what context justifies arbitrary lynchings, summary executions, extrajudicial capital punishment, and an overall disrespect for human life?
Perhaps it's the view from the high horse I'm sitting on, but when I look throughout europe I don't see nations with major drug problems, and they haven't fixed any problems they had with assassinations.
Could you please provide any insight on what makes this sort of rampant uncivilized behaviour necessary or even remotely justified?
Pray tell, what context justifies arbitrary lynchings, summary executions, extrajudicial capital punishment, and an overall disrespect for human life?
Probably the same one that justifies invading countries on flimsy excuses, setting up your own local dictator, and then continuingto bomb the shit out of people when things do not go as you promised your subjects. Shall we roll the clock back a bit and talk about the wonderful "arbitrary lynchings, summary executions, extrajudicial capital punishment, and an overall disrespect for human life" that were the hallmarks of European colonialism?
Perhaps it's the view from the high horse I'm sitting on, but when I look throughout europe I don't see nations with major drug problems, and they haven't fixed any problems they had with assassinations.
Your high horse stands upon a hill of corpses. When I look throughout Europe I see nations that have spent millenia creating problems for other people outside Europe, then washing thier hands of the problem when no one is looking, moralizing to each other about those poor stupid brown people, and then repeating the process.
Societal change, or "needed reforms" are accomplished regularly without indiscriminate use of force. See e.g. India, South Africa, the Civil Rights movement...
This isn't even mentioning the regular and continuous reforms that happen as the institutions of mature democracies manage change.
Violence seldom leads to anything productive. Crime at the level in Philippines is not there because there are a few bad apples. It's because there are structural reasons which drive crime. Sadly, in Philippines case the only method to put a permanent end on the crimelords would be to petition legalization of drugs in UN.
The US military kills "terrorists" abroad, in a war zone. If the US were giving its citizens carte blanche rights to label fellow citizens "terrorists" and execute them on behalf of the government, then your analogy would make sense. But as it stands, this is a wholly different situation from drone strikes, as reprehensible as they may be.
> First of all, Duterte was elected overwhelmingly with a clear mandate of using brute violence to clear out drug dealers.
And journalists too! Kill everyone you don't like!
> “Just because you’re a journalist you are not exempted from assassination, if you’re a son of a bitch,” Duterte said when asked how he would address the problem of media killings in the Philippines, after a reporter was shot dead in Manila last week.
> “Most of those killed, to be frank, have done something. You won’t be killed if you don’t do anything wrong,” Duterte said, adding that many journalists in the Philippines were corrupt.
> “That can’t be just freedom of speech. The constitution can no longer help you if you disrespect a person,”
> Duterte raised the case of Jun Pala, a journalist and politician who was murdered in Davao in 2003. Gunmen on a motorcycle shot dead Pala, who was a vocal critic of Duterte. His murder has never been solved. “If you are an upright journalist, nothing will happen to you,” said Duterte
Why am I not surprised that the person who sees the solution to a countries problems growing out of the barrel of a gun would not have a problem with journalists being killed.
> “If you are an upright journalist, nothing will happen to you,” said Duterte
Good. So we can rest assured that only those journalists that were not 'upright' will not remain upright.
You're wrong in agreeing that it does not, democracy is a perverted form of government (see Aristotle). That's why most countries implement a constitutional republic or something similar instead.
No offense, but you sound like an aging white man slamming his fist on the table and hectoring "what we need is a good war!" at family dinners.
Human rights, and more specifically due process, are not 'Western', they've just been formulated there. Do you believe gravity is 'white' or 'jewish' because it was formulated by Einstein?
And societies that 'get' due process objectively do better: tell me, who does better in social development and public safety, Nigeria or Mauritius? Nigeria or Cape Verde? Conversely, when were Latin American countries worse off, during their "military Dutertre" era, or now? Your position has never worked historically.
You can't _claim_ guilt, you need proof, and to get proof you need due process.
There is no war. There is nothing even close to a war zone. If you consider the society threatened on such a level there are steps to be taken, like declaring the martial law and such. But this... is just madness to me, covered by populist propaganda!
You are missing the scope of the discussion. My point is that abdicating proper law enforcement has historically always failed at improving society.
Yes you can "declare war". This will certainly not improve your country (Cf Colombia before, Mexico now).
Note that I'm not even making the argument that killing innocents is wrong, I'm just saying that due process works better, period.
"Human rights, and more specifically due process, are not 'Western', they've just been formulated there."
Not even that. I'm not sure to what do we refer exactly by (western) "human rights". Is it the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? That was not "western", as the United Nations General Assembly, which adopted it, had equal representation of all member nations, including Philippines. Is it something else, something older, like the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, passed somewhere in the French Revolution? Well, we can find less "western" versions before that all over the world and history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_human_rights
> Human rights, and more specifically due process, are not 'Western', they've just been formulated there. Do you believe gravity is 'white' or 'jewish' because it was formulated by Einstein?
Are you saying that human rights are real in some sense? That they're something more than arbitrary legal constructs/a civic religion devised by Westerners in the last few centuries?
Sure, that's a good analogy. Human rights are a currency printed by the West. They have a lot of weight because of the political and economic weight of the west. But they're still fundamentally Western, and not everyone accepts that currency.
Taiwan never was colonized by a Western power, and they are the most progressive democracy in Asia (quirky-folksy democracy, but democracy nonetheless). Thailand never was colonized at all, and it sucks for them right now, but there are many democrats there.
In fact during the colonial era Western powers considered democracy "non-exportable" (for obvious self-serving reasons), yet it was used as a moral and ideological weapon by many independence movements (India springs to mind). So not really "printed by the West".
You know what works really well at getting radical progress? Make everyone rich. Look at the reduction in violent crime throughout Asia as people's income increased.
Japan, Singapore, Korea.. The pattern is the same, and it isn't brutal law and order policies that made the difference.
If your country is Nigeria as your nick seems to suggest, then I suggest you look at how "doing not so nice things" has worked out elsewhere in Africa, and in fact, in Nigeria itself.
There is no easy path towards progress, and certainly not by killing whomever we think is the cause of the problem.
Also let's be honest, there never was a society that went down the drain due to drugs. Not even close. They are just scapegoats. Society that went down the drain due to violence and mob-approved regimes? Loads.
Why the downvote? I'm calling it a democracy, which is a very generous assessment for a place where the president directs the population to kill without due process.
The "geno" literally means a race or lineage of people. If the definition can be expanded to include national and religious affiliation, then it might as well be expanded to include other social groups. It's the act that's atrocious, regardless of semantic technicalities.
Sadly not. Even what the nazis did to homosexuals didn't qualify as genocide because the definition doesn't include sexual orientation (just ethnicity, religion and a few other things) -- no matter that they were targeted as an entire class of people to be exterminated.
I had this T-shirt a friend of mine gave me years ago, it simply had a silk screen on it that said "legalize murder". It was meant to be an ironic liberally extreme idea of granting freedom to do whatever you wanted.
It was meant to be over the top. I can't believe I just read that it is quite literally happening.
