Speaker 1: Mmm, so we're back. I'm again Robert Evans, and this
Speaker 1: is Behind the Bastards, the show where we tell you
Speaker 1: everything you don't know about the very worst people in
Speaker 1: all of history. My guest today is Blake Wexler, and
Speaker 1: he did an album called Stuffed Boy and is a
Speaker 1: stand up comedian and a variety of other things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is this is part two of a of
Speaker 1: a two part episode on Rodrigudutarte. If you haven't cut
Speaker 1: part one, probably listened to that, but there will be labeled.
Speaker 1: So I assume if you're listening to this as part two,
Speaker 1: you've made a choice one way or the other, and
Speaker 1: we're just gonna we're diving into it now. I'm just
Speaker 1: getting into it. November of two thousand and sixteen was
Speaker 1: a surprising time for a lot of people around the world. Uh.
Speaker 1: It came at the end of a surprising election, uh
Speaker 1: for those of us in the United States. But I
Speaker 1: think we in the US allow an apology to the
Speaker 1: people of the Philippines because I don't think we had
Speaker 1: the craziest election of two thousand sixteen. Um, you remember,
Speaker 1: like how a couple of months before, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the the election came down that access Hollywood tape leaked
Speaker 1: and we got to hear a presidential candidate make laughing
Speaker 1: references to sexual assault. Remember that, how crazy that's saying.
Speaker 1: There's no way that guy won, right, There's there's no
Speaker 1: way another presidential candidate topp that in the same year.
Speaker 1: Only that exact thing happened because one month before the
Speaker 1: May two thousand sixteen Philippine presidential election, the clinical analysis
Speaker 1: that I read in the first part of this episode
Speaker 1: that declared Rodrigo du Terte and aggressive narcissist was leaked
Speaker 1: to a Philippine national television news station. Suddenly, every voter
Speaker 1: in the country knew that a mental health expert had
Speaker 1: declared a major presidential candidate to lack quote any capacity
Speaker 1: for remorse or guilt. And yet sixteen million people still
Speaker 1: voted for Rodrigo du Terte, more than enough to hand
Speaker 1: him the election. Part of why this happened has to
Speaker 1: do with the army of trolls candidate d Tete wielded
Speaker 1: to a great effect during the race. See du Terte
Speaker 1: has an active cyber army today, but according to New Republic,
Speaker 1: he's started using it from the beginning of his national ambitions.
Speaker 1: Quote November of two fifteen, when he decided to run
Speaker 1: for president, he enlisted a marketing consultant named Nick Gabonada
Speaker 1: to assemble a social media army with a budget of
Speaker 1: just over two hundred thousand dollars. Gabunada used the money
Speaker 1: to pay hundreds of prominent online voices to flood social
Speaker 1: media with pro dutarte comments, popularized hashtags, and attack critics.
Speaker 1: So what we had going on in our election, some
Speaker 1: of it directed from Russia, some of it just completely organic.
Speaker 1: He was harnessing himself to use and like it's it's
Speaker 1: as if Trump had actually been like getting on eight
Speaker 1: chan and four chan and like trying to get people
Speaker 1: to make memes and stuff like do tete was actually
Speaker 1: organizing a troll army. I assume he delegated a lot
Speaker 1: of that to people to the internet because he's like seventy.
Speaker 1: But still this was knowledge at that age, and this
Speaker 1: was a major part of his strategy because he very
Speaker 1: famously spent way less money on his campaign than any
Speaker 1: of his competitors because he knew where to focus it.
Speaker 1: He really well, I mean, you're gonna pay some to
Speaker 1: murderers that was already going up, but no onlike trolls
Speaker 1: online that was his thing, rather than like traditional advertising
Speaker 1: and whatever like. He realized that's not going to convince anybody,
Speaker 1: but a bunch of arguments on Facebook have a better
Speaker 1: shot at actually changing some minds. So the article of
Speaker 1: that New Republic, Sean Williams knows very well what it's
Speaker 1: like when when of dottertes mobs goes after a critic.
Speaker 1: He earned their attention after reporting on the bloodshed behind
Speaker 1: the new president's now national anti drug campaign. There's another quote.
Speaker 1: Her name was Madeline. She was young and attractive, with
Speaker 1: long hair and deep brown eyes. When I posted about
Speaker 1: de tertes war on drugs, Madeline responded with derision. Maybe
Speaker 1: you are anti Duterte troll all caps, she tweeted, a
Speaker 1: foreigner who knows nothing all caps about my country. She
Speaker 1: seemed to devote her waking hours to spreading her love
Speaker 1: of Deuterte and assailing anyone who questioned him, posting dozens
Speaker 1: of times a day my president and I am proud
Speaker 1: of him. One tweet reads get lost critics. So it's
Speaker 1: very familiar sounding. It's canny. Yeah, it's really it's really uncanny,
Speaker 1: and it seems silly. It is it is very silly,
Speaker 1: but the sheer flow of information did its job. Hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of paid and unpaid people successfully dominated much
Speaker 1: of the Philippines national digital discourse. Rodrigo de Terte owes
Speaker 1: a lot to our dear friend Facebook because in March fifteen,
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg announced that his company was partnering with smart
Speaker 1: Communications to release a free app called internet dot Org.
