On Duterte

[CavLancer]

That was part of what convinced me.

 

[FriendlyFire]

That was part of what convinced me.

Meth Fentanyl is a hell of a drug
At least it dose explain a lot about the Presidents behaviour and shooting hes mouth off.
At around 80 - 500 Times stronger then morphine if the president is addicted then losing ability is make rational decisions is very high side effect, like meth it produces Euphoria then depression
Maybe he needs to be checked out by a neutral professional doctor.

A Philippine lawmaker says President Rodrigo Duterte should be at the top of his deadly drug war hit list, claiming the big-talking leader is suffering from “drug-induced imaginations” while abusing a highly addictive painkiller.
The 71-year-old revealed last week he had been taking Fentanyl — the same drug that killed pop legend Prince — to ease his migraines and spinal pain stemming from a motorcycle accident injury.

The controversial president told his doctor he often doubled the dosage, Duterte said.
"He made me stop and he said, 'Stop it. The first thing that you would lose is your cognitive ability,'" he said at a business forum. "'And if you are noticing it', he said, 'Because you are, you know, abusing the drug.'"

He later denied being an addict and defended his painkiller use as prescribed medication, according to the Philippine Star.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/wor...dent-duterte-fentanyl-abuse-article-1.2918009

 

[yung.carl.jung]

"Rodrigo Duterte, the president of the Philippines, says the motivation for his brutal clampdown on drugs comes in part from being sexually abused by a Catholic priest as a child."

Truly the voice of reason that the Philippines need. A literal addict with repressed anger from a childhood trauma that likes to compare himself to Hitler. But hey, just like Adolf he is a man of the people, right?

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...al-abuse-crackdown-human-rights-a7366941.html

 

[Samson]

Probe into murder claim by Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte. The investigation comes after the UN said Mr Duterte's involvement in the killing of suspected kidnappers "constituted murder".

From Sky: http://news.sky.com/story/probe-into-murder-claim-by-philippines-president-rodrigo-duterte-10704687

 

[Agent327]

I'm sure. But the UN do't instigate murder investigation in the Philippines.

Could there be a downside to publicly claiming to have executed people? It's almost like a confession of guilt. Someone should investigate. Oh, they are.

 

[CavLancer]

He is much loved here. Crime rate is down, its safe to walk the streets. The folks here like that sort of stuff and don't see how terrible it is.

Anyway a trial would go nowhere.

 

[FriendlyFire]

He is much loved here. Crime rate is down, its safe to walk the streets. The folks here like that sort of stuff and don't see how terrible it is.

Oh well, this is probably the same that happened in thailand and why after their mass drug killings the drug trade is stronger then ever
It seems the police are complicit in the drug trade along with corrupt officals

Publisher slain in Philippines after criticizing officials over drugs

(CNN)A journalist has been slain in the Philippines after writing a column criticizing local officials for alleged "negligence" over an illegal drug factory.

Larry Que, publisher of the Catanduanes News Now newspaper, is the first journalist killed since President Rodrigo Duterte assumed office in June; two others have been attacked and injured.
The Philippines is one of the world's most dangerous countries for media workers, according to a watchdog group.

"Que's murder came after he published his column, which criticised local officials and their alleged negligence in allowing the setting up on the island-province of a recently raided shabu [the local name for methamphetamine] laboratory that authorities claimed was the biggest so far discovered in the country," the IFJ said.

"Just because you're a journalist you are not exempted from assassination, if you're a son of a *****," he said. "Freedom of expression cannot help you if you have done something wrong."

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/12/22/asia/journalist-killed-philippines/

 

[CavLancer]

Its true, lots of police have been canned because of drug payoffs and are being tried mostly instead of shot. This includes iirc 2 'police generals', the very highest rank. Mayors, officials, many have fallen.

 

[CaptainF]

Funny how not even the harshest of penalties, legal or extralegal, can stop the drug trade. Nothing can stop the drug trade from operating anywhere on the globe. The drug trade must be regulated and legalized, not prohibited, in order for the situation to change.

Interesting, how the OP mentions that the price of meth has gone up 9 fold since Duterte's genocide. Seems Duterte is subsidizing the drug trade, making some drug sellers very rich. It's sort of like using too many antibiotics to fight disease. You might kill off the majority of the "bacteria" (drug sellers), but the bacteria that survive will be stronger (richer, more powerful) than before.

