Over the past few weeks, the offspring of two of the 20th centuries most ruthless strongmen have announced they’d like to become the (democratically elected) leaders of Libya and the Philippines.
Tag: duterte
Narcissists, sociopaths, hypomaniacs and more: from Trump to Erdogan and Duterte, the debate on the stability of government leaders has become increasingly relevant. Labeling them as mentally ill or giving too much power to psychiatrists is dangerous.
For strongman leaders like Putin and Bolsonaro, the health crisis looked like a natural opening for greater top-down control — at least on paper.
-Analysis- PARIS — And then, Brazil. The list of countries that are switching to so-called “strongman” regimes keeps growing. Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, Narendra Modi’s India, Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. The “people” leave it up to a candidate who has promised the end of corruption and economic recovery. In […]
BANGKOK — Luzviminda Siapo is telling me about the day her 19-year-old son was killed — that was just seven months ago. He was dragged from his home by 14 masked men and shot in the head twice. Witnesses say he was ordered to run for his life before being shot. “He just couldn’t run, he had club feet,” Luzviminda told me. I met Luzviminda along with The Philippines Human Rights Commissioner, Leah Tanodra-Armamento. The pair were visiting Thailand last month, sharing stories of Filipinos killed in the country’s so-called ‘war on drugs.” It’s been 16 months since Rodrigo Duterte […]
The southern city of Marawi was liberated last week after months of fighting which left some 1,000 dead and hundreds of thousands displaced.
-OpEd- SAO PAULO — Barbarism has actually become popular in the Philippines. According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, 78% of Filipinos support the “license to kill” President Rodrigo Duterte has given the police against those accused, or even just suspected, of dealing or consuming drugs. The government proudly announced the death […]
WASHINGTON, D.C. — During his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Donald Trump boasted that “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” On the 100th day of his presidency, Trump invited Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who has said that he used to roam the streets on a motorcycle looking for criminals to kill, to the White House. A Duterte state visit to Washington or Mar-a-Lago would be a ghastly spectacle, given the way the Philippines have pursued a war on drugs even more literal than the one in the United […]
The rise of Donald Trump, as well as the growing power of populist leaders in Europe, will require a vigilant eye when the signs start appearing that puts basic democratic values in harm’s way. It is just beginning.
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International Justice Denied
Your daily update of the latest news from around the world, brought to you by Worldcrunch. To get it in your inbox each morning, sign up here. Is this the end of the road for the International Criminal Court? Yesterday’s announcement by Russia that it was formally withdrawing its signature from the ICC’s founding Rome […]
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A Vast, Small World After All
We, the fortunate and overstimulated masses of the early 21st century can watch the whole world pass by on our computer and smartphone screens. The picture often isn’t pretty, and we would all do well to lift our heads up more often to see what’s happening right in front of us. In real life, as […]
This is supposed to be the week that Canada and the EU ink their landmark Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) after seven years of painstaking negotiations. Hopes are fading, however, due to last-minute objections from Belgium’s Wallonia region. The French-speaking area’s 3.6 million people represent less than 1% of the EU’s total population. Yet […]
The controversial new Filippino president, who arrives in China today, has mostly garnered attention for his brutal crackdown on drug dealers. But his ambitions go far beyond.
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From Obama To Duterte, Breaking The Mold
In many ways, Barack Obama’s election eight years ago as America’s first black president broke the mold. But in other ways it has not. Both at home and abroad, there are certain codes and behaviors and best practices that the preternaturally moderate Obama has abided by for the past eight years to ensure a kind […]
Since Rodrigo Duterte was inaugurated two months ago, some 2,000 people have been killed across the country in the past two months in what experts say are extra-judicial vigilante murders. Fear and silence make it all possible.
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Germany Caught Between Its Past And Turkey
Turkey, past and present, is a particularly tough balancing act for Angela Merkel. On the one hand, Germany’s own past means its leaders face a bigger responsibility than those of other nations to officially recognize the 1915 killings of 1.5 million Armenians as a genocide. But Berlin knows that it is an immensely sensitive topic […]
MANILA — Heavy clouds in the sky over Manila, soon it will start to rain. Jennilyn Olayres must hurry up if she wants to whisper a few more words to her fiancé. How she’s feeling, what she has been up to all day long. And that she’s really mad at him. What a bastard for […]
Philippine Daily Inquirer, Aug. 19 Philippines’ maverick president Rodrigo Duterte has declared a new war of words against Senator Leila de Lima, whom he accused of being an “immoral” woman with a “very sordid personal and official life” and linked to the illegal drug trade. “If you are bent on destroying me, please have the […]
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How Low Will Trump Go?
SPOTLIGHT: HOW LOW WILL TRUMP GO? Waking up in European Central Time to the morning headlines means two things right now: Rio Olympic results and Donald Trump’s new low. We’ve been trying to digest the latest installment of the latter after the Republican nominee in his inimitable, er, offhanded way, said yesterday in North Carolina […]
SPOTLIGHT: WHAT DOES ISTANBUL ATTACK SAY ABOUT ISIS? After Tuesday night’s gruesome attack at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport, where the toll now stands at 42 people dead and 239 wounded, Turkish police launched a vast operation that led to the arrest of 13 suspects, AFP reports. Perhaps surprisingly, no organization has so far claimed responsibility for […]
SPOTLIGHT: CHINA’S SILENT ANNIVERSARY It was 50 years ago today that the Chinese Communist Party and its leader Mao Zedong released a circular that was bound to unleash a decade of violence that would kill more than 1.5 million people. It would come to be known as the Cultural Revolution, and the history books consider […]