Speaker 1: This app provides free mobile Internet access to anyone with
Speaker 1: a smartphone, but it doesn't give users access to the
Speaker 1: whole Internet, just twenty four websites, including Wikipedia, ACU, Weather,
Speaker 1: and of course Facebook. Have you spotted the downside of
Speaker 1: this plan yet? So? The median age in the Philippines
Speaker 1: is twenty three as compared to like thirty seven point
Speaker 1: eight something years here in the United States. It's a
Speaker 1: very young country. Half of the nation's hundred plus million
Speaker 1: citizens are active social media users. At least one study
Speaker 1: suggests that Filipino people may lead the world in terms
Speaker 1: of time spent on social media an average of four
Speaker 1: hours and seventeen minutes per day, a half hour longer
Speaker 1: than the next highest at Blake Wexler. By the way,
Speaker 1: at the Philippines, at you're gonna get your tar tape
Speaker 1: mob on you, I hope. So you need the followers
Speaker 1: as followers man, the pr this guy sounds like a genius.
Speaker 1: Well so, I mean if this is like the perfect storm,
Speaker 1: because like at least when we started dealing with all this,
Speaker 1: most people have access to the Internet and the whole internet.
Speaker 1: What happened in the Philippines is that Facebook gave millions
Speaker 1: of people free mobile internet, but also in doing that,
Speaker 1: they created a separate walled Internet that millions of poor
Speaker 1: people were on, and the only reliable source sort of
Speaker 1: was Wikipedia, and the vast, vast majority of news came
Speaker 1: through social media. So you would see people posting about
Speaker 1: news on Facebook, but you wouldn't be able to click
Speaker 1: on a link to read about it, to like com
Speaker 1: or deny it. All you had was the misinformation spreading
Speaker 1: through social media because that the only internet Facebook has
Speaker 1: any vested interest in giving you for free, right, So
Speaker 1: they created a separate internet for poor people where disinformation
Speaker 1: was even easier to spread. And Facebook did this. They
Speaker 1: did this presuming to be nice, like that was the
Speaker 1: how they presented. I mean, obviously they just wanted the
Speaker 1: data on these people, but they didn't think about the
Speaker 1: fact that any repercussion whatsoever other than money, and do
Speaker 1: Tarte was like, oh, some millions of people now have
Speaker 1: access to Facebook, but nothing else. Well, let's hire people
Speaker 1: to spread propaganda on Facebook. It seems really worth the
Speaker 1: money and it totally was. When these people would see
Speaker 1: or participate in fights on Twitter or Facebook about mayor
Speaker 1: Do Tartes murderous policies, it would just look like one
Speaker 1: horde of angry people screaming at a smaller horde of
Speaker 1: angry people. There would be almost no way for people
Speaker 1: looking at this to research any of the claims being made.
Speaker 1: You might just side with whatever group seemed the most
Speaker 1: confident and prominent. Needless to say, fake news spread through
Speaker 1: the Philippines like wildfire. The book Fire and Fury in
Speaker 1: the Philippines gives a rundown of how adept to Tartes
Speaker 1: campaign was at using this to their advantage. One example
Speaker 1: of the government's use of fake news was a viral
Speaker 1: post by Juttes campaign spokesman Peter to Lavinia, which defended
Speaker 1: the war on drugs. Lavinians cited a report about a
Speaker 1: nine year old girl who was raped and murdered. He lambastad,
Speaker 1: human rightists, bishops and prostitutes for their failure to condemn
Speaker 1: what he called this brutal act. They, he said, we're
Speaker 1: derailing the government's war against drugs and crime and Trumpian style.
Speaker 1: He went on, Our righteous battles are fierce and relentless
Speaker 1: because we faced the devil himself. We cannot be softer,
Speaker 1: let our guards down, less we ourselves be devoured and defeated.
Speaker 1: Below this, he posted a graphic and distressing photograph purporting
Speaker 1: to show the dead child and her weeping mother. As
Speaker 1: the online news website Rappler would later point out in
Speaker 1: a series of articles which showed how the government was
Speaker 1: weaponized in the Internet, the photo was taken in Brazil,
Speaker 1: not the Philippines, so fake news big part of this election.
Speaker 1: Trolls were used to burnish the mayor's record and devout
Speaker 1: It was critical to his presidential campaign that he'd be
Speaker 1: seen as having cleaned up the city. One piece of
Speaker 1: evidence used to support this was a two thousand fifteen
Speaker 1: crowdsourced survey that had ranked Devour City is the ninth
Speaker 1: safest city in the world. Because you want to go
Speaker 1: too much higher than you know what I mean? It's
Speaker 1: way bigger cities out there who have legitimate people voting
Speaker 1: on them, as opposed to this in which it was
Speaker 1: just but still like, you have a bunch of people vote,
Speaker 1: you know, in your online mob vote for devour City
Speaker 1: is the safest city in the world, and you get
Speaker 1: up to number nine. That's good enough to get the election,
Speaker 1: and it cracks the top ten, cracks the top ten.
Speaker 1: That's not bad. So do Tear Taste trolls earned their
Speaker 1: money on a sliding scale based on how active they were,
Speaker 1: with salaries reaching up to two thousand a month, which
Speaker 1: you'll remember from the first episode, more or less the
Speaker 1: same retainer you get for being one of the leaders
Speaker 1: of the Devout Death Squad. Uh. These trolls are augmented
Speaker 1: by true believers and of course bots. Some research suggests
Speaker 1: that of all Twitter accounts that mentioned Rodrigo do Tearte
Speaker 1: are bots. Here's another quote from Free Republic. Elisair Carlos,
Speaker 1: a human rights advocate, was forced to change his Facebook
Speaker 1: profile after he received repeated threats of islands in a
Speaker 1: country where anti government activists have been killed during the
Speaker 1: Tear Taste drug war. Carlos takes such threats seriously, sometimes
Speaker 1: you go home, you're alone and you need to buy
Speaker 1: something from the store. He says, then the fear kicks in,
Speaker 1: which is again, these are not just petty criminals and
Speaker 1: stuff who have been killed a devout. There have also
Speaker 1: been journalists killed. There have been political opponents of his killed,
Speaker 1: and his president He's continued to do this sort of
Speaker 1: thing to like go after people who speak out against
Speaker 1: him because now there's just this precedent that people die
Speaker 1: in the streets a lot. People are gunning down in
Speaker 1: the streets a lot, and it's just these vigilantes, Like,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's what happens in streets. People die in streets. Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: cars are there, foot traffic is there, but death is
Speaker 1: the primary death inhabitor. Of course. Yeah, so do tear
Speaker 1: Te acknowledged hiring social media commentars for his campaign, but
Speaker 1: he denies running a digital army, just like he denies
Speaker 1: running a death squad. Sometimes sometimes he admits running a
Speaker 1: death squad. He denies it until he doesn't. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: was against the death squad before he started the death squad.