I wonder if Duterte is now fearing for his life, since he's a drug addict and thus subject to murder under his own policies. Whoops!

 

[CavLancer]

So you are saying he's favoring certain dealers to earn a cut? Evidence? No, there is none. If someone is earning 9X today then its because most of the drugs are taken and most dealers dead. The notion that somehow the survivors are happy about this is odd, since they may die tomorrow. No, I'm in favor of the problem getting solved and the kids growing up in a safer society. Crime stats are dropping fast as the dealers. I was not aware of the pain killer thing, and that to me makes a huge difference, if in fact it is as bad as some have said. Seems a double standard. Still, in the end if folks, the kids, can walk down the road in safety then that in itself, taken in isolation, is a very good thing.

 

[CaptainF]

So you are saying he's favoring certain dealers to earn a cut? Evidence? No, there is none. If someone is earning 9X today then its because most of the drugs are taken and most dealers dead.

You miss my point completely. I'm saying that drug sellers have more of an incentive now to keep selling, since the price has risen, and they will make more money. There may be fewer drug dealers out there, but they are definitely earning a lot more money.

The notion that somehow the survivors are happy about this is odd, since they may die tomorrow.

Or, maybe they are using their drug dealing fortune to buy protection from corrupt law enforcement, like many other drug dealers around the world have done since time immemorial. Money talks, BS walks.

No, I'm in favor of the problem getting solved and the kids growing up in a safer society.

Hmm. What if a kid's parents are shot to death because they have a drug problem? Are they safer then? What if the kids themselves get shot, after experimenting with drugs? Such things are happening in the Philippines now, you just don't notice, because you don't care.

Crime stats are dropping fast as the dealers.

Oh really? You demand evidence from me, and then don't provide any for your own claims.

I've found some evidence, which would seem to contradict your statement.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/duterte-philippines-drug-war_us_580e1420e4b02444efa429fe

Note the bolded parts:

Spoiler from article: :

In his inaugural State of the Nation Address on July 25, Duterte declared that there were 3.7 million “drug addicts” in the Philippines.

“The number is quite staggering and scary,” he said. “I have to slaughter these idiots for destroying my country.”

But according to a 2015 survey by the Office of the President’s Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB), the main drug policy and research unit, the Philippines has fewer than half that many drug users.

And rather than being “addicts,” as Duterte refers to all drug users, about a third of the 1.8 million users identified in the DDB survey had taken drugs only once in the previous 13 months. Fewer than half of them - 860,000 - had consumed crystal meth, or shabu, the highly addictive stimulant widely blamed by officials for high crime rates and other social ills. Most were marijuana users.

...

Officials in the president’s media office contacted by Reuters could not say where the data came from to back up another of the government’s central claims: that 75 percent of serious crimes in the Philippines are drug-related.

Police and senior officials have used the claim to justify tough measures against drug users and pushers, and say those measures have been vindicated by a drop in crime since the anti-drug campaign began.

The faulty figures have other real-world implications. They determine, for instance, how many people the government says must be targeted to eradicate drug demand in the Philippines. That has led to the drawing up of police “watch lists” with the names of drug suspects, hundreds of whom have been shot dead either in police operations or by unknown gunmen.

The president’s statistical claims continue to drive policy. In September, Duterte said the number of “addicts” would rise to four million by the end of the month and vowed to extend his drug war for another six months - to June 2017. That statement came after remarks on Sept. 30, when Duterte seemed to compare himself to Hitler and said he would be “happy to slaughter” three million drug addicts.

...

A senior Philippines law enforcement officer said Duterte’s “arbitrary” figures had put pressure on police and government officials.


“The problem is, every time the president says something, it’s already some sort of a policy statement,” said the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We have to toe the line.”


The officer pointed, for example, to the more than 700,000 people who have registered in the past three months with the authorities as drug users or pushers, a process known as “surrendering.” But, he said, authorities were expected to produce at least 1.8 million “surrenderers” to match the number of users cited in the DDB report.


“That’s the reason we are having a hard time. We need to produce,” he said. “Even if we add up everything...we are not even close to 1.8 million.”

...

Statements by Duterte and other officials not only fail to distinguish between users and problem users, say drug-treatment specialists, but also between users of shabu and marijuana. Shabu is a highly addictive stimulant with side effects that can include aggression and psychosis.