Reminds me of a conversation of I had with a Cameroonian recently. He said: "I don't understand how these drug dealers and criminals can get away with so much in your country [I'm from South Africa]. Where I'm from the soldiers will take you to the bush and execute you. That's how they brought peace to my country. The military kidnapped all the criminals and drug dealers and killed them".
I don't have any way to verify this, but he seemed pretty happy about it and hoped they would do it in other countries too.
edit: Wait... did I just read correctly? He gave the public permission to kill drug addicts? That's the WTF of the year.
"Where I'm from the soldiers will take you to the bush and execute you. That's how they brought peace to my country. The military kidnapped all the criminals and drug dealers and killed them"
So, an armed faction took out another factions or group of factions out of the picture in the most simple and grotesque way, by kidnapping (instead of public apprehension) and summary execution (instead of prosecution with a trial that gives the culprits the chance to defend themselves). This armed faction has been called "the military"? And the murderous cleansing - "peace"? And after all this someone actually seriously considers them and their deeds as an example worth following? I find this kind of thinking comparable to any of the doctrines promoting mass murdering in the name of solving something and the individuals advocating such methods to be a danger to the general public!
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[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 300 ms ] threadThis man just gave the public free rein to murder and get away with it.
Jesus this planet is insane.
This guy just got elected. He was mayor before this, and that's how he ran his city.
He had secret death squads that cleaned the streets and "transformed" his city to the 5th safest city in the world. [0]
[0]http://globalnation.inquirer.net/125132/davao-city-improves-...
[1] http://m.gulfnews.com/news/asia/philippines/one-crime-every-...
To play devil's advocate: Drugs and the criminal networks supported by drugs are a massive problem in the Philippines. Police are too weak and too corrupt to deal with it, but this is a solution that works, even if it does offend our first world sensibilities.
Yes, so let's go kill a bunch of people, instead of reforming the police force.
A state that does kill random citizens has no legitimacy. states are formed by individuals in order to ensure they are not subject to random violence or violation of their rights. If a state can't or does not want to guarantee that nobody has any reason to respect the state. If police men kill random people because they think they deal drugs, the ordinary citizen has every right to kill police men because they think the police thinks they deal drugs. (or their fellow country men) In such a state of affairs, what's the purpose of a state? What's it's legitimacy? It doesn't have any. A complete lack of any institutions and anarchy would protect everybodys rights better.
The main problem I see with it though is that soon someone will say you are a drug dealer. Or that weird people are coming to your house. Or that at some point the actual evil people will arrange drug deals near people they want to get rid of. And then you'll really want a fair process. If you start a red scare equivalent, then suddenly every neighbour may be a communist.
To play devil's advocate: Jews and other degenerates are a massive problem in Germany. Police are too weak and too corrupt to deal with it, but this is a solution that works, even if it does offend our first world sensibilities.
It's not qualitatively different from disenfranchised workers voting for Trump. It's the nuclear option for people who have no way to profit from the existing system. It just so happens that life is much, much easier in the US so there is no need to consider actual violence when thinking about going nuclear.
If you want to solve a problem you have to understand it first and foremost. Just calling it insanity is therefore not only not helpful, but harmful as others might take up that world view and stop caring for a real solution.
I do not have a solution, but am trying to understand how people can be so miserable (be it workers in US voting for Trump, German people voting AfD or people in the Philippines seeing this as a viable option/solution to their problem, when it probably even isn't such).
I can understand being desperate and taking desperate measures. But killing? I am so not able to understand it - even while I am trying to find rational reasons/explanations.
Also the president is probably headed for the Hague.
(You do notice that most of the graphs lower down the page have a sharp uptick towards the far right ?!? especially "Violent Victimisation at School", "Prevalence of Mass Killings", "Rate of Death in Genocides and Other Killings", "Wars > 1000 Deaths/Year" whilst things like "Rape and Sexual Assault", "Physical Abuse", "Sexual Abuse" show a small uptrend)
Is it that the craziest plans standout against the two regular options? Or that the regular options hedge their bets and don't appear to adequately address issues concerning the masses?
It's dissapointing that people see this as something to do with drugs, while in reality it's just a green light for a killing frenzy.
Yes, maybe some murderers will slip under the radar, but the numbers so far look good. Only 30 deaths over the country (that's no killing frenzy) and 952 people have surrendered to the authorities. I'd say it's working
No, it seems that unknowingly, the "normal people" were waiting for the people with guns, and all of them together were waiting the right time, which is now!
"Only 30 deaths over the country (that's no killing frenzy) and 952 people have surrendered to the authorities. I'd say it's working"
Who gives you the figures? As I understand, the president's opposing figures, including journalists, were targets for some time already! ...for being drug dealers or addicts, allegedly. It's safe to assume that the ones that left to live have to really impress the president with their reporting.
Young female from out of area (some state) comes (homeless) to a town known for downward spirals.
Arrested 20+ times over 2 years, mainly around meth addiction, but seriously mental.
Local people reach out to family/friends of said individual via social media expressing concern, no response.
Individual continues to flail.
County (in California) refuses to adopt Laura's Law -- incarnation of adults with repeat mental issues -- lack of budget.
Who is responsible for the individual and why?
Addicts need a will to want to recover. Some are hell bent on escape regardless.
What is the right social/safety net?
Relevance to post: many people in this community and similar are tired of people throwing their life away and expecting a safety net.
The fact that people in the richest country in the world are still having this debate is appalling to Canadians and Western Europeans.
Americans will be the last on this ship, but part of living in a prosperous 21st century society means giving up some liberty (in the form of taxes, limited access to guns, suffering additional government bureaucracy) for the knowledge that getting sick should never be a death sentence regardless of your income level. Neither should poverty. Universal Basic Income WILL happen. After that, anyone who is still unable to provide for themselves and stays homeless needs medical support beyond financial support, because the incidence of mental health issues amongst the homeless is huge. Finally, addiction should be treated like a health issue also.
Now you can say that "it's not fair" that some people will end up pulling more from the collective pot of funds than others. But that's society. It's not about fairness. It's about every life being worth something, and having the potential to put something back into society after their recovery.
Because UBI is unsustainable and won't last more than a year. There is not enough money for any plausible scenario. That's why.
And yes, let's give people "free" money and do nothing about hugely overpriced and corrupt healthcare system, education and things. In fact, let's introduce new obligatory payments for everyone!
Who, do you think, might be the most interested in lobbying for _that_?
Yeah, the Koch brothers would only be worth 5 billion instead of 40, but somehow I don't think their lifestyle will be altered in any way shape or form.
I expect this is probably an unpopular opinion on a forum for entrepreneurs
No it isn't. Get an Excel and calculate. It will last about a year.
Once something like this is in place I could see the needle being moved over time if the sort of automation that machines give us in the coming decades really is categorically different from the sort of automation that machines have given us in the past 2 centuries (debatable).
[1] http://www.economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/11...