Speaker 1: Despite running by far the cheapest presidential campaign of any
Speaker 1: major candidate, Rodrigo dou Tarte one nearly of the vote.
Speaker 1: He was elected in May of two thousand sixteen, and
Speaker 1: his spokesman issued dou Tar Taste thanks to fourteen million
Speaker 1: social media volunteers. Once he was president, several bloggers who
Speaker 1: spread pro do Tarte fake news were given press credentials
Speaker 1: in July of two thousand seventeen, and Oxford University study
Speaker 1: revealed that roughly five hundred paide rolls were likely involved
Speaker 1: in do tarrtase online army. Oxford estimated that it would
Speaker 1: have cost him around two hundred grand to do so.
Speaker 1: This is a pretty good value for the money. When
Speaker 1: do Tarte was told about this study, the now president replied,
Speaker 1: Oxford University, that's the school for the dumb perfect and
Speaker 1: you know what fun their dictionary is, Amryan Webster guy,
Speaker 1: the school for the school for the dumb. I've been
Speaker 1: saying that for years. On June two sixteen, right after
Speaker 1: his inauguration, Do Tarte visited the slum of Tondo and Manila.
Speaker 1: He told a crowd quote, if you know of any addicts,
Speaker 1: go ahead and killed them yourself, as getting their parents
Speaker 1: to do it would be too painful. He's a humanitarian.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's nice. That's nice. Just go ahead kill
Speaker 1: a drug addict so his mom doesn't have to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's because before the mom's had to kill their own
Speaker 1: and that was a dark era. Right. We're more humanists
Speaker 1: now we kill drug addicts for their mothers. Right, that's nice. Uh.
Speaker 1: In August of two sixteen, President du Terte announced his
Speaker 1: new NARCO list of more than a hundred and fifties citizens,
Speaker 1: many of them local government officials, judges, or police. They
Speaker 1: were all stripped of any police escort. Any who were
Speaker 1: serving as officers were relieved of duty. By this point,
Speaker 1: just a few months into his presidency, eight hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty two people had already been killed in the now
Speaker 1: national drug war. When questioned by reporters about his list,
Speaker 1: the president explained that if suspects showed the slightest violence
Speaker 1: and resistance, I will tell the police shoot them. By
Speaker 1: early two thousand seventeen, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency revealed
Speaker 1: that the NARCO list had been expanded to more than
Speaker 1: six thousand suspects. This is somewhat at odds with the
Speaker 1: reporting of The New York Times, who suggests the list
Speaker 1: may have over a million names by now. Quote said
Speaker 1: do terte in October, the human rights people will commit
Speaker 1: suicide if I finish these all, which again, there's never
Speaker 1: any hiding this. He's he's never not pretending to be
Speaker 1: a terrible, terrible monster. Jesus. Yeah uh, here's the New
Speaker 1: York Times. The list was a distilled essence of do
Speaker 1: ter taste appeal, a raw and brutal effort at law
Speaker 1: and order, whatever the cost. As of October, the president
Speaker 1: enjoyed an eighty six percent approval rating nationwide. His popularity
Speaker 1: was greatest among the poorest Filipinos surveyed. Family members of
Speaker 1: the drug Wars casualties, on several occasions told me they
Speaker 1: supported Dottertase violence, even as they insisted their sons and
Speaker 1: daughters were targeted and accurately, Which is if you get
Speaker 1: people to believe that, like, yeah, that sort of tough
Speaker 1: justice thing is the only way to keep the country safe,
Speaker 1: and they'll be like, yeah, man, it's just a shame
Speaker 1: that they got Mark, Like yeah, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: if Mark has to go, he's got to go. He
Speaker 1: did sniff glue. You know, he was a glue stick.
Speaker 1: He was a glue stiffer. And he stole a cell
Speaker 1: phone that one. I mean, the point of the matter is,
Speaker 1: no death squad is perfect. You know, you can't hold
Speaker 1: a death squad to an unreasonable standard. You know, a
Speaker 1: death squad, I would say, you want a death squad
Speaker 1: to be at least accurate. But anymore than that, you're
Speaker 1: kind of asking for the moon, you really are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they don't. You don't want them going to some
Speaker 1: shitty college like Oxford right now, that's our university. They
Speaker 1: do their own research poorly, I would imagine. Uh so
Speaker 1: do Tote had won six and a half million more
Speaker 1: votes in the next most popular candidate in the presidential election,
Speaker 1: so it was not particularly close. The public seemed to
Speaker 1: eat up his promises of unspeakable violence and death. In fact,
Speaker 1: after his election, the president started to claim that he'd
Speaker 1: killed three suspected criminals while he was mayor of de
Speaker 1: Vous City. The way he tells it, it it sounds like
Speaker 1: he ambushed three people and gunned them down in the street.