“They are completely different substances in terms of risk profiles and harms,” said Robert Ali, director of a University of Adelaide research center on drug and alcohol treatment who works with the World Health Organization. “Shabu has a higher risk of addiction. It is associated with a greater range of physical and psychological harms.”

While drug abuse is a real problem in the Philippines, said Ali, it was hard to devise an effective national response based on flawed data. “With public health, whether it’s diabetes or drug use, you need a sense of the burden of harm to understand how to use your resources,” he said.

Joanne Csete, a specialist in health and human rights at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University in New York, said that the term “current drug users” usually refers to those who have used drugs in the past month. However, the DDB survey counts anyone who has used drugs in the past 13 months, which Csete says could inflate the number of users.


“So the president can make up whatever numbers he likes - the survey does not adequately estimate current use,” she said.

...

The claim that 75 percent of “heinous crime” in the Philippines is drug-related features in an official booklet called “Winning the First Phase of the Drug War.” It was handed out by the president’s media team in September at a regional summit in Laos attended by world leaders.

According to the booklet, heinous crimes include murder, rape, human trafficking and treason.

It is not clear where the president’s media team got the 75 percent figure. The booklet identifies the source of the number as the Philippines National Police Directorate for Investigation and Detective Management (DIDM). But six officials in the office responsible for the booklet and at the DIDM were unable to point to a specific study or explain how the figure was calculated.

Nimfa Reloc, who monitors heinous crime cases for DIDM, said the office had released no such data or analysis and did not know where the number came from. She said 15 percent of heinous crimes are drug-related.

Benjamin Reyes, the DDB’s chairman, said there was “actually no data” on crimes committed under the influence of drugs.

An estimated 18 percent of convicted prisoners worldwide are in jail for drug-related offenses, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

“Illegal drugs do create a substantial burden on societies, and it’s important that governments respond in ways that reduce the economic cost of drug use...and reduce pain and suffering from drug use,” said Alison Ritter, a researcher at Australia’s National Drug & Alcohol Research Centre.

But crime is complicated, and the rise and fall in crime rates can’t be attributed to a single campaign or even a single institution such as the police, Ritter said. “To argue that killing people for consuming drugs is associated with crime reduction is blatantly unsupported,” she said.

“Index” or serious crimes in the Philippines dropped by 31 percent in January to August this year compared with the same period in 2015, according to police statistics presented to a Senate hearing on extrajudicial killings on Oct. 5.


“If you don’t call it winning, I don’t know what to call it,” said Villanueva at PDEA.


But the same police statistics show serious crime was already in decline during the administration of Duterte’s predecessor, President Benigno Aquino, who did not conduct a war on drugs.


In fact, Aquino was still in office for most of the period covered by the 2016 statistics. The police figures show that in the January-August period of 2015, serious crime was down 22 percent compared with the same period the previous year. In 2014, it declined 26 percent.


While the crime rate has been dropping for several years, under Duterte the murder rate has risen since he launched his anti-drug campaign. In the first three months of his administration, police recorded a total of 3,760 murders, compared with 2,359 in the same period last year, a rise of 59 percent.

“Compared with last year, we are better off this year,” said Dionardo Carlos, the national police spokesman. “Most of the victims this time are the drug users.”

In Davao City, where Duterte was mayor for 22 years, he led an equally brutal anti-drugs crackdown. There, death squads killed hundreds of alleged drug dealers, petty criminals and street children, said Human Rights Watch in a 2009 report. Duterte denied any involvement in the killings.


Despite the crackdown, Davao still ranks first among 15 cities in the Philippines for murder and second for rape, according to police crime data from 2010 to 2015.

...

Senior anti-narcotics officials in the Philippines also invoke conflicting or incomplete data in trying to identify how many people are problem users, which drug they use and what treatment they might need.

While the DDB survey says about 860,000 people are shabu users, PDEA chief Villanueva puts the number at 1.4 million. He explained to Reuters how he reached this number.

Villanueva started with an estimate based on drug-rehab facility data that he said showed 75 percent of patients at these facilities were shabu users. He then applied this percentage to the DDB’s 1.8 million figure for all drug users.

He acknowledged that rehab data was already skewed towards shabu users, who seek treatment more often than users of less addictive drugs, and that applying the percentage to another study was problematic.

“Actually, the 75 percent does not translate, but it’s a pretty good assumption,” said Villanueva, who spent 12 years with PDEA in Davao City, where he said he got to know Duterte.