Concerning the automation and sudden increases in productivity — but this was exactly the very same promise that full-scale Communism was expected to deliver in Soviet Union. It was reiterated in internal propaganda endlessly (I still remember that). As every ex-Soviet person knows well, the full-scale Communism (with free basic income, fully automated factories and cities of the future) was promised as early as 1980. Now it is called "post-scarcity".
It wasn't delivered then, and I doubt it will be delivered this century.
The question is politics: it'd also require scrapping most of our current welfare programs and instituting Scandinavian levels of taxation. This ends up goring {Republican,Democratic} {donors,clientele demographics}, so I agree that's presently an impossible lift in the USA, but that's a matter of politics, not economics.
I'm with you on fixing our broken healthcare and educational systems, but if you think that's any more practicable than a UBI, I've got a free government subsidy to sell you.
Also, taxes in Scandinavia (I lived in Denmark) are not that high. True, there is 50% tax, but no other hidden payments like social security or medical insurance. And medicine and education are free. I'd rather run business with 50% tax and no bureaucracy and no social security payments than pay all this.
One of the most expensive and problematic countries to run businesses is France. Scandinavia is piece of cake compared to France.
Suffering additional government bureaucracy? No way. It's interesting because I would bet you're opposed to government surveillance yet you are unopposed to increasing the power and thus the tyrannical potential of government. Those things are one in the same.
In a freshman dorm room late at night, we've all had the discussion that communism would be good if it were implemented correctly. However most of us grew up. We realize that human nature will never change no matter how many rainbows we wish upon. Every single time some perfect society attempt has been made, it turned into millions of dead people. Increasing the power of government is to increase the potential for tyranny.
Utopia doesn't exist and it will never exist.
That's suspect to me.
This was in the post-Iraq War context when Freedom fries became a thing. Still, I was baffled. And wondering why I wasn't allowed to buy a beer...
And it looks like Canada, Switzerland, or The Netherlands. Utopias? Hardly. And that's not the point ("Utopia" is a black-and-white concept. The world is gray). The point is incremental improvements forward, sometimes 2 steps forward and 1 back (e.g. turns out legalizing prostitution doesn't automatically eliminate human trafficking. But it doesn't mean the idea is bad, just that it's not enough on it's own.)
You are correct, I am against warrantless government surveillance. But again, middle ground. Why can I not be against blanket all-encompassing communication surveillance with no oversight, but for regulation that protects my drinking water from factories dumping untreated waste? Or are you trying to tell me that it's both or neither? Because if so, I do not want to live in your Randian Utopia.
Having lived in Vancouver's downtown east side, and spent time in the neighbourhoods of various Western European cities that have high addict and homeless populations, I find your moral superiority breathtaking.
These addicts and homeless have access to: * 3 meals a day at various food banks * Safe injection sites to decrease disease risk as a result of intravenous drug use * Universal health care for when any of the above fails * A sympathetic and protective police force that ensures people do not hurt themselves or others.
As a result I've never felt unsafe living there like I do when I wander through San Francisco.
Is the system perfect? No. The legacy of conservative governments meant that mental health assistance budgets were severely cut, and so there are a lot of people on the street that really need more government help, not less.
And let's not even get into the fact that Vancouver has most of the homeless population of Canada because it's the only city in the country where you can be homeless through the winter and not die from exposure.
We set up safety nets, and people abuse that. We set up extremely complicated (often lobbied) tax codes, and big business are the only ones able to abuse that. Am I okay with it? Not really. But voting for some pompous populist asshole is not a better alternative. We're of course talking about the Philippines here and nothing else.
> many people in this community and similar are tired of people throwing their life away and expecting a safety net.
That's a really disgusting approach to treating human life. These people aren't "throwing their life away", they're broken and in need of help. Why is it unreasonable to expect a society to look out for its weak and vulnerable?
It's perfectly reasonable.
But bullets are cheaper than care and that's why bullets rather than care fit so much better in the narrative expounded by populist leaders.
Conveniently, bullets also allow you to get rid of people that oppose you and that works better if you have a group that you've labeled 'ripe for extermination'. Then all you have to do is make people in group 'B' look like the people in group 'A'.
Young female from out of area (some state) comes (homeless) to a town known for downward spirals.
Arrested 20+ times over 2 years, mainly around meth addiction, but seriously mental.
Local people reach out to family/friends of said individual via social media expressing concern, no response.
Individual continues to flail.
County (in California) refuses to adopt Laura's Law -- incarnation of adults with repeat mental issues -- lack of budget.
Who is responsible for the individual and why?
Addicts need a will to want to recover. Some are hell bent on escape regardless.
What is the right social/safety net?
Relevance to post: many people in this community and similar are tired of people throwing their life away and expecting a safety net.
30 people in 4 days.
I'm from germany, we're helping because our government does nothing in stopping the use of Rammstein Airbase as drone satellite uplink. So we are also partly responsible. :(
food for thought
> I'm from germany, we're helping because our government does nothing in stopping the use of Rammstein Airbase as drone satellite uplink. So we are also partly responsible. :(
> food for thought
Definitely, but totally OT.
You can not really compare that, but i honestly think thats even worse. At least officially the philippines only kill THEIR PEOPLE people that damage THEIR society.
IMO if the majority of the society does not agree, it is also their fault if they still let it happen. Its (some kind of) democracy after all.
But we live in a world in which Saudi Arabia is chair of the UN human rights council ...
Laws, rights, constitutions - they mean a lot less when no force is capable or willing to enforce them.
I think it is entirely appropriate for the ruler of a country who instead of attacking the root cause of corruption in that country decides to give license to his population to go and kill each other instead.
> But we live in a world in which Saudi Arabia is chair of the UN human rights council ...
Ugh. I had to go and look that up to make sure you weren't pulling my leg. Sorry for not trusting you.
If his goal is strong Philippines under El Presidente that conveniently shares the same name as him ... he is on the right way.
I know I am cynical as a person nearing the age of 350 but after the drug dealer "threat" is dealt with, the corrupted (and his opponents) may as well be his next extrajudical targets.
In every impoverished area there are some local feudal bigshots that do what they please and can get away with anything. Give the poor licence to kill them ... and they will elect you to your grave and beyond.
Democracy does not mean human rights or rule of law ...
Do you exercise or is it purely genetic?
This isn't a joke. This is real. What a sick bastard.
Give everyone a license to kill, give everyone a gun, and after that you think everything would just sort itself out? Do you believe that only the right people will survive and then everything will be fine?
Absolutely no risk of a violent degradation into chaos, looting, riots?
..I hope.
If you're not safe in your own homes because of the drug lords you don't have a drug lord problem, you have a law enforcement problem and a corruption issue.
Civilization does not magically arrive by killing a large number of people (and probably plenty of them innocent).
When the uncivilised people control a large amount of money, they control the power, and there's simply no hope of just fixing corruption as you propose.
I think what this guy is proposing will prove to be a good idea with time, and you have his time as a mayor as an example. Even if a few innocents die. To make an omelette you have to break some eggs.
Citation fairly urgently needed.
