Philippine President Duterte Against the World

 

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte took office on June 30, 2016, elected partially on his promise to bring an end to the drug trade which was destroying his nation and the people’s nation. He has gone directly to work on this promise but now is facing threats from the United Nations as well as the United States State Department. Just yesterday we were giving the United States Department of State credit and now we face the great let down as they join the United Nations Human Rights experts all of whom are denigrating the efforts of President Duterte in freeing his people from the ravages of the illegal drug trade. His efforts to clean the Philippines of this scourge has run into a difficulty which the United Nations Human Rights experts and United States Department of State as they protest the deaths of five-hundred drug suspects have who have been killed in gun battles with police. If this number shocks you, then we might ask a simple question. What part of the statement distresses one? Is it the fact that gun battles have broken out between suspected drug criminals? Is it that these suspected drug traffickers were killed extra-judicially without being found guilty by a trial in a court of law? Was it the number of drug suspects killed is so high at five-hundred? Was it something we may have missed in our quick summary? Perhaps we should slow down in the rush to judgement and place this number into perspective of the accomplishments Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in his eight weeks in office first and then discuss these introduction statements in context.

 

Yes, five-hundred were killed in gun battles in eight weeks, a total of nine suspected drug criminals each day. We agree that such is a bit shocking but what is even more shocking are the success numbers of efforts thus far which place all in sharp contrast. Thus far over four-thousand-four-hundred drug suspects have been arrested and are awaiting trial. That is a large number of arrests and that is not even the slightest bit of the success. Between those arrested and those who chose to resist arrest and died in violent gun battles approach five-thousand drug suspects out of action, that is nothing compared to this final statistic. There have been an astonishing almost six-hundred-thousand drug suspects and related operatives who have turned themselves over to authorities simply surrendering. This astounding and likely unexpected success has resulted in overcrowding in Philippine jails which were never expected to hold such numbers. We believe that Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte will find some alternative by which these suspects will be housed at military bases or other emergency facilities and many will likely be processed, then charged, followed by some very reasonable bails being set and the least offenders freed on their own recognizance and told they will be notified of their court date which they will be expected to present themselves or face additional and likely more serious charges of disobeying the courts. Meanwhile, after taking in the scope of the problem, is there any doubt that those who decided their odds were better in a shoot-out than a trial were actually the most guilty and the highest ranking drug lords and their security forces, the central core of what was obviously an enormous problem in the Philippines which President Duterte has delivered on a dangerous and difficult promise and done so spectacularly.

 

The one important and further ramification of the United Nations and United States State Department charges of human rights abuses and extra-judicial executions prompting threats to charge President Duterte with crimes against humanity and potentially genocidal practices are as ridiculous and they are familiar to us here. President Duterte had gone after and looking like having cleaned-up some dangerous and hard-core criminal enterprises which likely were costing the Philippine population numerous lives and making for a society where lawlessness was posing a threat and difficulty for those desiring to live in peace and security. Such a drug problem had to result in challenges to the authority of the government and pose serious threats to the Philippine citizens, especially those trying to be law abiding. Further, such a criminal enterprise must have been a huge drain on the economy and further made life difficult for the average law abiding citizens with lives threatened by such lawlessness in a similar manner as faced in Israel from terrorism and President Duterte and his government was threatened with the exact same threats as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israeli governance is threatened with as Israel fights terrorism. Even spookier was that the charges emanated from the United Nations human rights experts and the United States Department of State, the identical entities which make Israelis fighting terrorism appear to be a criminal enterprise against innocent terrorists just as the Philippine fight was criminalized as they brought innocent drug lords to justice.

 

The difference was the reaction from the Philippine President when compared to the passive and almost acquiescing apologetic Israeli reactions. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte took on his detractors from the United States and United Nations head-on and bluntly called them out. He challenged the United States on their fatal and very public shootings of black men in the recent past challenging to know how what he was doing was any different than these shootings by the police in the cities of the United States. He also brought up the viral picture of the five-year-old Syrian boy, Omran Daqneesh, which has gone viral online (see montage below). He stressed the lack of any progress and the lack of evidence that the people of Syria were being relieved of the heavy toll from the civil conflicts encompassing every corner and area of Syria where numerous disparate groups are warring each against the others with there being at least four distinct groups, Russia, Bashar Assad, Hezballah, Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps, Sunni Fighters, Islamic State and the Kurdish Militias for starters plus who knows who else. The big threat was that perhaps the Philippines would be better served separating from the United Nations as their efforts in Syria, Darfur, Libya and formerly in Rwanda, Central African Republic and the myriad of other trouble spots past and present which the United Nations had proved less than effective and in many cases where United Nations troops caused more problems than they relieved including running food for sex scandals in numerous places and their inability to enforce any order and being basically nonfunctional. President Duterte challenged the United Nations threatening to set up a group of nations initially with suggesting China and African nations to form a new international body. Perhaps Israel should assist with the formation of an actual international group of like-minded nations as a replacement for the United Nations though simply making agreements with select nations on a one-by-one nature and forge alliances more directly.