Of the 1.4 million shabu users Villanueva had identified by his method, about 700,000 people had already “surrendered” to the police as drug users and pushers, he said.

“We are taking away already one half of the demand,” said Villanueva.

Treatment experts dispute this claim, since the severity of drug use among those who surrender is unclear. A spokesperson at the Philippines’ Department of Health said he didn’t know how many “surrenderers” had been medically screened.

This matters, said Ali, the University of Adelaide treatment specialist, because “drug use is not necessarily drug dependence.” Only about 10 to 15 percent of shabu users might require residential care, he said. Ali said he based this estimate on his clinical experience and the experience of treatment services in the United Kingdom.

The DDB’s survey does not distinguish between users and problem users.

“We did not try to categorize them, whether or not they were addicts, problematic drug users, or just plain users,” said DDB chairman Reyes.

To calculate the number of problem users, said Reyes, the DDB relied on global estimates from the UNODC that say 0.6 percent of drug users are problem users, which means they require treatment.

Reyes said he rounded this figure up to one percent and applied it to the figure of 1.8 million users, and concluded that the Philippines had, at most, 18,000 drug users in need of treatment.


“It’s a small number,” he said.

TL;DR, everything that comes out of Duterte's mouth is a lie.

I was not aware of the pain killer thing, and that to me makes a huge difference, if in fact it is as bad as some have said. Seems a double standard.

Oh it is, absolutely! Fascists like Duterte cannot operate without double standards.

Still, in the end if folks, the kids, can walk down the road in safety then that in itself, taken in isolation, is a very good thing.

Except, of course, if kids have to see their loved ones getting killed, which is happening all the time.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...-duterte-philippines-drugs-killings.html?_r=0

Spoiler from NY times article: :

Mr. Cruz’s 16-year-old nephew, Eliam, and 18-year-old niece, Princess, said they had watched from a second-story porch as the plainclothes officers who had killed their uncle emerged from the house. Eliam and Princess said they heard the beep of a text message and watched as one of the men read it from his phone.

“Ginebra’s won,” he announced to the others, referring to Barangay Ginebra San Miguel, the nation’s most popular basketball team, which had been battling for the championship across town. The teenagers said the men celebrated the team’s victory as their uncle was carried out in a body bag.

Roel Scott, 13, is one of the boys in the photo above, at the spot where his uncle, Joselito Jumaquio, was slain by a mob of masked men. Mourners often place candles in the blood of the victim to honor them.

Roel said he was playing video games with Mr. Jumaquio, a pedicab driver who had also surrendered himself to the authorities, when 15 of the masked men descended quickly and silently over the shantytown called Pandacan.

Witnesses told us the men dragged Mr. Jumaquio down an alley and shouted at gathering neighbors to go back into their homes and turn the lights off. They heard a woman shout, “Nanlaban!” He’s fighting it out.

Two shots rang out. Then four more.

When it was quiet, the neighbors found the pedicab driver’s bloodied body — a gun and a plastic bag of shabu next to his handcuffed hands. The police report called it a “buy-bust operation.”

It seems the cops aren't even trying to hide their bloodlust, the fact that they are killing extrajudicially.

“Nanlaban” is what the police call a case when a suspect resists arrest and ends up dead. It means “he fought it out.” That is what they said about Florjohn Cruz, 34, whose body was being carted away by a funeral home when I arrived at his home in the poor Caloocan neighborhood just before 11 p.m. one night.

His niece said they found a cardboard sign saying “Pusher at Adik Wag Tularan” — “Don’t be a pusher and an addict like him” — as they were cleaning Mr. Cruz’s blood from the floor near the family’s altar, shown in the middle photo below.

The police report said, “Suspect Cruz ran inside the house then pulled a firearm and successively shot the lawmen, prompting the same to return fire in order to prevent and repel Cruz’s unlawful aggression.”

His wife, Rita, told me, between pained cries, that Mr. Cruz had been fixing a transistor radio for his 71-year-old mother in the living room when armed men barged in and shot him dead.

The family said Mr. Cruz was not a drug dealer, only a user of shabu, as Filipinos call methamphetamine. He had surrendered months earlier, responding to Mr. Duterte’s call, for what was supposed to be a drug-treatment program. The police came for him anyway.

As my time in the Philippines wore on, the killings seemed to become more brazen. Police officers appeared to do little to hide their involvement in what were essentially extrajudicial executions. Nanlaban had become a dark joke.