Does that mean we will have to get rid of the killers as well? They're uncivilized people as well, after all.
> Even if a few innocents die.
Ah, that's too bad.
> To make an omelette you have to break some eggs.
You've got to be kidding.
Think of African or American colonisation for example. Local opposition had to be removed.
Think of the war on drugs in the USA, which was a covert operation to kill blacks.
Etc
>Does that mean we will have to get rid of the killers as well? They're uncivilized people as well, after all.
No they are not. They earned the right to kill drug lords and junkies through democracy. With all due respect did you read the article? This isn't some kind of evil tyrant, that guy earned his position through the electorate because he's been using that plan to do away with scum in his own city and it worked well. Citizens are looking forward to cleanse their country and that's what they'll do, I hope.
Sorry for the brevity as I am typing this from my mobile.
Right, let's just say that that is probably not the strongest argument you could have made.
> Think of the war on drugs in the USA, which was a covert operation to kill blacks.
That's an interesting alternative reading. The 'war on drugs' was a misguided attempt at solving a societal problem through confrontational means. Roughly what the article is all about.
It's also an abject failure, and a textbook case of why these things do not work long term. Kill all the criminals is only a good idea if don't want to have a civilized country.
> No they are not. They earned the right to kill drug lords and junkies through democracy.
Ah ok. That makes them lily white.
> With all due respect did you read the article?
Yes. Now with the same respect: Did you study history? At all?
> This isn't some kind of evil tyrant, that guy earned his position through the electorate because he's been using that plan to do away with scum in his own city and it worked well. Citizens are looking forward to cleanse their country and that's what they'll do, I hope.
Oh, you hope. Well, I hope with you. But the fact is that rather than having a bunch of drug criminals and junkies we will now have a population with a large fraction involved in extra-judicial murder. That's not necessarily a preferably situation over the original one and it leaves in place the biggest problem the country had to begin with: corrupt government officials and police force.
See, when you tackle a problem you should tackle the root cause, not the symptoms.
> Sorry for the brevity as I am typing this from my mobile.
That's fine. I'm not sure more of it would make it any better.
>Right, let's just say that that is probably not the strongest argument you could have made.
Are many of those countries being run better now?
One of my older servants here in Guatemala used to speak fondly of the "genocidal" general Rios Montt. During his time, she said, things were so safe. If someone robbed you, say, grabbed a purse, he'd be shot on the spot! Even now, I hear people express desire for summary execution. They're just so sick of the shittiness of these countries that due process doesn't get consideration.
I don't think many of these countries are very capable of attacking the root problems (which seems to mostly be just sheer incompetence at every conceivable level). At least not on any useful timeframes. It's almost certainly a better deal for them to become protectorates/colonies of properly run countries. Maybe on a 50-year term.
It's fairly obvious you have no frame of reference to judge the people that elected this president, for better or for worse, and what conditions have led them to such measures.
You'd be surprised what thoughts enter your mind when you live in conditions with constant danger and stark prospects. But you'd have to have experienced it, which you obviously haven't.
Really, this whole thread is a testimony to how easy it is to slide into a dictatorship or fascism.
The only time when morality matters is when it is challenged. If you de-humanize others - no matter who - you are also de-humanizing yourself and that road leads fairly directly into hell.
I've spent enough time with people who spent time in those hells to recognize the prelude to one.
I strongly suggest you study up on the person of 'El Presidente' a little bit more before you come out in defense of this person. A couple of hours reading might sway you to the position that this person is going to cause absolutely nothing but trouble (and in fact, is already causing it).
I was merely mentioning that you might not win the argument with the way you were responding before.
> I strongly suggest you study up on the person of 'El Presidente' a little bit more before you come out in defense of this person.
I'm assuming here you're talking about some particular South American dictator, but perhaps you could elaborate?
>> Citation fairly urgently needed
> colonisation for example. Local opposition had to be removed. Think of the war on drugs in the USA, which was a covert operation to kill blacks.
Umm.. I'm assuming I'm misreading this. It sounds like you have just claimed that colonisation and an operation to kill blacks in the US were both ways to do away with uncivilised people and make society better(?!?). What did you mean?
I'm sorry, WHAT?!
Please please expound.
Nuremberg Trials, and thus the international community, said otherwise. Being given the green light or the order to commit crimes against humanity by your government doesn't mean it's right or absolvable.
Regarding crimes against humanity
>Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity can be committed during peace or war. They are not isolated or sporadic events, but are part either of a government policy (although the perpetrators need not identify themselves with this policy) or of a wide practice of atrocities tolerated or condoned by a government or a de facto authority. Murder, massacres, dehumanization, extermination, human experimentation, extrajudicial punishments, death squads, forced disappearances, military use of children, kidnappings, unjust imprisonment, slavery, cannibalism, torture, rape, and political or racial repression may reach the threshold of crimes against humanity if they are part of a widespread or systematic practice. [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimes_against_humanity
They really want their country cleaned up. Have you ever been there. His city before he cleaned it up, you could not safely walk down the streets, you would be stabbed in broad daylight. Now you can safely walk down the streets at night without being mugged.
Call him sick all you want, guy is bloody awesome from where I'm standing.
It's a great example of "be careful what you wish for". Trains on time, then 30 million people die in a war you helped forge, then your country becomes destroyed. I'll happily live with the late trains.
RE this crazy drug policy: very, very bad things happen when rule of law breaks down and we go into vigilante justice. Moral arguments aside, how many innocent people have died because of this already? It's an absolutely horrible idea.
Strongmen don't usually make things more efficient by diktat. If you want to have a population that takes no risks and does the absolute minimum, just threaten to shoot them for screwing up.
It looks like that is not about to change.
So progress and a functioning society is possible without coercing or scaring people into obedience. What is needed is a cultural shift and it can only start from the schools. If you look at the Japanese school system, every other aspect of their society becomes an obvious consequence.
Or even better, they will kill competitors/people they don't like and then claim that they killed an addict.
Do you not see any moral problem with that?
You can choose to kill bad people or let it slide. The latter will cause more problem to society. Prison will do nothing. This is not scandinavian country.
There's a reason each country has an official justice system.
Sigmund Freud and Thomas Edison used cocaine regularly. Nietzsche used opiates. William S Burroughs liked morphine a little too much. Erdos regularly used amphetamines. Hundreds of famous actors and actresses were and are addicts. Thousands of college students will use amphetamines prescribed by doctors to complete their school work, a number of them will end up addicted. Thousands of elderly men and women in America are addicted to their pain medications and probably don't know it.
It's almost as if people who commit crimes against another person should be charged and brought to trial so innocent people aren't murdered in the streets.
PS: Mike Lindell, Joe Roberts and John McAfee are/were CEOs and were active addicts.
People who commit crimes against others should be charged and have their case heard in a court of law. Not be shot in the street. Doesn't matter if this is Camden, Detroit, Skid Row, Vancouver or the Philippines.
Not saying it's good, but if a country decides to kill its own people to fix some problems, that is somehow suddenly a huge topic while other nations invade other countries and kill more civilians than terrorists?
