Will America Intervene in the Philippines?

Or…What America will look like if Trump wins.

The Philippines elected a Trump lookalike. So far, all it has gotten them is mass murder in the streets.

President Duterte perhaps emboldened by no foreign power (the US) putting their foot down on the murders of thousands of people accused of drug using or trafficking, seems to believe in his own “tough guy” talk. It is a sad thing to say, but the big powers really don’t give a damn what you do to your own people in your own country. Mass incarceration and murder are just fine. The problem with most of the tinpot dictators, is they get to smelling their own odor, and believing its like Honeysuckle. And wandering into international politics and the carefully choreographed balance of power between the big boys. That almost always results in said dictator eating a bullet, or hanging by a rope by either a “internal” coup, or a few thousand Marines. The one notable exception being Castro…But his survival wasn’t due to lack of trying by the US over several decades to kill him.

So the question is, as things continue to spiral out of control…Is the next US President going to involve us in an “Intervention”…Which is nothing more than politics-speak for war.

Hope Duterte doesn’t think his new “friends” in China are going to save him from a 9mm to the head.

And no…It isn’t about the drugs. If he stuck solely to that…He could conceivably wind up a National Hero.

Philippine mayor, on president’s drug list, killed in jail cell

Philippine President Duterte

Philippine police killed a town mayor in his jail cell in a purported gun battle, the second killing in a week of a politician linked to illegal drugs under President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal crackdown.

Rolando Espinosa Sr., the mayor of the town of Albuera in the central province of Leyte, and a fellow inmate were shot dead before dawn Saturday after they fired at officers who staged a raid in search of firearms and illegal drugs in the provincial jail in Leyte’s Baybay city, police said.

Some officials and an anti-crime watchdog have called for an investigation of the circumstances of the killings, wondering how the mayor and the other inmate got hold of guns and what prompted them to clash with several policemen while in detention.

“Offhand, I can smell extrajudicial killing,” said Sen. Panfilo Lacson, a former national police chief, adding that the suspicious deaths were the “biggest challenge” to the credibility of the national police force, which is undertaking the anti-drug crackdown.

Last week, police killed another town mayor, Samsudin Dimaukom, and nine of his men allegedly in a gunbattle in the southern Philippines.

Espinosa and Dimaukom were among more than 160 officials named publicly by Duterte in August as part of a shame campaign. Espinosa’s son, an alleged drug lord, was arrested in the United Arab Emirates’ capital city of Abu Dhabi last month.

After being linked by Duterte to illegal drugs, Espinosa surrendered to the national police chief in August in a nationally televised event. He was later released, but was arrested last month after being indicted on drug and illegal possession of firearm charges.

One of over 3,600 Murders ordered by Duterte

Police estimate that more than 3,600 suspected drug dealers and users have been killed since Duterte took office on June 30. Many of those killed in the initial months of the crackdown were poor drug suspects, and police said “high-value targets,” including mayors and drug lords, would be their next target in a new phase of the crackdown that was launched late last month.

The unprecedented crackdown and killings have helped ease crime, but the U.S. and other Western governments, along with human rights watchdogs, have been alarmed and called for an end to the killings. One human rights advocate has called the killings under Duterte a “human rights calamity.”

Duterte has lashed out at President Barack Obama and other critics, saying he was dealing with a pandemic that has afflicted politics, corrupted even generals and threatened to turn the country into what he describes as a “narco state” similar to some Latin American countries.

 

Negative Press Spurs DC To Give 107 Year Old Woman Photo ID

Get enough people demanding answers and once in a while the politicians will respond…

ID problem resolved for 107-year-old woman who danced with Obamas

“Thank the lord!” 107-year-old Virginia McLaurin exclaimed Tuesday morning as Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser handed her a copy of a new government-issued photo ID.

Just days earlier, McLaurin revealed in an interview with The Washington Postthat after meeting and dancing with President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama in February, she had been invited to New York and Los Angeles for media interviews.

There was only one problem: McLaurin didn’t have the ID she’d need to travel by plane or train, and she didn’t have the appropriate documents to get one.

The Department of Motor Vehicles in D.C. said she would need documentation that proves her identity, such as a U.S. birth certificate, an unexpired passport or an unexpired military ID card, among other things. Now at the age of 107, McLaurin didn’t have any of the required documentation to get a D.C. photo ID. She once had one, but it was stolen awhile back, she told the Post. In order to obtain her birth certificate from South Carolina where where she was born, she discovered she would also need a government-issued photo ID.

Bowser heard about McLaurin’s ordeal and as a result, Washington, D.C. passed a new regulation on Monday that allows the city to make exceptions for elderly residents applying for a driver’s license or photo ID. Under the new regulation, D.C. officials will now have the discretion to make exceptions for federal requirements for any D.C. resident over the age of 70, whereby they can come up with other acceptable documents.

“Thank you. Thank the lord!” McLaurin said after they handed her the temporary version of the ID. She will receive the official version in the mail.

Asked how she was feeling, she said, “Great! I feel great!…I don’t feel like 107. I feel like I’m about 16.”

 

 

On the Next American War… Syria

It’s fairly obvious the American people aren’t buying in to the justifications for bombing Syria. There are a lot of reasons, not the least because the previous President and his Staff lied America into it’s last, and longest lasting War in Iraq… And quite possibly in Afghanistan. All to accomplish exactly nothing.

The list of American national interests in Syria is very very short…

In fact you’d have to search hard to find just one.

The just isn’t any evidence on the table that should the Syrian rebels overthrow the existing government, they will be any better than the current monsters. Indeed,, the only way terrorism and extremism has successfully been destroyed in the past is to implement an even greater level of barbarity. Think Romans and Spartacus, where the roman crucified each and every “rebel” after defeating them alongside  the road to Rome. Opening the doors of the hidden armories, unleashing the gates of WMD hell – completely depopulating the region may well be the ultimate solution – but a cancerous “victory” won at the cost of our collective morality and national souls.

Ergo – We aren’t going to go there. And as such will be fighting pinpricks for the next 20-30 years as the region burns.

Giving the “bad guys” bombs to kill the even “badder guys” isn’t a strategy based in a formula for success. We tried that with Saddam. We tried that in numerous other places around the world. Didn’t work then…Won’t work now.

Sometimes, you just have to let the fire burn out by itself.

 

Staying Out of Iran

Lot of criticism this past week from the  neo-con-nitwit set directed against President Obama for failing to “do something” about the internal crisis in Iran. Of course we know the neo-con-nitwit response would be to fly onto a US carrier in the Persian Gulf to prance across the deck declaring our unyielding commitment to “Mission Accomplished” and sock stuffed flight suits…

Why is this a stupid idea – Conservative George Will explains for his less intellectually endowed brethren-

Why is any US involvement a bad idea? The Iranians have a long memory of foreign intervention in their country, including the US support of the Shah.  Let’s not forget the millions killed in the US sponsored and supported Iraq-Iran War.