Philippines Duterte: God told me to stop swearing
Source: BBC
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte says he has promised God he will clean up his famously vulgar language.
Arriving in his home city of Davao after a trip to Japan, Mr Duterte said God gave him an ultimatum on the plane.
"I heard a voice telling me to stop swearing or the plane will crash in mid-air, and so I promised to stop," he told reporters at the airport.
Mr Duterte's blunt speaking, often directed at the West, has contributed to his popularity at home.
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Read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-37795957
WTF?
truthisfreedom
(23,152 posts)icymist
(15,888 posts)He's probably one of those people who smoked a lot of weed in his youth and then got real paranoid. Just like that there are some people who should not drink, there are some people who should not do pot. Because it makes you think. A lot.
jmowreader
(50,562 posts)shenmue
(38,506 posts)If he asked for more peanuts.
4bucksagallon
(975 posts)the Davao Gulf. I am avoiding it for a while 'coz I just know Gawd is gonna hit the city with a tsunami, earthquake, volcanic eruption, or meteor strike...... soon.. Dirty Duterte can't keep his tongue under control.. If I lived in Davao City I would consider moving outside the city limits... LOL...
HAB911
(8,911 posts)47of74
(18,470 posts)And like Bush, it's not the voice of God talking to him either.
AgadorSparticus
(7,963 posts)Helen Borg
(3,963 posts)Gotta start somewhere!
paleotn
(17,946 posts)of folks who hear voices in their head
They're crazy!
CentralMass
(15,265 posts)Dorian Gray
(13,498 posts)retrowire
(10,345 posts)The new Ghaddafi.
dalton99
(781 posts)FailureToCommunicate
(14,020 posts)Liberalagogo
(1,770 posts)geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)ansible
(1,718 posts)The Philippine political system is so horribly corrupt it makes ours look like a utopian system. Duterte was the only one who wasn't part of the entrenched family clans that have controlled the country since the spanish colonial era. Only 12 families control 95% of the country's wealth and are worth billions while the average filipino lives on less than $1 a day. That's why he won to begin with, he was an outsider who promised to shift political power away from Manila, especially since he's not a tagalog.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)metalbot
(1,058 posts)Duterte considers drugs to be one of the most serious problems in the Philippines, so he's killing drug dealers. We consider terrorism to be one of our most serious problems, so we send drones over Pakistan and kill people that we think are terrorists (along with thousands more who aren't). The US then turns around and calls out Duterte on human rights violations for doing what is arguably the same thing that the US is doing. In response to US criticisms, Duterte reaches out to other world powers who aren't going to call him out on an international stage.
[Side Note: Thaksin, prime minister of Thailand during the early years of the "war on terror", provided direct military support during the Gulf War, as well as intelligence support in detaining key terrorists in Thailand. Like Duterte, Thaksin launched an extrajudicial campaign against drug dealers, which the US condemned, to which Thaksin responded "You know, the US is a really crappy ally - it's really all about what's convenient for them"]
I know that analogy is a stretch, but it's not a huge stretch. We can argue there are mitigating circumstances, that we would actually go arrest terrorists in Pakistan if we could, and that we'd bring them to trial (except our history says that if we did arrest terrorists overseas, they would likely be shipped to somewhere outside of the US justice system).
I know a lot of poor Filipinos who are big Duterte supporters. They are pretty fed up - they've seen power go back and forth between the same handful of families for the last 200 years, and economic development in the PI has significantly lagged that of many of its immediate neighbors. While there can be some analogies drawn between Trump and Duterte based on the lack of a filter between their brains and mouths, they are really representing opposite ideological ends.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)You just need to say someone is a drug dealer or abuser and you have the right to kill them.
It's nuts.
Anyhow, the Chinese are going to be colonizing the place, so presumably murder will eventually be considered a crime there one day.
metalbot
(1,058 posts)He legalized murder in much the same way that the US did by saying "killing people in sovereign nations using drones isn't really murder as long as someone told us that one of the guys in the car was a terrorist".
I'm not sure that what Duterte is doing is much different from a moral perspective, yet there have been more posts on DU since Duterte's election about his extrajudicial killing program than there have been about our own similar programs.
I'm fairly certain that most Filipinos would argue that drugs are a much greater threat to their country than terrorism is to the US.
Again - not arguing in favor of murdering people for being suspected drug dealers, just pointing out that the US doesn't really have the moral authority to condemn this.
haele
(12,673 posts)Chinese in authority positions are very concerned about respect and "face" - if he starts swearing at a major Chinese investor out of habit, he'll either lose any negotiating position he may have, or that investor will just leave.
He's the type of sociopathic bully who uses the word "God" as a marketing tool - a way to convince the locals he's a good, moral leader by saying the right words, and still doing whatever he wants to do.
He's still a mob leader. The only difference is that he preys on gangster competitors to as a PR stunt instead of preying on the general public.
Haele
roamer65
(36,747 posts)Except throw in the secession of a few states as well, like CA.
closeupready
(29,503 posts)That would be seriously frightening.
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)Killing is ok, but just don't swear, because that's really bad.