So your point is kind of irrelevant.
There is barely objective media coverage about this in western countries as well.
Edit:// also this guy does exactly what he was voted for. while the war nations do what they want without democratic process
They're literally allowing ordinary citizens to kill random people on the street without consequences.
Besides, the reason these people are violent is that they are desperate and mentally unstable. Their state is a failure of society, you can't fix it by just outright murdering people.
This has nothing to do with Trump or American politics. Not a single candidate in the US has called for the extra-judicial execution of drug dealers or users. Trying to draw an equivalence to Trump is absurd.
Trump is an opportunistic buffoon, Hillary is cold and calculating. But both really just want power at any cost. The differences are not even remotely as significant as voters seem to believe. Sure, they hold opposing views, but neither of them is a saint and neither of them is going to openly do stupid drastic things like telling civilians to murder other people in the streets.
> ... and neither of them is going to openly do stupid drastic things like telling civilians to murder other people in the streets.
Sure, that's valid. But while I'm no fan of Hillary, she is, as you said, cold and calculating, which I posit as the major difference between the two. Trump is hotheaded and impulsive, and while we'll never see him (knock on wood) condone senseless killing in the street, he HAS expressed a plethora of outlandish statements (later retracted), so little out of his mouth surprises me.
This does not oppose your description of the two, other than Trump can say ~anything, Hillary won't.
"If everyone had guns..." and the crowd cheered.
If his target audience believed that killing drug dealers was a good idea, Trump would say it.
Clinton seems rather straightforward: you can look back at her political career and what she did as Secretary of State to figure out where she's headed; you have no such luxury with Trump.
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/681-the-future-is-already-he...
And it likely never will be. Unfortunately.
-Dr. King, 1956
http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentse...
China and Indonesia dissappear thousands of addicts and criminals every year too the only difference is it's not advertised in the media as a killing free for all. This guy also gave Indonesia the green light to go after Abu Sayyaf kidnappers basically inviting them to invade those autonomous islands.
Well you've sold me! Line 'em up!
First of all, Duterte was elected overwhelmingly with a clear mandate of using brute violence to clear out drug dealers. He was clear about it and he is delivering on that mandate. I have to accept, he has made a PR error by not calling them terrorists. At which point, he will be sold drones that can also wipe out families in addition to the druggies.
The fact is, you do not get radical progress pandering to western styled hypocritical democracy or "human rights". It's the reality. A harsh one. Of course, I will not be so "logical" if I happen to be at the receiving end of such needed reform. But hey.. it's what life is.
At least, no set of drug dealers are at greater risk because of the colour of their skin.
PS: I am speaking like a man living in a country where some not so nice things will be needed to be done if we are going to ever progress.
Isn't the normal procedure to just sprinkle some crack over their body?
Hmm.. No addict's blood testing confirmation necessary, huh?
On the other hand, if the President of a country says to kill drug dealers and addicts, quite a few people will go ahead and do that, thinking that it's now justified.
Election ballot 1936: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahlrecht_in_der_Zeit_des_Nati...
Actually his final rise to power came through back room shenanigans with Hindenburg when the popular support of the national socialist party was way below 50% of the voters.
Its easier to get a quorum if you can kill your opposition
Once you start arguing like this, any political stance is valid as long as your group is not the one being killed.
So what's the progress towards then? A totalitarian dictatorship that murders people? That's hardly progress of any sort. I'm quite happy to stay on my high horse if that means arguing for the rule of law and basic decency, both things which Duterte has thrown out the window in his quest to rid society of 'problems' by getting vigilantes to murder people.
Hating on democracy and human rights because they're 'Western' (and usually by extension 'Imperial') really annoys me. It's a stupid, petty argument that is continuously peddled by figures in non-Western countries as a justification for doing whatever they like.
Thomas, you may not not realise you have just written a one line thesis for the justification of colonialism.
"You brutes have no idea to run a society. We'll come show you how"
Of course, you most likely do not think in such nasty terms however, that is the translation.
You're a 20 year old Aussie (I checked your website). You know the history of your country so I will not have to educate you on the result of preventing people "doing what they like" with regard to their culture and customs.
Are you/your ways superior to the people that voted him to do EXACTLY what he is doing? You called his one week old government "totalitarian". Forgetting he was elected for a 6 year term. Is that system they like stupid and petty too? Or should they come take instructions from you? Your country?
That's quite an irrational leap from what he said... It could also be:
"We've tried all this before, we know democracy works better, so we suggest you implement it as well."
Lol
Tell that to the people who had democracy bombed into them.
The point is, there are two patterns here which should be of concern: a popular leader calls for violence and vigilante style justice. In the long term this a non-stabilizing policy and likely to do a bit of economic damage. The second is that I give it a fifty-fifty that Duarte will run through a legislation that will turn him into a president-for-life. These types of scenarios usually go bad, take Zimbabwe for example.
I'm not saying 'going tough' would not work in the short term - but there is no reason the president should concentrate on this single issue except to stir popular support. Just removing crime won't make rhe all other problems go away. I would claim 'going tough' is the ultimate cop out move by any statesman since it removes attention from other problems and does not help build anything new.
The point is, how do you rebut this without using human-right thesis ? If enlightenment is to be discarded, why should people not invade your country and reduce its population to slavery ?
> "You brutes have no idea to run a society. We'll come show you how"
And you've just proved my point about democracy and human rights being dismissed as Western colonialism.
What's your alternative to democracy and human rights? A dictatorship that can have anyone it dislikes executed?
Colonialism might have been what brought democracy to many parts of the world - but the two are not one and the same (in fact, colonialism was regarded by many in Europe as being opposed to human rights and democracy). Many former colonies have tossed democracy and the rule of law out the window before - and it hasn't worked particularly well.
> You know the history of your country so I will not have to educate you on the result of preventing people "doing what they like" with regard to their culture and customs.
Well, Australia isn't an authoritarian regime, is it? I'd say that having elections with the government's power constrained by a constitution is going quite well.
> Are you/your ways superior to the people that voted him to do EXACTLY what he is doing? You called his one week old government "totalitarian". Forgetting he was elected for a 6 year term. Is that system they like stupid and petty too? Or should they come take instructions from you? Your country?
Of course I think my political beliefs are superior - that's why they're my political beliefs. I don't go around supporting a political ideology I believe to be inferior. It just so happens that extrajudicial executions are fundamentally opposed to my belief in the goal of a liberal democratic society.
I didn't call Duterte's government totalitarian - I agree that one week is not long enough. But if he's still asking for drug dealers and addicts to be murdered in a year I'll happily call him authoritarian, totalitarian, etc.
I understand he was elected for a six year term. That doesn't justify disregarding the rule of law (the same rule of law that make those elections every six years), nor does it morally justify murder.
The Philippines shouldn't be forced to take instructions from Australia - but that doesn't magically make criticism disappear. I'll criticise Duterte all I like, and I hope the Australian government criticises him too in the future.