Speaker 1: He's very proud of this. He also claims to have
Speaker 1: thrown a rape and murder suspect out of a flying helicopter. Well,
Speaker 1: here's here's just a quick question. It's not like a bus,
Speaker 1: you know, like where you just happened to run into
Speaker 1: someone that you don't know who happens to be a
Speaker 1: rape and murder suspect. Like why were they in the
Speaker 1: same Like there's the pilot, there's the co pilot, there's
Speaker 1: the president, and then there's a rape and murder suspect.
Speaker 1: Like how many people are in this helicopter just wandering in?
Speaker 1: I'm assuming what he's talking about is like when Pinochet
Speaker 1: was president, it would capture communists, they would take them
Speaker 1: up in helicopters, and that's how they'd executed that. It
Speaker 1: wasn't an opportunistic thing. It was just it's just like,
Speaker 1: who then is this rapist? So I'm the president, what
Speaker 1: do you do? Well, I'm a rapist. Your seat belt, sir,
Speaker 1: door opened. It would be kind of cute if it
Speaker 1: was just serendipity. Yeah, well that's a weird coincidence. You're
Speaker 1: the president, I'm a rapist. Oh well, just push me
Speaker 1: right on out, jump up into the blades. Oh boy, Rodrigo,
Speaker 1: you know, now that he's president, has managed to stay humble.
Speaker 1: He insists that his colleagues continue to call him mayor.
Speaker 1: This is somewhat fitting because do tear te more or
Speaker 1: less does the same things as president that he did
Speaker 1: his mayor, just on a grander scale. One of his
Speaker 1: first priorities after being elected was to secure a massive
Speaker 1: increase in the Presidential Intelligence Fund, which can be used
Speaker 1: with the president's discretion with no oversight, to do things
Speaker 1: like pay assassins on motorcycles to murder drug users in
Speaker 1: the streets hypothetically. Hypothetically, hypothetically, you could also use it
Speaker 1: birthday parties, of course, streamers instead. We don't have to
Speaker 1: name all the things. Let's just name that one. And
Speaker 1: and in fact, disbursements from the Intelligence Fund are not
Speaker 1: itemized and unless supported by agencies, and receipt of the
Speaker 1: money are not audited. So that's nice. It increased roughly
Speaker 1: from like fifty million dollars the year before to ten
Speaker 1: million dollars now that do Chete was president. And yeah,
Speaker 1: he gets to use it basically on whatever he wants.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's that's kind of neat. He gets to
Speaker 1: like buy gifts and rewards for like for people he
Speaker 1: wants to bribe, and he also gets to buy bullets
Speaker 1: for people that he wants to kill people and pay
Speaker 1: the money for killing people. That's nice. We should have
Speaker 1: have a presidential intelligence fund that just is completely unaccountable,
Speaker 1: like a good time. Yeah, i'd be good with a
Speaker 1: president with intelligence. Thank you so much. We'll be right back. Nice, nice,
Speaker 1: It is about time. I know that you were joking
Speaker 1: with that ad break, but let's do an actual ad
Speaker 1: break and fucking blow some people's minds. I'll take it.
Speaker 1: Buy some products. We're back, boy, howdy. I mean, those
Speaker 1: products and services were just so much better than the
Speaker 1: products and services that came on during whatever last ad
Speaker 1: break you'll listen to. Yeah, I feel comfortable saying you
Speaker 1: build off the previous one, which is a professional thing
Speaker 1: to do. Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely, always taking steps forward and
Speaker 1: never taking steps backwards, unless you're taking a step backward
Speaker 1: in order to make a long jump forwards like Seaquille O'Neal. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Or one of those assholes on a hike who walk
Speaker 1: up backwards to work the front with the front part
Speaker 1: of your life. Does that happen in a lot of hikes.
Speaker 1: I'll see him. I mean, that could be your death
Speaker 1: squad thing, but it could be what you use your
Speaker 1: death squad for. The al Right, well we've got two
Speaker 1: things for the death squad. People who make their own
Speaker 1: speed limits and people who walk backwards on ice. All right, See,
Speaker 1: everybody's got a death squad if you really think hard
Speaker 1: at it. And I challenge you listeners at home, pick
Speaker 1: your death squad target. Everyone's got a group, you know,
Speaker 1: all right, So do tartes first year in office saw
Speaker 1: ten thousand deaths from his now national death squads. Now
Speaker 1: you may note that is three times as many people
Speaker 1: who died during the Bloody Rain of Ferdinand Marcos. So
Speaker 1: he is in the first year, in his first years yea,
Speaker 1: and Marcos had like fourteen years. Is dictator and fucking
Speaker 1: do Tartes not even dictator yet? And he's he's already
Speaker 1: way better at killing people. So I'll give that to him.
Speaker 1: Like he's a better dictator than Ferdinand. He's better at
Speaker 1: murdering people than Ferdinand. Move scho he moves fast. He's
Speaker 1: not a lazy president riot. You would not say that
Speaker 1: about him, although he does not like to get up
Speaker 1: early in the morning. Not one third of the people
Speaker 1: shot dead were by the police. The vast majority two
Speaker 1: thirds died in vigilante hits by killers. Writing in tandem, Now,
Speaker 1: writing in tandem is sort of a phrase in the Philippines.