 

Five Year Old Syrian Omran Daqneesh
sitting in Ambulance in Aleppo Syria
After Being Pulled from Beneath Rubble of
Collapsed Building from Bombing Attack

 

Those who have followed or had direct experience with the United Nations and/or the United States State Department realize how much these sanctimonious organizations have rules of their own and definitions which they adjust to fit their preferred targets. Both organizations would rather target democratic states as their accommodations are often of a higher level of comfort and these targets are far more sensitive and less likely to shoot first and ask questions rarely. These organizations would prefer Israel to Gaza, Syria or most other areas in the Middle East. They would prefer to inspect Egypt from Alexandria or Cairo than the Sinai Peninsula or anywhere in Libya or the Sudan. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Gulf States are preferable to Yemen and almost anywhere is preferable to northern Nigeria where Boko Haram works their horrors. Europe is preferable to anywhere in the Third World.

 

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte

 

Their field inspections are more tailored to five star hotels than actual trouble spots. Their hypocrisy is only out done by their padded expense accounts’ and even that is a close race. They both avoid making accusation about police states such as China, Turkey, Myanmar or Turkey outside the main cities and even those are losing their luster. With the fine beaches and five star resorts in the Philippines and Israel, it is no wonder these two organizations have redundant subgroups all but assigned to giving first class air fare, placing these inspection bodies with reservations along the Tel Aviv beaches or the gorgeous resorts all along the northern Philippine Islands and Manilla. It is difficult to take almost anything either the United Nations or United States State Department accuse certain nation of being guilty of when these adjudications are more attuned to vacation season than actual criminal activities. What a world we reside in and we owe President Duterte a tip of our hats for making such needful accusations against the two grandest fraudulent hypocritical organizations on the planet.

 

Beyond the Cusp 

 

How Democracy Dies in Israel

 

Though we had discussed thoughts of this nature we could only obliquely refer to our suspicions but thanks to Caroline B. Glick for her article which is the meat of our commentary and worth reading as her manner and ability to cut to the bone and serve the meat on any subject is particularly poignant and we would feel as if we had deprived our readers of every morsel and fact within her article The Fruits of Subversion which we read in Jewish World Review which is one of many places where Carolyn Glick can be found. The discussion we will attempt will be to delve into some of the ramifications; both the potential, and the other simply dread and hopefully never come to pass. Needless to point out, adding to a Caroline B. Glick article is not a task for the queasy and in this endeavor failure is not only an option but even a probability. I guess by now we can simply assume that Caroline B. Glick is a reporter and editorialist extraordinaire whom we hold in high esteem. Now let us proceed and try and tackle this not so simple task and hope for the best.

 

There has been a shadow government operating in concert with the administration of a foreign power, that of President Barack Obama and the United States Department of State. This government has taken upon itself the pursuit of an agenda which is completely the opposite of that of the elected government. These individuals have taken upon themselves to assist the aims of President Barack Obama and report to the State department, administration appointees and even the Secretary of State or the Director of Central Intelligence Agency any deviations from the presumptive and United States approved policy potentially taken or in the plans of the government in Israel. Examples from the article included reporting the plans for a strike on the Iranian nuclear sites and we might discern that other such treasonous revelations granted the United States and Obama Administration would include any objections or arguments which Prime Minister Netanyahu might have regarding any peace and concessions and any resistance to of President Obama’s carefully laid out agenda which he and his tools in Israel believed to be superior and a better path for Israel going into the future and against the will of the voters and their elected governance. The problem is that this infection had spread throughout much of the highest ranks including the general staff as well as the intelligence community. Caroline Glick mentioned some names but we suspect, as does she more than likely, that the disease is rotting through many institutions who see their job description to include preserving the democracy their politics support, the people be damned, as what do the people know about the realities of the world and the best of paths for the state of Israel. Another place where this rot had held sway since the beginning of the state of Israel and through the same process of self-appointing replacements and choosing those of identical political philosophies while punishing those who hold contrary opinions even to the point of demotions or forced retirement from serving the country is the Supreme Court and likely the entire legal and judicial system.