“There is a new way of dying in the Philippines,” said Redentor C. Ulsano, the police superintendent in the Tondo district. He smiled and held his wrists together in front of him, pretending to be handcuffed.

The sad thing is, this is all for naught. Like I said, nothing, absolutely nothing, can prevent people from doing whatever drugs they want to do. Ever heard of Singapore? They have the death penalty for drug dealers, and execute many of them all the time, and yet still they have a thriving drug business.

Duterte and his cronies are killing for sport, and you don't care, because they aren't killing your family or your children. You hate drugs and drug users so much, that you are willing to see them die, regardless of the collateral damage.

 

[CavLancer]

Well, Merry Christmas to you too.

I actually don't hate drug users. I was pleased when hundreds of thousands turned themselves in for treatment. I'd rather is users were not targeted. It is however, not my country. In the US I'd be up in arms if I thought the cause worthy, but not here. Besides, Duterte has great ratings, the folks here think he's doing a good thing.

Dealers I find it hard to care too much about.

Regarding a pusher buying protection from police, many were and those police are behind bars now. If I were a politician and a pusher came to me for protection I'd shoot him myself rather than go to prison over it, even if the morality didn't bother me..

The problem was very bad which if you read the OP, watched the videos and bothered to do a little background before your little caring drama orgasm, you would know.. Pushers had bought enough protection to be running the prisons up on Luzon themselves. They ran their drug rackets out of the prisons. That has all been exposed and fixed, and officials responsible put away.

I actually do care about this country, and am glad top see it kicking the habit though by all means, the methods are not what I'd prefer.

So you have had your little tirade now, hope you feel like you've really accomplished something today and proven that you care. Don't seem to care so much about the kids whose lives are ruined by drugs, but ya can't have everything I guess. Happy Holidays

 

[yung.carl.jung]

I love how you keep referring to "kids having their lifes ruined by drugs" or "saving my children" when Duterte was literally paying Death Squads to execute street children. It says that in the article and was confirmed by Human Rights Watch. I realize that for you only the rich, privileged children matter, but you could at least try and do a better job of hiding that.

The source that dogfood posted revealed much more, but of course you choose to ignore it completely, I would wager you haven't even read it. Can't say I'm surprised though as you have willingly ignored every argument itt that you cannot respond to.

 

[CaptainF]

Well, Merry Christmas to you too.

Merry Christmas!

I actually don't hate drug users.

And yet, you don't care if they are brutally murdered. Hmm...

I was pleased when hundreds of thousands turned themselves in for treatment. I'd rather is users were not targeted. It is however, not my country. In the US I'd be up in arms if I thought the cause worthy, but not here. Besides, Duterte has great ratings, the folks here think he's doing a good thing.

Oh wow! People think he's doing a great thing, so that means there's no wrong doing, sort of like when Hitler was in power! Yessir, all those Germans had great love for Dear Leader.

And none of those people turning themselves in to treatment are getting killed, like mentioned in the article I posted, no sir!

Dealers I find it hard to care too much about.

What you are completely ignorant of, is that many "dealers" of the drugs are themselves addicted, and sell primarily to support their habit. These are not kingpins, but people who buy a little bit more than personal use amounts, to sell in order to make enough money to buy more drugs.

There are very few drug sellers that don't use the drugs themselves. This applies to everything from pot, to cocaine, to heroin or meth.

You know who fits the definition of a drug dealer? Say, for example, a 16 year-old girl with 10 ecstasy tablets that she wants to share with her friends for free, just to party. Should that person be shot? Hmm...

Regarding a pusher buying protection from police, many were and those police are behind bars now. If I were a politician and a pusher came to me for protection I'd shoot him myself rather than go to prison over it, even if the morality didn't bother me..

Oh wow, such a badass, imagining how you would shoot those big bad drug dealers! Maybe you should join Duterte's killing squads, and satisfy your bloodlust, show all those drug users how you don't hate them at all!

The problem was very bad which if you read the OP, watched the videos and bothered to do a little background before your little caring drama orgasm, you would know..

Yeah, there have been many bad drug problems, in many countries around the world, that were solved using methods a lot less brutal than indiscriminate mass-murder. Mass murder doesn't solve drug epidemics.

Pushers had bought enough protection to be running the prisons up on Luzon themselves. They ran their drug rackets out of the prisons. That has all been exposed and fixed, and officials responsible put away.

