He was referring to an incident that took place in 1989 in the jail in the city — Davao City — where he was mayor. A 36-year-old Australian woman was taken hostage, raped, had her throat slashed, and died in the gunfire as troops ended the incident. This is the translated text of what Duterte said about it recently:
All the women were raped so during the first assault, because they retreated, the bodies they used as a cover, one of them was the corpse of the Australian woman layminister. Tsk, this is a problem. When the bodies were brought out, they were wrapped. I looked at her face, son of a bitch, she looks like a beautiful American actress. Son of a bitch, what a waste. What came to mind was, they raped her, they lined up. I was angry because she was raped, that’s one thing. But she was so beautiful, the mayor should have been first. What a waste.The linked Washington Post article quotes 2 critics of Duterte, who drag in the name Donald Trump. Julio C. Teehankee of De La Salle University and Mark R. Thompson, of the City University of Hong Kong wrote this before the rape remark came out:
Duterte poses a grave challenge to the country’s fragile democratic institutions. He has promised to ‘clean up the country’ within six months and has threatened to abolish Congress or tame the courts if they try to stand in his way. The rapid rise of voter support for Duterte, despite his late entry into the race, highlights the pent-up anger among the lower-middle class at the deterioration of public order and concerns about growing drug abuse.
Duterte’s neo-authoritarian style, alongside ‘anti-Imperial Manila’ sentiments, has fueled his popularity, particularly in his birthplace of southern Mindanao. Duterte does not deny his poor human rights record — instead he brags about extrajudicial killings that he claims were necessary to pacify Davao.... Along with his bombastic style and rough language — which is typical of a many local politicians but unusual in national politics — this cavalier attitude makes him a kind of Philippine version of Donald Trump.
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38 comments:
Lazy thinking by scholars
Ridiculous. Trump is a clown, a showman. This man seems to be a vicious thug. You don't get to compare them just because (a) they both don't care what they say, and (b) you don't like either one. The thing that makes the thug evil is not that he doesn't care what he says.
This is a person I don't like.
This is another person I don't like.
They have that in common.
When he says “the mayor should have been first,” I hope that it’s poorly translated and what he meant is “he should have gotten there first (to stop this)” and not “he should have had the chance to go first.”
Trump is what comes second. The tea party came first and was one of the most peaceful and congenial protest movements in history. They were trashed and called wacko birds.
The little people out here are tired of open borders, giant corporations that use complicated tax codes to avoid taxes that keep going up on us, giant corporations that force their current employees to train their h1b's before getting fired, first ladies and daughters partying in $20000 dresses, and gated community dwelling political class types telling us there is no crime wave resulting from illegal immigration and that we are racist for bringing it up.
They can rig Trump out if they want. But they better be ready for what comes next. If the GOP nominates an open borders oligarch pet or nominates Cruz and sabotages him and hillary is elected use your imagination. At the very minimum there will be a complete breakdown in the rule of law as we are tired of being the only rubes that actually follow the law.
"But they better be ready for what comes next."
Yup.
I keep suggesting people read Richard Fernandez columns.
Brazil's boom years attracted corruption on a massive scale. Soon the leeches were sucking more blood out of the host than its body could replace. Once the economy collapsed and the middle class had been beggared an angry public went looking for a scapegoat and found one in current president Dilma Roussef.
The same catastrophe maybe happening on a global scale. The music has stopped and the petrostates who have long bankrolled Western politicians have run out of money. "The petrostates assembling in Doha to discuss a potential output freeze two days from now aren’t coming together in a show of solidarity or out of some sense of duty towards one another, but rather as an act of desperation. Bloomberg ran the numbers, and found that the oil price collapse has collectively cost the 18 countries involved in this meeting nearly one third of a trillion dollars."
It's coming here next and soon.
Fracking is all that can save us and all the left is hostile to it. Just think what it could do for upstate New York.
And you wonder where Trump came from.
