The oh-so-noble journalists are at it again, this time, with Duterte’s Hitler comment. I am no Duterte fanatic. I criticize him more scathingly than anyone when his mouth is out of line. But this time, Duterte really didn’t say anything wrong. The real culprits behind the fuss over his Hitler comment are Karen Lema and Manuel Mogato, two Filipino reporters of the Reuters news agency, who wrote this article: “ Philippines’ Duterte likens himself to Hitler, wants to kill millions of drug addicts ”. Lema and Mogato are Filipinos. There’s no way they could have misunderstood what Duterte really meant in his speech. I watched the video and this is what the President said: “Hitler massacred 3 million Jews. There are 3 million drug addicts. I’d be happy to slaughter them. At least, if Germany had Hitler, the Philippines would have ….. my victims, all criminals, to finish a problem of my country, and save the next generation.” (See for yourself here . The Hitler part is at 14:40....
I finally feel that I need to speak up. There has been much in the press lately about newly elected Philippine President Duterte. Most of what is said focuses on his policies toward the illegal drug problem, and his direct (to put it mildly) comments to other national leaders, particularly to US leaders. The world's press responds with concern, even alarm. In the Philippines, he is immensely popular. As an American who has lived here in the Philippines for 30+ years, I think I understand why. Allow me to explain. First of all, the facts. 1) Americans almost never take culture and other cultures' viewpoints and values into consideration. Almost never. That explains nonsense foreign policy and constant misunderstanding. 2) Americans are one thing; the American government is something different. Generally speaking, Americans are liked here. Generally speaking, the American government is grossly arrogant and condescending, and is often despised because of it. 3) Other natio...
Leni Robredo is like a cancerous tumor who needs to be removed as soon as possible. As long as she’s occupying the VP post, our country won’t be able to move forward. The drug lords, the gambling lords, illegal miners, police scalawags etc. will keep defying President Duterte for as long as Leni is there, waiting in the wings. They’ll keep destabilizing the country and trying to oust President Duterte, because they know they have a dummy ready to take over. But if Leni is out, they won’t have any incentive anymore to keep destabilizing the country. There won’t be any point, because they won’t be able to control the successor. They’ll be forced to behave. There’s no doubt that Leni was acting in bad faith when she did that UN video. Anyone in President Duterte’s team who says otherwise, or tries to make excuses for her by saying she’s just being “used” or “misled”, needs to have his brain and his loyalty checked. Just watch this interview of Leni’s spokesperson, Georgina He...
Leni Robredo admitted to Mike Enriquez during a radio interview on May 9 that she owned stocks at Meralco. She also admitted that such had a value of 95k pesos in 1995. Robredo did not declare the value of these stocks, and while she declared owning stocks, the value of such is not listed in her SALN as an asset. Now after doing some crowd-sourcing and math, here is what I found out. I could not get the share prices of Meralco stocks in 1995. What I got thanks to Carlos A Jr Cortes is the value in 2000 which is 4 pesos per share. Using this, and this is even conservative since the price in 1995 must have been lower than 4 pesos, then Robredo owned at least 23,750 shares of stocks (95k divided by 4). The current share price of Meralco is 272 pesos per share. If we use this value, then Robredo has at least 6.46 milion pesos (at least 23,750 shares multiplied by 272 pesos per share) of assets which she failed to declare in her SALN. Using the Corona precedent, this is an i...
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