Sep 14, 2016Statistics show what any visitor to the country may easily see: Filipinos are not degenerates, who need to be protected from themselves, but are mostly a nation of decent, sober, law-abiding and God-fearing people.
↩︎ TIME
The widening gyre that is Rodrigo Duterte's criminal career.
- A brief profile of Maria Ressa, the Philippines news site editor who's now been arrested twice by Duterte's government. Updated Feb 14, 2019 ago
- At least 10 mayors in the Philippines have been killed since Duterte's rise—he may be targeting political opponents.
- Duterte boasts that as a teenager he stabbed someone to death "over a look."
Feb 14, 2019Ressa and Duterte have been crossing paths for over 30 years. She first interviewed him in the 1980s when he was Mayor of Davao. In 2015, during his election campaign, she conducted a now infamous interview with Duterte in which he confessed to killing three people.
↩︎ The Guardian
Dec 15, 2016I’d go around in Davao with a motorcycle, with a big bike around, and I would just patrol the streets, looking for trouble also. I was really looking for a confrontation so I could kill.
↩︎ Manila Times
Duterte dumps the US
While in China, Duterte broke up with the US. "I announce my separation from the United States," he said to applause. "America does not control our lives. Enough bullshit,"
In Duterte's war, local residents draw up hit lists
Philippines police are doing deadly door-to-door raids on neighborhood "hit lists" drawn up by local officials without any due process.
After the Praise for Hitler, This Seems Reasonable
President Duterte told a sympathetic audience Wednesday that Obama and the State Department should "go to hell," intimating that he would take steps to replace American influence with Russian or Chinese support.
The United States has repeatedly put the Phillipines on notice over Duterte's encouragement of extrajudicial killings. The country's national police chief reported that Duterte's pressure has led his office to a state of war, though it's unclear against whom; police have killed 1,375 in anti-drug operations, but it's not specified how many were users or dealers, and more than 2,000 more deaths have been attributed to vigilantes.
International Criminal Court, Here I Come
Citing Hitler as a role model, Duterte vows to kill three million drug addicts. As the Guardian notes: “If Germany had Hitler, the Philippines would have...” he said, pausing and pointing to himself.
Sep 15, 2016The purpose of President Duterte’s open calls for violence, rather ironically, is for peace—to end crime and corruption perceived as endemic in the Philippines. He offered a simple, horrifying solution that tens of millions of Filipinos elected him to implement through unrestricted police operations, death squads, and hired assassins.
↩︎ GQ
Bye Bye, USA
Continuing his pivot away from American allies, Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte ordered the US military out of the nation's unrestful southern zone of Mindanao, despite a January high court ruling that they should stay, and without any prior consultation with the United States.
Duterte Threatens to Eat Terrorists
Duterte has made waves for targeting drug users, but he also plans to go after Abu Sayyaf, a jihadist group that has pledged allegiance to ISIS. Recently they beheaded a teenage ransom, and affiliates claimed responsibility for a bombing in Duterte's hometown that killed more than a dozen. In response, the president threatened the terrorists with retaliatory cannibalism: "When the time comes, I will eat you alive in front of people. If you make me mad, in all honesty, I will eat you alive, raw."
The Editors' Longreads Picks
- An excellent essay on poverty and writing by Starr Davis. Updated May 31, 2022
- Novelist Héctor Tobar tries to understand the 1992 Los Angeles riots through the experiences of a single high school.
- Steven Johnson with a long assessment of the current state of A.I. and language. (The illusion has gotten very good.)
Welcome to The Morning News Tournament of Books, 2017 edition.
- Our championship match is decided in the Tournament of Books, with news of a Rooster surprise debuting this summer. Updated Mar 31, 2017
- In Thursday's action, Reyhan Harmanci sets up a colossal final.
- The Zombie round opens with Buzzfeed's Isaac Fitzgerald reading The Nix and The Underground Railroad.
Все ваши Белый дом принадлежит нам.
- "Will Putin expose the failings of American democracy or will he inadvertently expose the strength of American democracy?" Updated Mar 3, 2017
- Wilbur Ross just wanted to make some money in ethically gray areas (that should've prevented him from taking office).
- Jeff Sessions's spokeswoman can't help but continue to lie.
The oceans are under assault, and not just from the White House and friends.
- Trump's assault on the environment begins with American headwaters. Updated Mar 1, 2017
- Don't just blame the oil companies for destroying the oceans—blame sushi restaurants.
- Nothing escapes the deepest trenches of the ocean floor. Not light, not nutrients, not pollutants.