Speaker 1: A bicycle built for two, right, it's two people on
Speaker 1: a motor site. Right. And this technique was first pioneered
Speaker 1: by Griselda Blanco, who we did an episode on. She
Speaker 1: was most likely the inspiration for this strategy because Rodrigo
Speaker 1: dou Tarte is a huge fan of true crime novels
Speaker 1: and I think the show Narcos, so he seems to
Speaker 1: get ideas. He invited like a true crime novelist over
Speaker 1: to the country to hang with him instead of God. Like,
Speaker 1: he seems to get a lot of his ideas from
Speaker 1: these things. And he clearly saw like, oh, motorcycle assassins,
Speaker 1: that's a really good way to kill people in this Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a great way because you don't have to worry
Speaker 1: about traffic. You know, that's true. Yeah, it's sensible. It's
Speaker 1: the only way to run a death squad in a
Speaker 1: city with severe urban congestion. Yeah, I mean, you can't
Speaker 1: do it from an suvdeo. Oh my god, can you
Speaker 1: imagine Jesus, No, what a waste of gasoline. I mean,
Speaker 1: you only have so much money in the slush fund, right,
Speaker 1: It's just it makes more sense. It's just good economics exactly.
Speaker 1: An awful lot of little kids have died, and that's
Speaker 1: an ugly I'm sitting that one out. A lot of
Speaker 1: children died in the crossfire of this drug war. Refers
Speaker 1: to these dead children as collateral damage. Here's the Guardian.
Speaker 1: Do Tart said those cases would be investigated, but added
Speaker 1: that police can kill hundreds of civilians without criminal liability.
Speaker 1: He gave a hypothetical example of an officer using an
Speaker 1: M sixteen rifle when dealing with a gangster who wields
Speaker 1: a pistol. Quote when they meet, the exchange fire with
Speaker 1: the policeman in the M sixteen, it's one burst burr
Speaker 1: and he hits the thousand people there and they die.
Speaker 1: It could not be negligence because you have to save
Speaker 1: your life. It could not be recklessness because you have
Speaker 1: to defend yourself. So if a policeman fires a thousand
Speaker 1: rounds wildly into a crowd because the one guy had
Speaker 1: a gun, that's okay, oh my god. Which is like,
Speaker 1: it's like the problems we have now with police in
Speaker 1: our country, but taken to the nth level, because here
Speaker 1: we'd be like at least and people panicked and like,
Speaker 1: you know, the right thing wasn't done, but it was
Speaker 1: not purposeful. And he's just like, no, you can fire
Speaker 1: a thousand rounds doing fuck it? Yeah, you ahead again,
Speaker 1: right one. I mean that guy with the gun could
Speaker 1: have killed ten people, upwards of a dozen people off
Speaker 1: to save ten. Yeah. Of course the checks out um
Speaker 1: dictator math would be a fun class to teach, associated
Speaker 1: it would. On Christmas two thousand sixteen, twelve year old
Speaker 1: Christine Joyce Salog was shot and killed in the car
Speaker 1: park of her church is she left Christmas Mass. The
Speaker 1: bullet that killed her was alleged to have been fired
Speaker 1: by a mask man on a motorcycle, aiming at someone
Speaker 1: else who also died in the attack. At least thirty
Speaker 1: one children were shot dead in the first six months
Speaker 1: of the national drug war. The youngest victim was four.
Speaker 1: In August and early September of two seventeen, ninety six
Speaker 1: people were killed in Manila in the space of what
Speaker 1: the police called a one time, big time assault on
Speaker 1: drug dealers in the capital. Here's fire and fury in
Speaker 1: the Philippines. The first to die was seventeen year old
Speaker 1: can Lloyd Delo Santos and Calocan City, on the northern
Speaker 1: fringes of Metropolitan Manila Police claimed that he was a
Speaker 1: meth dealer who had fired at cops during a raid.
Speaker 1: They had acted in self defense, they said, after he
Speaker 1: had opened fire on them. But for once, CCTV footage
Speaker 1: emerged that told a very different story. It clearly showed
Speaker 1: two plainclosed police officers dragging the teenager away before he
Speaker 1: was shot dead in a rubbish strewn alleyway. His body
Speaker 1: dumped next to a pig sty. He was found with
Speaker 1: a hole in his head and another gunshot wound to
Speaker 1: his torso, grasping a pistol in his left hand. His
Speaker 1: parents said their son was right handed. Justice Secretary Battaliano
Speaker 1: Aguir the Second described the killing as an isolated case.
Speaker 1: Human Rights Watch said that to deliberately target children for
Speaker 1: execution marks an appalling new level of depravity in this
Speaker 1: so called drugs war. So people started to have issues
Speaker 1: with all of the murdering. Can's funeral became a giant
Speaker 1: pro test march against the new drug war. More than
Speaker 1: five thousand people took to the streets. Many of them
Speaker 1: were family members of people who've been murdered by duteier
Speaker 1: taste hired guns. The government was forced to investigate, and
Speaker 1: the Justice Department actually did look into the killings. This
Speaker 1: led to the firing of the entire person police force
Speaker 1: in the city of Calucan, where Kan had been killed.
Speaker 1: They were ordered to receive forty five days of training,
Speaker 1: and then most of them were rehired and reassigned other stations,
Speaker 1: which you may recognize as not being fired. Right, right,
Speaker 1: and also very odd for the Catholic Church, which he
Speaker 1: hates so much. He's taking an exact strategy that they
Speaker 1: used by reassigned. Oh my god, I didn't even think
Speaker 1: about that. But he is doing the rape priest thing,
Speaker 1: but with cops that shoot children, right, Yeah, remarkable, one
Speaker 1: of the worst sentences I've ever heard. Priest with cops children.
Speaker 1: It's just a bang, bang bang of horribleness. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: really yeah, but efficient, a very efficient sentence and accurate. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: we'll say this for the Catholic Church, they know how
Speaker 1: to cover up a crime for a while, for for
Speaker 1: a while. So yeah, Can's parents met with Duterte, who
Speaker 1: told them those who had committed wrong would not go unpunished.