“You American intellectuals – you want so desperately to feel besieged and persecuted!” – Günter Grass
The name "Donald Trump" has officially become the watchword for saying something outrageous.
Click bait, no? They'll work Donald Trump in there nay way they can to get more hits.
Thorley Winston said...
When he says “the mayor should have been first,” I hope that it’s poorly translated and what he meant is “he should have gotten there first (to stop this)” and not “he should have had the chance to go first.”
You're right that it's open to despicable interpretation, but I think your first interpretation is correct. Though it's still pretty bad--the crime is worse, the loss greater, because the victim is attractive.
Duterte comes out of the wild frontier of Mindanao, where there is a long tradition of violence among the recent Bisayan immigrants (like Duterte). And of course their part in the constant wars with the Muslims, where they have been on the front lines the longest. They are a tough lot. The Philippine military is majority Bisayan. Paquiao is one of them too. They don't watch their speech or their thoughts, nor have they much patience for process.
In Philippine terms the real issue with Duterte is that he is a powerful challenge to the political/ bureaucratic centralization, where Manila decrees everything. The provinces have long chafed at this, but the conflict is now coming into the open, finally, in this campaign. Hence the complaints about Duterte. He is certainly not the first provincial chieftain with a bloody record, but he is the first to be frank about it. That too is refreshing in its own way.
Ref - a superb essay on the politics of Cavite (province adjacent to Manila), with all the political violence anyone could want - "An Anarchy of Families" -McCoy
And for that matter, Davao (Dutertes home) is probably the safest and most orderly place in the country. This is a very important matter there, given recent experience with the opposite. The fellow is sort of a tropical Giuliani, but his achievement is an order of magnitude greater. Granted, he achieved it with death squads.
We might expect some rough-and-tumble humor from the people who necessitated the Colt .45 Model 1911.
"Donald Trump" means boldly telling the truth in public, when the rest of the leaders are cringing in terror under a Power of of Political Correctness taught to them as students as if that crap educated them in anything except submission.
If you want an American analogy for what's really at stake there - Manila has been treating the provinces much like NYC has been treating upstate NY. For centuries.
buwaya - thanks for the background info.
buwaya puti said...
"If you want an American analogy for what's really at stake there - Manila has been treating the provinces much like NYC has been treating upstate NY. For centuries."
Or what Seattle does to Eastern Washington.
Or Portland to Eastern Oregon.
Or DC does to the rest of the US.
Or coastal cities in Brazil do to inland Brazil.
I could go on and on. Beijing. Moscow. Mexico City...
Corruptocrats are the rule not the exception. The Internet has changed things though. It is allowing the rabble to organize.
They call the results of their actions strongmen. They are just trying to protect their monopoly on force.
buwaya, isn't Richard Fernandez from the Philippines ? My impression is that he is and gets a lot of insight into the world from that background.
In other world news, feminist heroines seem to have clay feet.
OMG ! Can it be that they are fakes ?
Since launching Theranos in 2003, Ms. Holmes has set out to revolutionize the blood-testing industry. Before the company made changes to its website earlier this year, the website cited “breakthrough advancements” that made it possible to run “the full range” of lab tests on a few drops of blood pricked from a finger.
In October, The Wall Street Journal reported that Theranos did the vast majority of more than 200 tests it offered to consumers on traditional lab machines purchased from other companies.
Oh Oh. Reality bites.
Yes, he is.
Fernandez is of Filipino extraction and holds Australian citizenship.
Harvard Masters Degree.
Yes, he is a Filipino mestizo like me.
He's my homeboy. He went to Harvard though!
"Julio C. Teehankee of De La Salle University"
I went to La Salle, and I knew some of Teehankee's cousins. Very accomplished family.
My first "proper" job out of college was with what was a part of the old Arthur Andersen firm, consulting for the Asian Development Bank trying to get foreign investment projects approved by the Manila bureaucracy. I have reasons for hating whom I hate!