 

Perhaps this might be a good time to confess that we did not vote for Likud and much of the reasoning was a dislike and distrust of Prime Minister Netanyahu and wished that there was some way of either limiting the number of total years or terms a Prime Minister is permitted to serve and after that set period of time they would need to set aside their leadership of the nation and allow another to be the representative of their party as Prime Minister even if they continued to lead the party. Such an example might be that Prime Minister Netanyahu after serving, say, a decade holding the office of Prime Minister he would need appoint another from the party, or better yet, have the party choose the new Prime Minister designate to represent that position for example it might be Gilad Erdan, Yuli Edelstein, Yerael Kats or any other Likud member in good standing. Perhaps with such a limitation allowing for fresh leadership even if the same party remains as leading the government year after year after year which might prevent the self-appointed demi-gods from perverting the elective process and the choices of the people and destroying the democracy in order, in their minds, to preserve the democracy.

 

Part of the problem, as we estimate the situation, is that due to sclerotic and often paralytic political power structure which retains a small group of leadership holding all of the positions including Prime Minister and his Cabinet that stresses the top positions in the military, courts, intelligence and other political and security positions which are not elected directly or indirectly by the people into using their privileged positions and access to the decisions, plans and other intelligence including both external, internal and even secretive plans which only the very highest military position and heads of intelligence have privilege to acquire and who are trusted by the people not to overstep their boundaries and serve the people and its government. What is even more disturbing is the seeming support these paragons of perfect knowledge, or at least self-perceived as such, have abused their positions and forfeited the trust of the people and the government they are presumably serving have been celebrated and even granted privileged acceptance and praises from their political allies who are leaning on these people of rank to allow for their political goals and views to be implemented through abuse of force and forfeiting the votes of millions of their nation’s citizenry. The actions of the previous Director of the Mossad, Maj. Gen. Meir Dagan, and commanders such as Deputy Chief of General Staff Maj.-Gen. Yair Gola, compared Israeli society to the Nazis on Holocaust Remembrance Day; the General Staff’s vilification of Sgt. Elor Azaria, for killing a wounded terrorist in Hebron; and the drumming from his position as a commander of an Infantry Company of Lt. Col. Shalom Eisner for striking a European leftist instigator who had earlier broken a number of Eisner’s fingers and caused other equally painful injuries which required medical treatment.

 

Ya’alon and General Staff

 

The general policy being empowered by these paragons of democracy, well, at least in their own minds, and that of the extreme leftists, the defeatists, the leftist media which is to say the majority of the mainstream media, the European Union, United Nations, European government and media, and worst of all the anti-Zionist, anti-Israeli Administration of President Barack Obama is one duly leftist in its approach to all policies and completely placating and forgiving empowering the Arab Palestinians and the terror infrastructure and support systems all in the name of peace at any price even to include the complete compromise of the freedom and identity of Israel as the Jewish State. The obvious question is why these generals are not simply forced from service and replaced with other senior officers who hold more reasonable understandings of the power and responsibility of the military to serve the governance elected by the people. One reason is that it is very likely that the Supreme Court would intervene and return these general staff officers and likely find some choice names of officers who are approaching senior positions and blame them for attempting to overthrow the general staff and they themselves would find themselves drummed from service and potentially incarcerated, thus is the established leftist shadow governance. As far as removing such generals from the IDF, such a move would necessarily require the support of the Defense Minister and MK Ya’alon leans left himself and would likely defend these generals and may be partly the reason that Ya’alon was chosen for the position such as to have a person who could work with the generals the IDF offered and not one to shake things up and rock the boat. The entirety of the system of unelected policy experts who are pursuing their own agenda is an echo chamber which amplifies the problem which will take a brave and ready to fall on their political swords for the nation and its people.

 

The final item we will attempt to cover is why it may be time to find a new Prime Minister to replace Netanyahu, from Likud if necessary. The nation needs a bold leader who is willing to take whatever steps are required to enforce the will of the people. Such a person would be, by necessity, somebody with an almost careless outlook and one who does not prefer the limelight and instead simply desires sacrificing to serve the nation and its people. Unfortunately such a person is unlikely as a parliamentary system is not usually capable of taking dire steps even when many see it as necessary. A Parliamentary system most often places a party functionary who has the right pedigree often the result of years of steady service to the party as a dedicated soldier. This is how Ya’alon became Defense Minister as did the rest of the Prime Minister’s inner cabinet. One of the complaints we have often heard was that there was such a seeming dearth of politicians who would be worthy of being the next Prime Minister. Even when other parties are added to the discussion with their presumed additional candidates there are still very few if any additional candidates who might excite the people, or at least none of us here. We did have one we would have hoped would offer themselves as a challenger for the office of Prime Minister as the lead of their party but they made a couple of defeatist comments, one in particular which displayed a serious deficiency which displayed they were not ready for prime time, let alone Prime Minister. If anyone has any ideas on a viable challenger, please encourage them as Israel cannot long survive these closed systems and their ruinous effect acting against the will of the people. The leaders in the legal systems, military, intelligence and law enforcement systems are presumed and designed to serve the people and the government and to implement the desires and policies of same, not take it upon themselves to be gods and rule taking power upon themselves simply because they see themselves as superior to the elected governance. Such is a closed system free of outside forces for change thus not reflecting the will of the people as they serve and should not be placing themselves above the people and their welfare, which is also against Torah.