Speaker 1: This was not enough to stop the Catholic Church from
Speaker 1: condemning Duterte for all of the deaths. Deuterte did not
Speaker 1: actually give a funk what the church had to say,
Speaker 1: as I noted in the first episode. In two thousand sixteen,
Speaker 1: after Your Pope Francis's motorcade caused a traffic Jaman Manila,
Speaker 1: he called the Holy Father a son of a whore. Now,
Speaker 1: this particular phrase is if you haven't guessed the president's favorite.
Speaker 1: The exact term he uses is putang ena, which translates
Speaker 1: roughly to son of a whore. Apparently, some people count
Speaker 1: his p i s fire and Fury actually makes the
Speaker 1: claim that there are people who sort of like listen
Speaker 1: to his speeches to see how many times he'll say
Speaker 1: son of a whore, and so far the record is
Speaker 1: forty eight times in a forty five minute speech, which
Speaker 1: is a lot of times. It does make it seem
Speaker 1: like less of an attack on the Pope. He just
Speaker 1: can't stand like, that's just like a comma for this guy.
Speaker 1: What was the speech on you know, like, oh, I
Speaker 1: have no idea um that would be, but yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's probably Yeah. When Philippine priests condemned do Tarte for
Speaker 1: slandering the Pope, do Tarte responded, we are all the
Speaker 1: creations of God. We have God given talents. The talent
Speaker 1: that God gave me is cussing. Instead of blaming me,
Speaker 1: blame God because he created me. Bullet proof logic. You
Speaker 1: gotta give it to him. There the ultimate deflection. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: God made me. He made me good at saying fucking whore.
Speaker 1: Whatever right you pray to him, You pray to him,
Speaker 1: you ask him. Yeah, I'm just doing what's natural. Um Now.
Speaker 1: President do Tarte did eventually apologize to the Pope, but
Speaker 1: he seems to honestly have very little control over his mouth.
Speaker 1: In the moment when he met with thein Secretary of
Speaker 1: State John Kerry, he called the U. S Ambassador America's
Speaker 1: gay ambassador. Uh and he meant gay as a slur
Speaker 1: and is a literal thing. It's it's kind of hard
Speaker 1: to tell. He called President Barack Obama a son of
Speaker 1: a whore in two thousand and sixteen, and then apologized
Speaker 1: for that too. In June of two eighteen, Rodrigo dou
Speaker 1: Tete really shot for the moon and declared God stupid.
Speaker 1: Here's just going after God, the guy everything. Here's the
Speaker 1: BBC reporting on a speech he gave in Devour City,
Speaker 1: asking who is this stupid God? Mr do Tart criticized
Speaker 1: the biblical story of creation and Adam and Eve being
Speaker 1: thrown out of the garden of Eden after the eighth
Speaker 1: of forbidden Fruit. You created something perfect and then you
Speaker 1: think of an event that would attempt and destroy the
Speaker 1: quality of your work, He said, so really has some
Speaker 1: logical problems with God? Right, fair enough, there's some holes
Speaker 1: in that story if you poke enough. Yeah, yeah, oh boy, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll get to the fallout of calling God stupid because
Speaker 1: it's not great in a country where like nine people
Speaker 1: are a Christian. Yeah, now, right now. One of the
Speaker 1: big debates in Philippine politics, alongside should we be murdering
Speaker 1: drug users and petty criminals in the streets, is whether
Speaker 1: or not President do Tete is going to clare martial
Speaker 1: law like his predecessor Ferdinand Marcos and like the U.
Speaker 1: S Military before Marcos Uh. In May of two seventeen,
Speaker 1: around one Muslim fighters laid siege to the city of
Speaker 1: Marawi on the island of Mendano. In response, the president
Speaker 1: declared martial law across the island. So not all of
Speaker 1: the Philippines in the island of Mendana, which is also
Speaker 1: the island where devout city is. Fire and Fury discusses
Speaker 1: an address he gave the soldiers on Mendano shortly after
Speaker 1: the declaration quote. He sought to reassure them that should
Speaker 1: they be accused of committing abuses under martial law, he
Speaker 1: would take personal responsibility for their actions. Then he joked,
Speaker 1: if you raped three, I admit it, that's on me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: no one laughed. But when social media exploded withoutrage, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what Fire and Fury says. No one laughed. I
Speaker 1: wasn't there. The ultimate fool me. Once you're raped three people,
Speaker 1: that's on me. Social media exploded with outrage. Chelsea Clinton
Speaker 1: attacked Uterte, said he was a murderous thug with no
Speaker 1: regard for human rights and a sickening sense of humor.
Speaker 1: Rape is never a joke. Not funny ever, so that
Speaker 1: Chelsea Clinton went after the President of the Philippines. Not
Speaker 1: sure why she wound up seeing his tweets, but whatever,
Speaker 1: it's worthwhile thing to attack him on. Do Tarte did
Speaker 1: not wait for his pr people to figure out a
Speaker 1: good response or some way to spend the story. He
Speaker 1: gave another speech a little bit later to naval officers
Speaker 1: and devout and reminded Miss Clinton of her father's affair
Speaker 1: with Monica Lewinsky. Here's do Terte talking to naval officers,
Speaker 1: but really talking to Chelsea Clinton, because I don't think
Speaker 1: he's a big Twitter guy. These hors they hear rape
Speaker 1: like Chelsea, she slammed me. I was not joking. I
Speaker 1: was being sarcastic. I will tell her when your father,
Speaker 1: the president of the United States then was screwing Lewinsky
Speaker 1: and the girls in the Office of the President on
Speaker 1: the table on the sofa, how did you feel did
Speaker 1: you slam your father? Which if you thought locker room
Speaker 1: talk was bad, try Filipino naval ship talk. That's pretty
Speaker 1: bad as well. This gives me to something. One of
Speaker 1: the nicknames he's gotten is like the Trump of the Philippines,
Speaker 1: which I don't think is fair. He is way worse
Speaker 1: than Donald Trump, saying so much grosser and more violent
Speaker 1: and like scary, right uh? And and also but who
Speaker 1: is because they both admire each other, Like you said before,
Speaker 1: they really get along. Yeah, I'm sure almost the same person.