I assume you're referring to America. And my answer would be that yes, as abhorrent as segregation, drone strikes and backing coups in other countries is, that doesn't nullify the elections held within that country. It's still a democracy.
People voted for Obama and they got Obama. Obama may have said what he wanted to do in office back in 2008 and then not been able to achieve those things, but that doesn't make the US undemocratic. That's how representative democracy works - you vote for representatives, not policies.
Edit: Additionally, extrajudicial executions are a sign that Duterte doesn't respect the law. If he continues to encourage vigilante killings, there is precedent for him to encourage law breaking in other areas. Who's not to say there won't be electoral laws being flouted?
But not for the people living there.
By the way, I hope you realize this borders Ad Hominem. Does the US have it's issues that it needs to solve? Yes. Does that somehow void out argument that extrajudicial killings are okay? No.
As many others have pointed out, the difference is you have BLM here and Atlantic articles that point out drone strikes publishing in the US, and there is some movement (although, not as rapid as many of us would wish for) on the ground to make things better. With extrajudicial killings, it seems reasonable to assume that if there will be evil, it can be easily covered up by the powers that be, labeling critics as drugees and moving on.
One of the things about the West and the US is that you even hear about our ills and evils, while countries like China and Russia stiffle criticizing voices within their own populace. That gives the appearance of "hypocrisy" while to me, it is more like evidence of a freedom of press that we should be proud of.
Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lybia, Syria. I disagree with you that any of these events created a better ground for the next one. I would say exactly the opposite, as the US govt started to drone even their own citizens.
Again, we aren't perfect saints, and we have evils that we need to fight from certain politicians and yes segments of the population who are ignorant to the effects of our "foreign policy". I'd even argue the anti-interventionist rhetoric of Trump and Sanders is part of why they are popular, so that group of pro-interventionist, I-Don't-Give-a-Fuck-About-Non-Americans group is quickly shrinking.
But the entire point of my comment, which you seem to have filtered out in your reply is that you read in popular US media about these issues, from many in the US mainstream press. Where in Russian media will you hear about the Crimean invasion? (A negative perspective, at least) Or the plight of Tibetan monks in China?
The world isn't black and white, but the idea of liberal democracy I think is a worthy ideal, even if we fall short of it precisely with what we have done in the Middle East, towards left-ist governments in South America. At the very least, the fact we can even have this conversation is a testament to the (possibly degrading) freedom of speech that we are lucky to have in the US and one that seems to be waning now in Philippines specifically.
I'm sure some agencies of your country already knows (or may know, if they need/want) that I don't think good stuff about this "western" democracy and the US intervention in other democracies. This is not freedom of speech. This is terror.
Yes, people might have supported him to get results in a serious matter, but people did not (and neither they had the competence to) specify the details. Could he instead tell the masses to rattle out the drug dealers and the junkies so the law enforcement could apprehended them for future trials? No, here was a call for mass murder, plain and simple! Do the killers have to prove that the killed were drug dealers? Are the killers known at all? (You know, to be hold accountable if it happens that their victims had nothing to do with drugs?) We're talking about the difference in the means to the same desired end of drug problem. An important difference!
Not the usual bait and switch.
Like was pointed out, drug dealers are free to surrender. And some have done so.
http://news.abs-cbn.com/news/07/09/16/thousands-of-drug-push...
My own gripe is pontification of the west when it comes to the business of other countries.
There are no shortcuts, there is no magic authoritarian fairy dus you can apply and leapfrog the West, we have tried it all and it always ended in disaster. We have seen time and time again, both in our societies and in the developing world, that authoritarianism is self-sustaining and despite initial success will always lead to reduced political competition and an economic and social standstill.
You can do whatever you like in your countries and vote madmen, but we will always condemn such moves, we will always refuse to abed them and we will were always proved right. The cry of colonialism is exactly what these mad men need to stay in power and you are uneducated enough to fall for it.
I'm not sure if you are being sarcastic. But I am sorry to inform you that "development" of the west was borne out or slave labour. It is just that simple.
The was did not get developed in the past 50 years. I know, it sounds so shocking, but it is true.
In 40 years when countries are going to be invaded for industrial pollution (that's if the concept o countries still exist) the "west" and people like you would be stating, " you can be developed industrially without polluting the environment".
The facts may be unpleasant, but they remain fact.
And let's not even get started with the bullshit in the Middle East.
The west has no grounds to state they respect human rights when history clearly shows they do not.
Do as I say, not as I do?
How is this an answer to preventing the worse of what currently is? The extrajudicial killings in the name of wiping out the drug problem can (and I presume that it also will) be abused to whatever means. If murder was present before, this president just made it a whole lot easier! "Killed? Oh, well! Probably just another bunch of drug dealers who didn't surrendered when they had the chance." Is this what you're supporting?
Or maybe they do understand but simply do not agree with either the methods or the goal.
> First of all, Duterte was elected overwhelmingly with a clear mandate of using brute violence to clear out drug dealers.
This goes well beyond drug dealers (and even then it is not the way).
> He was clear about it and he is delivering on that mandate.
Could not care less about whether or not he was clear about it. Wrong is still wrong.
> He was clear about it and he is delivering on that mandate. I have to accept, he has made a PR error by not calling them terrorists.
Hard to tell if you're sarcastic or not, going on the assumption that you're not.
> The fact is, you do not get radical progress pandering to western styled hypocritical democracy or "human rights".
No, you'll get progress by giving everybody a license to go out and kill anybody they don't like on a pretext. That's going to make life so much better.
> It's the reality. A harsh one. Of course, I will not be so "logical" if I happen to be at the receiving end of such needed reform. But hey.. it's what life is.
It need not be. And if you're already hedging your position then I guess you too understand that this is not a solution, only more trouble.
> I am speaking like a man living in a country where some not so nice things will be needed to be done if we are going to ever progress.
Mass murder of citizens is never 'progress'. Especially not if the context is a corrupt police force that makes other avenues less likely to work. Then you go and fix the police force, you don't hand out a 'license to kill' to the population at large.
But you're taking issue with us on our 'high horses' criticizing it and that should be respected.
People have voted for dumb things many times in the past, in my opinion this is one of those times. Might or majority do not automatically make right.
If you 'clean up' a city or a country by extra-judicial killings that makes the cure no better than the disease.
If the country has a corruption issue the solution is not to go and kill people without due process. This is attacking a symptom, leaving the root cause un-examined and so will not solve the problem in the longer term.
People declare others who win stupid while claiming to to be democrats. That is hypocrisy.
While I similarly think people are stupid, I am not a fan of popular democracy. I believe my position is consistent with my belief. I am criticizing the hypocrisy of being democrat only when you get what you want.
Just like the labour party folks in the UK.
That's not hypocrisy, it is simply the best adaptation to reality that I can come up with.
And it has nothing to do with 'getting what I want', if NL will vote massively for Wilders in the next election (our local light-weight populist get-rid-of-all-Islamists-and-our-problems-will-magically-disappear politician) then I will consider that a failure of democracy.
Not because I don't get 'what I want' but because it will likely cause great harm to my country.