 

Thank you all,

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Terror Lawyer Released While Jonathan Pollard Rots

The lawyer who represented the Blind Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman who masterminded and organized the first World Trade Center bombing among other terror defendants, Lynne Stewart, was ordered released due to health problems. Doctors claimed she has less than eighteen months to live as she has been diagnosed with breast cancer that has metastasized to her lungs and bones as well as type-2 diabetes and numerous other health problems. She was originally sentenced to ten years for having passed sensitive information she had received due to her representing the Blind Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman as well as messages from the Sheik to terrorist leaders and representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Her actions compromised numerous methodologies the United States had in use to monitor and track terror operatives. Among the information she passed on to terrorist leadership in Egypt and the Middle East included actionable information which permitted the terrorists to alter their methods so as to avoid American detection and possibly revealed names of operatives who had given the Americans information thus placing their lives at risk. During her resentencing trial it was revealed that the three judge panel of the federal appeals court had noted specifically that Stewart exhibited a “stark inability to understand the seriousness of her crimes.”

 

Meanwhile, Jonathan Pollard has begun his twenty-ninth year of a life sentence after being convicted of passing intelligence information to an allied power, Israel. While I would not try to minimize his crime, the information he passed has been defined as information of Arab military capabilities and assets and none was concerning any American assets or personnel and the information could have been covered under an agreement between the United States and Israel on information sharing which was ordered ignored by the State Department directing the Department of Defense. Even comparing the sentencing of Jonathan Pollard and Lynne Stewart makes one see that at least one of these two sentences makes little sense. Either Pollard was sentenced way beyond his crimes or Stewart was treated with kid gloves for her crimes. When a person who gave information on enemy military capabilities, assets and locations of the allied nation to whom the intelligence was given is sentenced to life while another who revealed methods and names as well as passing instructions to commit terrorist acts within the United States compromising the nation in numerous ways is sentenced to merely ten years there is some serious inequality in sentencing which should be obvious to anybody. Additionally, Lynne Stewart has never apologized or stated she had any regrets over her actions and has gone so far as to claim she had done nothing wrong as she was simply serving her client and conscience while Jonathan Pollard has admitted his crimes and apologized and shown contrition. As far as the argument that Ms. Stewart is in failing health, so is Mr. Pollard. Where President Clinton had promised to release Pollard as part of the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians but after the Israelis held up their half of the bargain President Clinton laughed in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s face and called him a sucker for having believed Pollard would actually be released. President George W. Bush likely asked his father, former President Bush, and his father’s advisors, the same advisors who had convinced the Judge in Pollard’s case to throw out the agreement of a plea bargain and throw Pollard in prison for life. I hold President George W. Bush responsible for not taking the effort to research Pollard’s case himself and instead relying on slanders from those who were responsible for the life sentence.

 

I know that there will be those who will claim that the people from the State department knew of other crimes and that Pollard had turned over to the Russians the names of twenty American agents from the CIA. There is one problem with claiming that Johnathan Pollard had revealed the names of American agents anywhere, let alone Russia. Pollard was a Naval photographic evaluator who studied spy plane and satellite photos and discerned rocket launching, air defense, and other military potential targets. His clearance was limited to the level necessary to complete those kinds of evaluations and interpretations. He had no clearance nor could he have ever had access to information such as the names of active agents or any other CIA information. His clearance was limited to Naval photographic files and the actual photographs, nothing more. He not only did not have any clearance for information on CIA spies, he had no access to any information from the CIA unless the CIA sent photographs to the Navy to be inspected and interpreted for information, an unlikely but possible scenario, but personnel information would have been far beyond any access that Pollard was cleared to receive. He worked at a Naval operations center and likely never even set foot in any CIA building anywhere or at any time. Perhaps if Johnathan Pollard had instead given information to the Muslim Brotherhood he would have been freed long ago, but he foolishly gave the information to the Israelis and did it without receiving the huge sums of money some have claimed. He has stated that what he had done was a bad error in judgment and he expressed remorse all to no avail. Yet without any contrition or remorse Lynne Stewart is going home and I am willing to bet she lives well past the eighteen months that she is claimed to have remaining to her. Where I feel sympathy for her illness, I still am suspect that soon we will hear of her remarkable turnaround and her cancer having gone into remission, meanwhile her serving of her sentence will also have gone into remission.

 

Beyond the Cusp