Speaker 1: They are, just yeah, ones more openly violence. Well, I
Speaker 1: feel like do Tarrte is Donald Trump if he had
Speaker 1: physical courage because Do Tcharite is clearly not afraid to
Speaker 1: get and dirty. Put Yeah, like his Les Kanyes, the
Speaker 1: guy who claims to have been one of the heads
Speaker 1: of the di squad, claims that he's watched the president
Speaker 1: kill eight people. I can't imagine Trump doing that. I
Speaker 1: just don't think he's got the stomach for He isn't
Speaker 1: like one of the biggest narcissistic assholes in the world
Speaker 1: Trump is, but he is also a coward. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: they is the opposite of a coward. He's certainly not
Speaker 1: a physical coward. He's willing to like get into the
Speaker 1: fucking MUCKs say that for him. He's also really attacking
Speaker 1: Chelsea Clinton. He in a way that's very gross. So
Speaker 1: in October of two seventeen, Steven Seagal came to visit
Speaker 1: Rodrigo do Tarte. Of course course, of course, Steven Seagal
Speaker 1: came to visit you ter day. I'm surprised he wasn't
Speaker 1: already there. He just has a home there. The two
Speaker 1: hitted off. Seagal was in country to do location scouting
Speaker 1: for a film about illegal drugs and other crimes. Apparently,
Speaker 1: what he said, they took a picture together, punching towards
Speaker 1: the camera, and it's it's everything that you would expect.
Speaker 1: It will be incredible, but it's it's a great picture.
Speaker 1: That's one website behind the bastards dot com. Steven Seagal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the guy really knows who to associate himself with. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The president allegedly told Segal that he believes movies reflect life,
Speaker 1: then talk to him about his plans for the drug
Speaker 1: war quote. Segal endorsed him in exchange, confiding that he
Speaker 1: had made close to a hundred visits to the Philippines
Speaker 1: over the years, Although he didn't say why, what he
Speaker 1: did say was that he was a big fan of
Speaker 1: the president, who has been instrumental in making the Philippines
Speaker 1: a safer place. Steve. We all know why, stevens galen
Speaker 1: of the Philippines a hundred times. And it's gross. They
Speaker 1: don't need to say anything more about and it is gross.
Speaker 1: It's super gross. I'll so, I feel like you can
Speaker 1: predict that with any vacation Steven Seagal makes, there's probably
Speaker 1: one reason he's vacationing there. And it's gross. Steven Seagal, Right,
Speaker 1: oh god, that's disgusting. Film poison poured into a heavy suit,
Speaker 1: whatever kind of suit he's wearing in that that's a
Speaker 1: solidified cylinder of milk. Yeah yeah, he does look like
Speaker 1: what happens when a human being curdles, right. Uh. In
Speaker 1: February of eighteen, President Do Tete gave a speech to
Speaker 1: two hundred communist guerilla fighters who had surrendered. A quarter
Speaker 1: of them were female. During the speech, he specifically instructed
Speaker 1: his soldiers not to kill any female fighters they encountered
Speaker 1: in the field, shoot their vagina, because without that they
Speaker 1: are useless. He then addressed the surrendered women, we won't
Speaker 1: kill you. We will just shoot your vagina. If there
Speaker 1: is no vagina, it would be useless. And he's referring
Speaker 1: to the women women, right yeah, yeah, yeah, Rodrigod tarr
Speaker 1: te everybody. Yeah. Uh. For the first year or so
Speaker 1: that he was in power to Tear, his approval ratings
Speaker 1: were unassailable, But in more recent months it seems like
Speaker 1: he started to stumble. It's kind of hard to say
Speaker 1: because I've I've found some surveys and whatnot say that
Speaker 1: his approval ratings dropped after the calling God's stupid comment
Speaker 1: down Like, but that's just one. Another said fifty six.
Speaker 1: I found another couple that say he's still very popular
Speaker 1: in the seventies or eighties. So these aren't numbers being
Speaker 1: filtered through the government. These are actually these are other
Speaker 1: people trying to figure out what's going on. It does
Speaker 1: seem like his approval rating has fallen, particularly in the
Speaker 1: last six months. Growing inflation seems to be a big
Speaker 1: part of that. So it's not clear if all of
Speaker 1: the murder and vagina shooting comments have actually had an
Speaker 1: impact or it's just because the economy stumbled. But it
Speaker 1: seems like he maybe finally losing some support, but there's
Speaker 1: also evidence that he is still very popular, So I
Speaker 1: don't know. It's like, what do you have to do?
Speaker 1: It's almost in another just mirroring Trump is when Trump
Speaker 1: said that like fam is quote where he could shoot
Speaker 1: someone in the middle of the street and it wouldn't
Speaker 1: affect anything. To Tarte literally shot multiple people in the
Speaker 1: middle and his approval rating scott and he got elected president. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he became Yeah, people were big fans of that. Interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: Rodrigo Jutarte is something of a hypocrite on the matter
Speaker 1: of drugs. According to Fire and Fury in the Philippines.
