No problem. On first considering it there was some initial inclination to giving it some credibility which evaporated after reading more. And your thought just led to another little informative fact i don't recall reading before, Putin's disarming of his NATO borders which debunks his own invasion justification. Will post that shortly, linked to others.
Good to know your real antipathy to Trump. It led just now to an earlier serious warning to American's from Max Boot. It and all the others weren't enough in 2016, i'm still trusting they will be enough to do the best thing for the United States, for the world, in 2024:
It’s All Fun and Games, Until Someone Unleashes Death Squads
"'Reign of terror': Fear in the Philippines as police embark on state-sanctioned 'killing spree'"
Anyone wondering how the bare-knuckle populism of Donald Trump’s campaign would translate to office should take a look at the Philippines.
Listening to Donald Trump’s outlandish pronouncements, it’s all too easy to think: “He’ll never do that once in office. He’ll be restrained by wise advisors and act much more thoughtfully as president than he does as a presidential candidate.” Maybe so, but recent events in the Philippines demonstrate the dangers of voting into office an ignorant demagogue with a big mouth.
The new president of the Philippines, Rodrigo “Rody” Duterte, caught the attention of Americans recently by referring to President Barack Obama as the “son of a whore,” but, in the greater context, that is the least of his sins. There is a reason he is being called “Duterte Harry” and the “Trump of the Philippines” — and those monikers are not intended as compliments. Duterte is showing just what bare-knuckle populism looks like in action, and it’s not a pretty picture.
A few lowlights:
1) Taking advantage of the Philippine people’s understandable concern about a high crime rate, Duterte has unleashed a wave of violence against anyone suspected of being a criminal. During his campaign, he promised .. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/12/world/asia/the-philippines-rodrigo-duterte-vigilante-violence.html .. to kill so many outlaws that the “fish will grow fat” in Manila Bay from feasting on the remains. So far, more than 1,800 people have been killed .. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/23/world/asia/philippines-rodrigo-duterte.html .. by police and vigilantes since he came into office. No trial, no evidence: just death. Human-rights advocates are aghast, and understandably so. (It was in reaction to a journalist’s question about what he would say to Obama if the American president criticized his human-rights record that Duterte uttered his witty “son of a whore” comeback.)
4) Duterte has announced plans to move the remains of Ferdinand Marcos, the country’s late dictator, to the Cemetery of Heroes, despite copious evidence that Marcos was guilty of egregious misconduct while in office and that he had faked his World War II service record. The move to enshrine this brutal and corrupt ruler has triggered protests from many Filipinos, including victims of torture and imprisonment during the Marcos era. A close friend of the late dictator’s son, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., Duterte has often expressed admiration for Marcos senior, calling him .. http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/763290/duterte-says-marcos-was-the-brightest-of-them-all .. “the brightest among the past presidents.” Many believe that Duterte hopes to emulate Marcos, who also took power vowing to crack down on crime.
[...]
Duterte also refuses to acknowledge that, by the standards of the day, American colonial rule was fairly benign. Manual Quezon, who had fought against the Americans before becoming president of the Philippine Commonwealth in 1935, famously complained of the difficulty of rousing a nationalist revolt against U.S. rule: “Damn the Americans! Why don’t they tyrannize us more?” If Duterte is going to demand that the United States apologize for a century-old massacre, will he thank the United States for vastly improving education, transportation, sanitation, and other services in the Philippines — and for liberating that country from Japanese occupation?
Duterte’s presidency is a tragedy for the long-suffering people of the Philippines. A nation of hardworking English-speakers that was one of the first democracies in Asia, thanks to America’s liberal imperialism, should be doing far better economically than it is. (Per capita GDP, $2,886, is lower than Swaziland and Guatemala.) There are many reasons for its deficiencies, but a big part of the explanation lies in terrible leadership.
In the postwar era, the Philippines has had only one great leader — Ramon Magsaysay...
[...]
The fate of the Philippines should make us realize how high the stakes are in our own election. America may seem far more stable than the Philippines, and it is, but we would be in for profound and disturbing changes if we elect the Rodrigo Duterte of America. Donald Trump is a demagogue who shares Duterte’s vulgarity, his ignorance, his admiration of dictators, his contempt for liberal democratic norms, and his tendency to flip-flop on the issues.
But Trump has much grander aspirations. Duterte is in charge of a poor country with scarcely any military power. Although Duterte can damage the efforts of China’s neighbors to contain Beijing’s expansionism, most of the harm he is inflicting is on his own citizens. If Trump were to win the presidency, by contrast, he would be in charge of the most powerful nation in the world, with thousands of nuclear weapons at his command. He needs to be taken seriously when he threatens, inter alia, to rip up free-trade agreements, impose costly tariffs, build a wall on the Mexico border, deport 11 million undocumented immigrants, abandon NATO, pull U.S. troops out of countries such as South Korea and Japan, recognize Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea, and generally turn his back on decades of American international leadership. The example of rowdy “Rody” Duterte — along with countless others, from Juan Perón to Benito Mussolini —suggests that demagogues have a disturbing tendency to act in office much as they said they would do on the campaign trail, no matter how unhinged their ideas may appear to rational observers.
Oh and along the way this time i bumped into F6's idea for the board which we have been attempting to keep going, albeit to some lesser degree:
fuagf -- the one text piece I included in full in that post (a number of others of similar significance just blurbed /linked there -- so much flying by at this point, just trying to keep some sort of record here of as much of it as I can) November 06, 2016 -- https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=126358076
I've mentioned it before but this is the first time to have fluked bumping into it again.
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