By the next election cycle given the way social media and the 24x7 news cycle are evolving into just pointless reaction and counter-reaction, voting will be restricted to those who can pass an exam. Like getting your drivers license and being allowed on the road.
We will have a new definition of what an elected govt is. And the commentators here can get back to thinking about things that aren't way above their pay grade.
> "If it be admitted that a man possessing absolute power may misuse that power by wronging his adversaries, why should not a majority be liable to the same reproach? Men do not change their characters by uniting with one another; nor does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with their strength. For my own part, I cannot believe it; the power to do everything, which I should refuse to one of my equals, I will never grant to any number of them."
Democracy requires that while the majority rules, the minority also have rights. Majoritarianism (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majoritarianism ) is similar to democracy, and some of its proponents argue is more democratic.
I disagree with that viewpoint. I do not respect a vote for autocracy, though of course this is abstract as my respect means nothing to those who voted that way, and I can do nothing to change things.
A democratic process must allow the minority at some point to be a majority. If you kill off the minorities, which yes, includes those accused of drug dealing, then there is no democracy. (And no, the frequent US policy of stripping the franchise from felons is not democratic.)
See also http://democracyweb.org/node/36 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority .
Note: I'm not American and don't live in the US.
African Americans have been killed by police, imprisoned as almost a racial policy (often resulting from petty drug offenses). So let's say there are an equal number of people killed on each side. 30 African American's in the past week (not true, but let's just make it simple) and 30 Philippine Drug Dealers.
Two wrongs. Why is America better? It is attempting to face the tragedy and stop the killing.
In the Phillipines, what is preventing somebody from killing their neighbor, and saying "he was a drug addict" with no evidence?
What 'radical progress' are you expecting from the killing of drug addicts? Unless, you consider a pile of dead bodies 'progress'. If the Phillipines were 'drug free', would that be 'radical progress'? If so, how? How would it change the rest of the country? The lives of the people?
Is America attempting to stop the killing? I must have missed a chapter. Last time I've checked Obama was mourning the police officers who were killed and no national mourning was declared for the 500-600 corpses left by the police. And last time I've checked there is also still no trial for which Arabs get to die in Middle East under drone strikes. And 95% inmates in USA have used a plea bargain, which means no trial has occurd to prove whether they were guilty or not. Did I mention the Civil Asset Forfeiture program? Did I mention that even if we right the 3 examples above, the financial imbalance means that the poorer people are not properly representated in legal situations, in votes, and in the economy?
I'm flummoxed the we, in the age of the full information, still take USA as a mere candidate when we talk about human rights. We can't compare USA to anything, their track record is too low.
1. 1 in 3 black people killed by police in 2015 were identified as unarmed [1].
2. In the current example, the black victim didn't resist arrest.
3. Those 500-600 weren't criminals, because you can only say they're "criminal" after a fair trial (oh, sorry, that's something to do with "human rights", if only you could understand what that means).
4. "Not mourning criminals" or not treating them as humans is the primary reason why USA is not compliant with human rights. The reason why it is important to treat assumed criminals as humans is in my point #5.
5. The reason why people resist arrests is because they have absolutely no trust that the judiciary system will judge them fairly. Today, an innocent would rather die than enter the judiciary system [2].
[1] http://mappingpoliceviolence.org/unarmed/
[2] Innocents are cornered into plea bargain, which is 90% of the criminal cases in USA - It means for 90% criminal cases, there was no formal proof that the accused was guilty. I know, they're black, male, muscular and poor, right!? But that doesn't mean they're guilty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plea_bargain
So, once again, you "don't mourn criminals, thugs and people who reach for guns when confronted by police", except you ought to mourn the innocent, the weak and the people who are mugged by police, and you should do that because the police also does it to white people, and you have even fewer organizations to defend against that.
Of course they weren't all criminals. Many of them were, though, you know, from prior arrests/crimes. Like this recent "victim" (or angel as some would have us believe): sex offender, arrest history, felon, gun in pocket, struggling against police trying to keep him on the ground, reaching for gun. But no, he's portrayed as some beloved member of the community and family man. Five kids, but basically homeless. Right.
If people stopped resisting and had some respect for officers, there would be far fewer fatal shootings. If a police officer tells me to do something, I do it. That's how it works. Black people, from certain black subcultures, start in with, "Nah man why you fuckin' wit me." I really don't understand why you want to protect the dregs of society and black society who don't know how to act, rather than help improve black communities, help them educate and advance and rid themselves of their most violent and counterproductive subcultures that reward unlawful and disrespectful behavior and keep them ignorant. As a black person, you're far far far more likely to be killed by another black person than a cop. Fine, disarm the cops and move to the hood. See how wonderful it is.
No, not really. I'm black so I know they're are 2 justice systems in the US.
You have expectations of police as a black man, why wouldn't they have expectations of every person they stop, based on color, shoes, accent, everything. That's part of their job. You're basically saying you're justified in having a preconceived notion of how police will treat you based on your color and theirs, yet they shouldn't? When it could save their lives? Maybe some black people (i.e. the black people who don't live in the neighborhoods where these shootings go down, but spend all their time writing posts about it on Medium), should try a different approach when they've done nothing wrong and are talking to an officer: be kind and respectful and helpful. Don't be defensive and argumentative and offended. Black people who have their shit together and got out of bad neighborhoods are not getting regularly killed by police. Come on.
I know a couple of very kind, respectful and helpful people who have been stop-and-frisked for being black and in public. They stopped visiting a mutual friend because it happened regularly traveling in his neighborhood.
They are treated differently for no fault of their own, despite being kind, respectful and helpful. There is a reason people are angry about the difference in treatment.
To give an example: When I traveled to visit a friend, I chose to stay at cheap hotel in a not so well to do area of town. I can carry my own and never felt unsafe. Apparently, the cops stake out that hotel regularly for drug deals and prostitution. I was stopped for an hour and interrogated because "Why would a white boy from out of state be staying at a place like this? Tell me about your history with prostitution. Are you _sure_ there are no drugs in your vehicle?" I was let go after my story checked out.
I felt targeted and no longer safe, because the cops had already painted a mental image of me as someone who dealt/used drugs or was involved with prostitutes and were looking for evidence to back up their presumption. I didn't feel safe leaving at night, because what if I was stopped and arrested for something I didn't do? "Why would a white boy be out at these hours in this neighborhood if he wasn't up to no good?" Those false charges would stick with me forever and I could lose my job.
I can only begin to imagine what it must feel like to be the target of actual racism with the implied assumption of being guilty until proven innocent.
> You do a great disservice to all the (and there are so many) black people out there who got educated, got good jobs, built families, and realized that most people honestly don't care what color they are, when you say that you're treated so poorly everywhere in the country. I'm sorry but it's nonsense. We have a black president for god's sake.
> Black people who have their shit together and got out of bad neighborhoods are not getting regularly killed by police. Come on.