Speaker 1: Deutarte has confessed to taking several times the prescribed dosage
Speaker 1: of the powerful painkiller fentonyl, the synthetic opioid on which
Speaker 1: the musician Prince overdosed and died. When it was reported
Speaker 1: that himself was a drug addict, he retracted his claim
Speaker 1: and said he'd been joking. Side effects of this highly
Speaker 1: addictive drug include mood swings, cognitive abnormalities, confusion, trouble concentrating,
Speaker 1: feeling sad or empty, in erectile dysfunction, although this would
Speaker 1: be countered by his enthusiastic embrace of viagra, which he
Speaker 1: is publicly bragged about. So no evidence that that is
Speaker 1: an actual thing that he takes. What a fucking drug cocktail?
Speaker 1: That is like a bunch of fyl board that is
Speaker 1: war heart crisis speedball. Yeah, we hope it's I hope
Speaker 1: it's bad for his So as as we speak to,
Speaker 1: Chart is currently trying to convince both houses of the
Speaker 1: Philippine Congress to reintroduce capital punishment. If that happens, they
Speaker 1: will be the first country in history to ban capital
Speaker 1: punishment and then reintroduce it. Do Charte has said he'd
Speaker 1: like to put five or six people to death every day.
Speaker 1: As you might expect, he's never a dollman for journalist
Speaker 1: to cover. On one occasion, a Filipino journalist asked about
Speaker 1: the president's health. He called the assembled journalists sons of whorse,
Speaker 1: and then he asked the reporter who questioned him, how
Speaker 1: is your wife's vagina? Is it smelly or not smelly?
Speaker 1: Give me a report. So this is the president in
Speaker 1: a press conference to National News. Another time, he was
Speaker 1: he's saying that it's inappropriate to ask if he's in
Speaker 1: good health. You're the president. It's always appropriate to make
Speaker 1: sure you're in good health. You're the president. It is
Speaker 1: our business, you're the press. Yeah, okay, I'm sorry. I
Speaker 1: was trying to apply a logic to a logical situation,
Speaker 1: and now he's just a mad Yeah. Another time, he
Speaker 1: was asked about what he planned to do to protect
Speaker 1: journalist in the Philippines, the deadliest country in Asia for journalists.
Speaker 1: Five I think have died at least since he took office, responded,
Speaker 1: Just because you're a journalist, you are not exempted from
Speaker 1: assassination if you are a son of a bitch. So
Speaker 1: it's good to know it. Qualifier. Yeah, it's hard to
Speaker 1: say how serious Rodrigo is about that or half of
Speaker 1: the ridiculous things he says. The president is on record
Speaker 1: is saying that out of every five things he says,
Speaker 1: only two are true and the other three are just
Speaker 1: wise cracks. That's why it's hard to know if his
Speaker 1: next plans for the nation include an expansion of the
Speaker 1: state of martial law. In Mendano, when asked about that,
Speaker 1: he has said, quote, you know, I have to protect
Speaker 1: the Filipino people. It is my duty. And I tell
Speaker 1: you now, if I have to declare martial law, I
Speaker 1: will declare it. I will declare martial law to preserve
Speaker 1: my nation. Period. So he's probably gonna de clare martial law. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or he is joking because you know how funny martial laws.
Speaker 1: That might be one of those three out of five
Speaker 1: statements that he's joking about it. I wonder he's claimed
Speaker 1: to kill people at least three times, so the odds
Speaker 1: are he's at least not lying about one of the
Speaker 1: murders that he's admitted to committing. Rodrigo do terr te
Speaker 1: quite the fellow. How do you feel having learned all this?
Speaker 1: I feel great, I feel good. I find energize. I
Speaker 1: feel like it's motivating me to do more with my
Speaker 1: life and and lie more often. And that does seem
Speaker 1: to be one of the through lines of all these
Speaker 1: bastards is that if you just keep lying and saying
Speaker 1: insane things to people and and shouting and then accepting
Speaker 1: responsibility whatever, accept responsibility, call everyone a son of a whore,
Speaker 1: have people's shot. That is, if I was going to
Speaker 1: like write, what's this famous self help book people like
Speaker 1: the purpose Driven Life, perfect the death Squad Driven Life,
Speaker 1: you could do a do terr Te themed version of
Speaker 1: that and it would have a lot of good advice
Speaker 1: for politics and murder, yeah, which are unfortunately have come
Speaker 1: together as one thing in this podcast. They're inextricably intertwined. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: well this has been great. Yeah, you want to plug
Speaker 1: some plug doubles before we I am blake Lex. That
Speaker 1: was just me stalling for a time, so I said
Speaker 1: my own name, um black blocks dot com at black
Speaker 1: Star on Twitter. And then a new album, Um stuff boy,
Speaker 1: my stand up comedy album is out on everywhere you
Speaker 1: download that ship beautiful. You can find us on behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards dot com. All the sources for this article
Speaker 1: will be available. You can also find us on Twitter
Speaker 1: and Instagram at at bastards Pod. We have t shirts
Speaker 1: and coffee mugs and phone cases and stuff with all
Speaker 1: sorts of funny googos on them. You can get them
Speaker 1: on the behind the Bastard store for t public so
Speaker 1: check that out to the money goes to me so
Speaker 1: that I can buy narcotics um, so yeah, help me
Speaker 1: not be as sober as I am right now in
Speaker 1: the second. Anyway, check us out. We'll be back next
Speaker 1: Tuesday and every Tuesday from now until the end of time,
Speaker 1: and until then, I love about