And yet, despite all this crackdown, all this so called success, all this rise in drug prices...

...somehow Filipinos are still using drugs. Why is that? Surely all of the drug dealers have been caught, right?

Wrong.

I actually do care about this country, and am glad top see it kicking the habit though by all means, the methods are not what I'd prefer.

You're not seeing Filipinos kick the habit, you're seeing mass-murder. The murder rate has risen, as I showed previously, by at least 59% over the previous year, possibly more. The country is devolving into a violent hell-hole, which you don't seem to care about. So you care about your country, but not the people in it?

Mass murder has never solved a drug problem. Never have, never will.

So you have had your little tirade now, hope you feel like you've really accomplished something today and proven that you care. Don't seem to care so much about the kids whose lives are ruined by drugs, but ya can't have everything I guess.

Nice cheap shot! Where'd you find that one, the bargain aisle at Wal-Mart?

If I wanted to be cheap, I could say that you don't care about the kids who are murdered by bloodthirsty cops, or the kids whose family members are murdered by bloodthirsty cops.

Actually, that's not a cheap shot, it's true!

Happy Holidays

Happy Holidays to you too! Hopefully your kids won't get caught smoking a joint or something, since that would end rather badly for them, and for you!

 

[CavLancer]

Okay, I gave up the cause a while back, now goaded back into it. Certainly a war on street kids does not have my support. If I see them begging and have money to give I always do so. Bugs my friends too, but I still do it. I've spent lots of money buying and filling bags of food for kids over the holidays, and am adopting 2 poor children. Spent a small fortune because one of them was dying when we got him, and now he's okay. Killing street kids is exactly opposite to killing pushers who push drugs to kids. If there are really murders of children happening here, well that is the heart of evil if true. I am not convinced its happening however. I've seen no sign of it and am convinced that if it were happening Duterte would lose his support because children are cared about here.

 

[CaptainF]

Okay, I gave up the cause a while back, now goaded back into it. Certainly a war on street kids does not have my support. If I see them begging and have money to give I always do so. Bugs my friends too, but I still do it. I've spent lots of money buying and filling bags of food for kids over the holidays, and am adopting 2 poor children. Spent a small fortune because one of them was dying when we got him, and now he's okay. Killing street kids is exactly opposite to killing pushers who push drugs to kids. If there are really murders of children happening here, well that is the heart of evil if true. I am not convinced its happening however. I've seen no sign of it and am convinced that if it were happening Duterte would lose his support because children are cared about here.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/children-k...ral-damage-says-philippines-president-1586751

The President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte, who has presided over an unprecedented drug war, killing thousands since he was elected in May, has called innocent people and children caught up in the violence "collateral damage".

Duterte said police in the Philippines could kill hundreds with impunity firing off rounds with an M16. He said it was understandable that a police officer with an automatic weapon would kill as many as a thousand while pursuing on gangster.

"When they meet, they exchange fire. With the policeman and the M16, it's one burst, brrr, and [he] hits 1,000 people there and they die," the president told al-Jazeera.

"It could not be negligence because you have to save your life. It could not be recklessness because you have to defend yourself."

In the past Duterte has rebuffed international criticism of his drug war saying his crackdown on the narcotics trade bears no comparison with wars waged by the US and its allies in Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam.

Repeating the claim, Duterte said: "When you bomb a village you intend to kill the militants but you kill the children there... Why do you say it is collateral damage to the West and to us it is murder?"

At least 3,800 people have been the victim of extrajudicial police and vigilante killings.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/15/world/philippines-duterte-killings/

A 6-year-old Manila boy killed in his sleep is among the latest victims in the ongoing violence against suspected drug criminals in the Philippines.
"There was a knock on the door," said Elizabeth Navarro, who is pregnant and already a mother of five at 29. "My husband said who's that? Then I heard two gunshots."

By the time Navarro realized what was happening, her husband, Domingo Mañosca, and son, Francis, were dead. The gunmen were gone, in what has become open season for anyone suspected of being tied to drugs.

...

Public opinion polls show the majority of Filipinos support Duterte's war on drugs. They say it makes their communities feel safer. But on the crowded streets of a Manila slum, no one was calling this number of killings justified. "They are killing left and right," one woman said. "Sometimes they kill 10 or 20 a day. I'm scared. These days you don't know who's your enemy."