They needed an engineer that could write English reasonably well. I was better at it back then! Too much brain damage since.
Anyway, the usual drill was that some foreigners wanted to build - an assembly plant, a container port, a fruit processing plant, what have you, usually in some provincial place - Davao, Cagayan, Iloilo, Albay, etc. Manila would say no. The local chieftains would come to the presentation, hear the foreigners offering what was (in provincial terms) vast sums to invest, and Manila said no. The provincials would say "sonofbitches!" - in English, their native tongue being something other than Tagalog, and go home.
@buwaya,
It was my impression that it was the Manila elites that wanted the American bases closed & the American military out of the Philippines. The common people were okay with the Americans being there as a source of employment that usually treated them better than either the local elites or visiting Japanese businessmen. The presence of the Americans offended the elites' sense of sovereignty, not to mention the fact that the Americans raised the price of housekeepers & hookers.
Am I wrong about this? Or, is the description above fairly accurate?
You aren't wrong.
Back in 1991, even pre volcano, IIRC the national polls were heavily in favor of the bases.
Manila certainly isn't the country.
The elites problem with the bases, is, in large part, the fact that two generations had been educated by university leftists, which were bitterly anti-American and intensely nationalist (hence laws against foreign investment). There was a huge class split on matters like attitude to Americans.
It didn't help that the US bases tended to spend their money locally, with the local people, and the power elite had little of that action.
"just like Trump" - Oh dear.
"At the very minimum there will be a complete breakdown in the rule of law as we are tired of being the only rubes that actually follow the law."
Maybe not complete, but certainly widespread among the formerly law-abiding. I've been amazed at the blatant and widespread disregard I see for the laws inposed by the passage of I-594 in Washington State.
The first thing "neo-authoritarians" ought to do if elected is shut down the legacy news media. Their negatives far outweigh their positives by now as illustrated by the absurd comparison here quoted in a way the partisans at WaPo may suppose absolves them of responsibility for defaming Trump.
This would necessitate watering down First Amendment freedom of the press as freedom of religion has been watered down with the approval of the mediaswine.
The media could reopen under new management subject to regulation providing that they not publish "discriminatory" material likely to cause specified victim groups to get all butthurt.
I feel his pain.
I knew next to nothing about the Philippines until I was 23 years old, got my current job, and met a lot of retired Filipinos.
It was really crazy all the things I didn't know. It seemed to me, of all the guys I met, they loved America and were still thankful for McArthur so many years later. In my ignorance I had to have them tell me why. Here were guys who chewed on leaves standing in a cold river at 13 to be circumsized. They grew up in huts with dirt floors but got good enough educations to join the US Navy to make something better of themselves.
And I ask myself, why can't these be the types of immigrants we encourage to the United States? What's happened to that? Why do we now only seem to encourage economic seeking migrants instead of those who want to fight and die for our country just for a chance to be a citizen?
We seriously went wrong somewhere and I've no idea how we can get back on track.
One of the ugly things about the planet Earth, is that it is run by warlords.
Most people who avoid military service, think that the President is a powerful man. He's a warlord, but the poor bastard has no suicide bombers.
So, that's the secret to success, we need more suicide bombers, not nuclear weapons.
Deja vu. First, they came for Trump. Seriously, they're trying too hard to shift the legacy of anti-native policies onto their preferred scapegoat. They should have waited for the optics and population to change.
"And I ask myself, why can't these be the types of immigrants we encourage to the United States?"
Well, that's a good question. Whatever immigrants you get, you will end up displacing natives in a stagnant economy. On the other hand, if you are looking for immigrants, Filipinos are a good choice, up to a point. Relatively speaking they are highly productive (#2 in Median household income among immigrant groups, second only to Indians, who are, unlike Filipinos, selected for by education and professional skills, and more than the Chinese, let alone native whites), fairly intelligent (current population SATs are at "US white" levels, though not up to the Chinese), low-maintenance (zero cultural chips-on-the-shoulder), trouble-free (extremely low US crime rate), rapid integrators (more so than Indians and Chinese) - they seem to intermarry faster than anyone.