You'll still encounter racism as a black person in America, even in the race blind techno-optimist meritocracy that is the technology sector. [0]
[0] "What interviewing for jobs feels like when you’re a black software engineer in Silicon Valley" http://qz.com/696562/what-interviewing-for-jobs-feels-like-w...
Actually, I think you understand perfectly. You gave a great example of how the way you looked and where you were and when you were there raised suspicions in people who have to be suspicious as part of their job. Why wouldn't it?! The cops were at that hotel, for a reason, and you looked out of place there. To me, it's totally reasonable. And why would you feel unsafe after that? They are trying to find the bad guys and get them off the street. You were in a bad area at a bad hotel. If someone would have tried something, they'd have been there to help you.
I was reading a Medium article by a black tech guy who was complaining about "every day I get on the metro and I'm the last one anyone wants to sit by, I'm always worried about what I'm wearing, I feel uncomfortable" -- yeah, welcome to my world, I'm white and neurotic and often I'm the last one anyone sits by too. I wonder why, is it the beard? Do I look grumpy? I'm always thinking people are looking at me, judging me. That I look weird in my clothes or something. This is totally normal. Everyone experiences these kinds of things and thoughts. I've been stopped by police too. The difference is that many black people are raised believing the police are their enemy and want to hurt them and that white people are racist. It's like Christians reading in the bible that people will mock them for their beliefs and when they're mocked they see that as proof that Christianity is true. It's confirmation bias. The way it seems to me, a police officer can't even speak to a black person these days without people assuming he's racist. So black people can assume about police, but police can't assume about black people. When I think about all the times I've been pulled over, stopped, talked to, I just think, wow, if I was black I could totally just say it was racism. I wasn't driving poorly -- he's racist!
Of course you'll encounter racism in America, no matter what color you are. Hard to believe, a lot of people hate whites! To imagine that all the police get together like mustache-twirling villains to plot ways to ruin the afternoons of normal black people walking somewhere is just preposterous. And if black people do get stopped more, then you have to wonder if it's because the cops are just totally racist or because of their experiences in the line of duty. But let's not wonder that. It's probably racism. Otherwise it would require black people and black communities having to change -- and that would be horrible and racist to even suggest.
I've already seen three or four black men killed by other black men just this morning on the Boston news, and that's just since yesterday. Nobody is out in the streets over that.
Pray tell, what context justifies arbitrary lynchings, summary executions, extrajudicial capital punishment, and an overall disrespect for human life?
Perhaps it's the view from the high horse I'm sitting on, but when I look throughout europe I don't see nations with major drug problems, and they haven't fixed any problems they had with assassinations.
Could you please provide any insight on what makes this sort of rampant uncivilized behaviour necessary or even remotely justified?
Probably the same one that justifies invading countries on flimsy excuses, setting up your own local dictator, and then continuingto bomb the shit out of people when things do not go as you promised your subjects. Shall we roll the clock back a bit and talk about the wonderful "arbitrary lynchings, summary executions, extrajudicial capital punishment, and an overall disrespect for human life" that were the hallmarks of European colonialism?
Perhaps it's the view from the high horse I'm sitting on, but when I look throughout europe I don't see nations with major drug problems, and they haven't fixed any problems they had with assassinations.
Your high horse stands upon a hill of corpses. When I look throughout Europe I see nations that have spent millenia creating problems for other people outside Europe, then washing thier hands of the problem when no one is looking, moralizing to each other about those poor stupid brown people, and then repeating the process.
Physician, heal thyself or STFU.
This isn't even mentioning the regular and continuous reforms that happen as the institutions of mature democracies manage change.
> He (the new president) placed trust and confidence in friends and acquaintances who are outsiders of the traditional power and social blocs.
That's one of the structural reasons right there.
And journalists too! Kill everyone you don't like!
> “Just because you’re a journalist you are not exempted from assassination, if you’re a son of a bitch,” Duterte said when asked how he would address the problem of media killings in the Philippines, after a reporter was shot dead in Manila last week.
> “Most of those killed, to be frank, have done something. You won’t be killed if you don’t do anything wrong,” Duterte said, adding that many journalists in the Philippines were corrupt.
> “That can’t be just freedom of speech. The constitution can no longer help you if you disrespect a person,”
> Duterte raised the case of Jun Pala, a journalist and politician who was murdered in Davao in 2003. Gunmen on a motorcycle shot dead Pala, who was a vocal critic of Duterte. His murder has never been solved. “If you are an upright journalist, nothing will happen to you,” said Duterte
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/31/philippine-pre...
> “If you are an upright journalist, nothing will happen to you,” said Duterte
Good. So we can rest assured that only those journalists that were not 'upright' will not remain upright.
This policy is akin to starting fire in a house to get rid of rats.
Democracy does not trump human rights and rule of law.
Human rights, and more specifically due process, are not 'Western', they've just been formulated there. Do you believe gravity is 'white' or 'jewish' because it was formulated by Einstein?
And societies that 'get' due process objectively do better: tell me, who does better in social development and public safety, Nigeria or Mauritius? Nigeria or Cape Verde? Conversely, when were Latin American countries worse off, during their "military Dutertre" era, or now? Your position has never worked historically.
You can't _claim_ guilt, you need proof, and to get proof you need due process.
You don't need it when you are at war. Killing people is normal during a wa even without evidence.
Not even that. I'm not sure to what do we refer exactly by (western) "human rights". Is it the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? That was not "western", as the United Nations General Assembly, which adopted it, had equal representation of all member nations, including Philippines. Is it something else, something older, like the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, passed somewhere in the French Revolution? Well, we can find less "western" versions before that all over the world and history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_human_rights
Are you saying that human rights are real in some sense? That they're something more than arbitrary legal constructs/a civic religion devised by Westerners in the last few centuries?
Japan, Singapore, Korea.. The pattern is the same, and it isn't brutal law and order policies that made the difference.
There is no easy path towards progress, and certainly not by killing whomever we think is the cause of the problem.
Also let's be honest, there never was a society that went down the drain due to drugs. Not even close. They are just scapegoats. Society that went down the drain due to violence and mob-approved regimes? Loads.
Democracy ensures a people gets the ruler most of them deserve.
[1] http://amzn.to/2a8EOCC
It might be appropriate to refer this lovely gentleman to the International Criminal Court.
"Genocide is the intentional action to systematically eliminate an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group"
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide
It was meant to be over the top. I can't believe I just read that it is quite literally happening.
I don't have any way to verify this, but he seemed pretty happy about it and hoped they would do it in other countries too.
edit: Wait... did I just read correctly? He gave the public permission to kill drug addicts? That's the WTF of the year.
So, an armed faction took out another factions or group of factions out of the picture in the most simple and grotesque way, by kidnapping (instead of public apprehension) and summary execution (instead of prosecution with a trial that gives the culprits the chance to defend themselves). This armed faction has been called "the military"? And the murderous cleansing - "peace"? And after all this someone actually seriously considers them and their deeds as an example worth following? I find this kind of thinking comparable to any of the doctrines promoting mass murdering in the name of solving something and the individuals advocating such methods to be a danger to the general public!