On the street where Francis and Domingo Mañosca's coffins rested, friends played cards and tried to raise $900 for the funeral. That's three times Domingo Mañosca's yearly earnings as a bicycle taxi driver. Two live chicks on the boy's coffin symbolized a family seeking justice. Francis' mother said he was a happy child and was due to begin school next year. In the slum of Pasay City, young children often ask for money. But Francis was known for smiling and dancing in exchange for one peso, about 20 cents. Domingo's mother, Maria Musabia, said he began using shabu, or meth, when he was 29. It is popular among the Philippines' poor as a way to increase energy and suppress hunger. Six months ago when Duterte launched his war on drugs, Domingo stopped using and turned himself in. Police took a statement and let him leave. His family says he hasn't used since, as Duterte promises more killings to come.

"My family needs help," Musabia said.

And this is from the NY Times article I posted earlier:

I witnessed bloody scenes just about everywhere imaginable — on the sidewalk, on train tracks, in front of a girls’ school, outside 7-Eleven stores and a McDonald’s restaurant, across bedroom mattresses and living-room sofas. I watched as a woman in red peeked at one of those grisly sites through fingers held over her eyes, at once trying to protect herself and permit herself one last glance at a man killed in the middle of a busy road.

Not far from where Tigas was killed, I found Michael Araja, shown in the first photo below, dead in front of a “sari sari,” what locals call the kiosks that sell basics in the slums. Neighbors told me that Mr. Araja, 29, had gone out to buy cigarettes and a drink for his wife, only to be shot dead by two men on a motorcycle, a tactic common enough to have earned its own nickname: riding in tandem.

In another neighborhood, Riverside, a bloodied Barbie doll lay next to the body of a 17-year-old girl who had been killed alongside her 21-year-old boyfriend.

“They are slaughtering us like animals,” said a bystander who was afraid to give his name.

Duterte is a monster.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Okay, I gave up the cause a while back, now goaded back into it. Certainly a war on street kids does not have my support. If I see them begging and have money to give I always do so. Bugs my friends too, but I still do it.

Children beggars are in most cases controlled by gangs who take all the money they got from begging and give them a pityful amount, all just to give them an "allowance" to be on their streets. Your friends are completely right, you are literally paying organized crime syndicates.. Adopting on the other hand is wonderful and has the opposite effect, it actually takes children out of the system and allows them to take their life around, so good on that.

As for children being killed, you can just check out various reports from human rights groups, since obviously the Phillipino media doesn't openly talk about this at all. I'll even be as nice as to quote the Wikipedia paragraph for you, this is completely out in the open..

In Mindanao many such killings, including those of minors, were attributed to the so-called “Davao Death Squad” vigilante group. It was reported that local officials in some areas advocated a “shoot to kill” policy with respect to criminal suspects resisting arrest.[9]

 

[CavLancer]

Yeah I'm not so sure about that. Maybe it happens, but Bohol is emerging but still the middle of nowhere. I've seen the kids I've helped buying food with the pesos. Also, when I have it to spare my wife and I buy food bags to pass out. Better that way because the food is more what a kid needs than what they might buy with those pesos. I try to give directly to mothers toting babies and with other street kids because the bags have a fair amount of stuff. We buy eggs, dried fish, fruit, canned food, etc etc. No sugary stuff. Thgis was back when we had a vehicle and go hunting folks in need, and money to buy stuff. Hope we sell a house so we can start this again. Now we're broke and trying to push the adoption forward. Better times ahead I hope. Our daughter is the smartest kid in her private school 1st grade class of 32. I really want her to get US citizenship so she can be a doctor or something someday. Both are from the tribal mountains and they don't have a lot of food up there, arraigned marriages at 13, the whole 9 yards. I'm so glad our kids are out of there. Btw if anyone is so in a twist about what is happening to kids here, if they care enough, they can adopt directly out of Cebu city where there are thousands of kids needing homes. Ya know, if anyone c a r e s enough to actually get off their asses and get er done. Belly up to the bar Dawg? I can find out who you can talk to, if you ask nicely.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

You know, all the support you give is actually great and I admire it, but it's completely irrelevant to the discussion and derailing the actual topic. You helping those children doesn't make Duterte less of a child murderer. And of course it's not just the child murders, often times those abhorrent "dealers" you despise so much are parents, too, so their children end up as orphans.. And get sucked into the street life.

 

[CavLancer]

I hope it ends soon Carl.