They do lack Chinese initiative and risk taking, and there has always been a problem with leadership. They make good employees, not so good entrepreneurs or executives.
If the US military ever needed a corps of decent light infantry, it need only send a man to Manila. He would have 50,000 trained (more or less) men in a week.
I saw some arguments about why Germany had to accept the refugees its been letting in lately, and one prominent one was that they needed a top-up to their population. I thought, if they feel that they are short of Germans, they were going about it in the worst possible way. Again, if they wanted trouble-free immigrants, they need only send a man to Manila and they would have as many rapid-integrating, productive, trouble free (non-raping, Duterte notwithstanding) people as they needed.
He wishes he was 'first'? WTH?
I don't care about that macho (as they call it.)
See I'm to the right of John Wayne and the Duke would NEVER even think that kind of thought.
When he says “the mayor should have been first,” I hope that it’s poorly translated and what he meant is “he should have gotten there first (to stop this)” and not “he should have had the chance to go first.”
unfortunately for du30, the latter is the accurate translation. the former is spin.
In Philippine terms the real issue with Duterte is that he is a powerful challenge to the political/ bureaucratic centralization, where Manila decrees everything. The provinces have long chafed at this, but the conflict is now coming into the open, finally, in this campaign. Hence the complaints about Duterte. He is certainly not the first provincial chieftain with a bloody record, but he is the first to be frank about it. That too is refreshing in its own way.
duterte is a confirmed sociopath
http://www.tribune.net.ph/commentary/apology-never-enough
And for that matter, Davao (Dutertes home) is probably the safest and most orderly place in the country. This is a very important matter there, given recent experience with the opposite. The fellow is sort of a tropical Giuliani, but his achievement is an order of magnitude greater. Granted, he achieved it with death squads.
No. Davao is #1 in Murder and #2 in Rape according to recent statistics. And he's buddies with the NPA terrorists (probably the death squads you speak of)
If you want an American analogy for what's really at stake there - Manila has been treating the provinces much like NYC has been treating upstate NY. For centuries.
there's not a lot of peace and order in mindanao because of Muslim terrorism/separatist movement.
Duterte is Rudi Guilliani on steroids. He cleaned up Davao from a crime and drug ridden city into a safe city.
I live in rural Luzon.
So Duterte hits thugs, drug runners, and others who threaten the fragile growing middle class. Extrajudicial killing, shout the "human rights" folks. But exactly whose rights are beeing violaed? At least he is hitting the bad guys, not shooting rival politicians who stand in the way of those elected divering government money into their own pockets, as our local politicians are prone to do.
Maybe this is why we see Duterte signs all over, including bumper stickers on cars and tricycles, and in front of shops. Poe is my choice, but ironically her posters are nowhere to be found, although her VP Trillianes, has his photo all over the place.
the LATimes article where this distorted article came from might have their finger on the pulse of the hipsters in Manila, but not in the rest of the country.
Trump is what comes second. The tea party came first and was one of the most peaceful and congenial protest movements in history. They were trashed and called wacko birds.
True. And while I vehemently disagree with Trumpsters, I do get where they came from. The Republicans had a very polite, if vocal, protest group. And they ignored them.
BUT...what Trump is going to learn is that a LOT of them actually did get involved in state politics and have made inroads in the party establishment at the state level. And those people like Cruz a lot.
...which is why he is doing very well with delegates and will likely end up winning if Trump fails to hit 1237.
Fracking is all that can save us and all the left is hostile to it. Just think what it could do for upstate New York.
It does irk me that they demand the product but hate how it is produced. And their war on coal indicates that their once-professed love of the poor is over. Why would they seek to make energy more expensive for people who can least afford it?
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