This guy, well thrug* really, is trail-blazing for what a Trump presidency might look like, making up policy as you go, swayed by gut insinct, rather than reason.
Apparently the Philippines is now a ally/client of China, the US state department is somewhat confused by the news.
* the elected president of the Philippines.
Ooooh, I shant despair, Mongers...he's not long for the Presidential Palace, the Philippine generals will see to that. This isn't Cory Aquino, and their armed forces enjoy their American equipment and training too much; I don't think industry-sponsored junkets to Beijing hold the same allure for them as the ones to LA strip clubs do. :D
Basically sold the country for magic beans to foreign enemies. He really is Trump like.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on October 20, 2016, 07:04:28 PM
Basically sold the country for magic beans to foreign enemies. He really is Trump like.
He's moving from one foreign power to another. Meh. Like seedy said he won't be around much longer.
Quote from: HVC on October 20, 2016, 07:07:48 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on October 20, 2016, 07:04:28 PM
Basically sold the country for magic beans to foreign enemies. He really is Trump like.
He's moving from one foreign power to another. Meh. Like seedy said he won't be around much longer.
That's rather under selling it. The country in question wants to annex Phillipino territory.
He should be more worried about visas for nannies and maids. A huge part of their economy is based on people sending money back and if the us tightens up visas in response then people will turn on him much quicker. Killing junkies is all fun and good until the money stream dries up.
QuoteWhat that means for the American "pivot" to Asia scarcely bears thinking about. But do the eyes deceive? American officials—from Admiral Harry Harris, commander in the Pacific, down—insist that all is dandy. Joint naval patrols continue, as does co-operation in Mindanao; and America still has five bases on Philippine soil. The close working relationship with Filipino counterparts, the Americans insist, is as strong as ever. The Filipinos, for their part, report no change of orders from the new chief.
:hmm:
Funny, when I say I prefer the character of an Oriental, IMMA RACISS
QuotePhilippines' Duterte in China announces split with US
Filipino president says he prefers "character of an Oriental" after meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/10/philippines-duterte-china-announces-split-161020131226993.html
President Rodrigo Duterte has declared the Philippines' "separation" from long-standing ally the United States during a visit in Beijing as he rebalances his country's diplomacy towards China.
Duterte's comments came after he met his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Tiananmen Square on Thursday. The two also pledged to enhance trust and friendship and played down a maritime dispute in the South China Sea.
"I announce my separation from the United States, both in military but economics also," Duterte announced at a meeting of Filipino and Chinese businessmen in Beijing.
The two leaders strode side-by-side down a red carpet inspecting an honour guard with children cheering.
Duterte is in China on a four-day trip seen as confirming his tilt away from Washington and towards Beijing's sphere of influence - and its deep pockets.
Xi called the two countries "neighbours across the sea" with "no reason for hostility or confrontation", the official Xinhua news agency said.
The two leaders held "extensive" and "amicable" official talks and oversaw the signing of 13 bilateral deals, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said.
Philippine Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez said his country and China will sign $13.5bn in deals this week. He did not elaborate.
Separately, the Philippines Presidential Communications Office said Xi committed more than $9bn in low-interest loans to the country, with about one third of that coming from private banks. About $15m in loans will go towards drug rehabilitation programmes.
Al Jazeera's Adrian Brown, reporting from Beijing, said Duterte's visit was "very significant" and a "diplomatic victory" for China, with the Philippines agreeing to resume bilateral talks after years of confrontation.
"A visit like this would have been impossible just six months ago, when the war of words between Manila and Beijing was at its height."
Richard Javad Heydarian, a political analyst, said by declaring a strong alliance with China, Duterte is going against the Filipino people's inclination towards the US.
"A survey just came out yesterday, which says that the US enjoys a plus 66 net approval rating. China has a negative 31 favourability rating," Heydarian told Al Jazeera.
He also said the Philippine military is "very predisposed towards the United States, while very critical towards China".
Since 1951, the Philippines has maintained a defence treaty with the US, which pledges that both countries would come to each other's defence in case of an armed attack.
The White House said on Thursday the Philippine government has not officially asked to end any security or economic ties between the US and Manila.
"We have not received any official requests from Filipino officials to alter any of our many issues where we bilaterally cooperate," White House spokesman Eric Schultz told reporters.
'Loud' and 'rowdy'
Under Duterte's predecessor, Benigno Aquino, the China and the Philippines were at loggerheads over the South China Sea - where Beijing has built a series of artificial islands - but since taking office in June the new head of state has changed course.
"Both sides agreed that the South China Sea issue is not the sum total of the bilateral relationship," Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin told reporters.
The two sides agreed to return to the approach used five years ago of seeking a settlement through bilateral dialogue, Liu said.
Duterte's visit to Beijing capped a series of recent declarations blasting the United States and President Barack Obama.
Duterte was quoted by the Manila-based website Rappler calling Americans "loud, sometimes rowdy. Their larynx is not adjusted to civility".
He said he prefers China "because it has the character of an Oriental. It does not go around insulting people".
Addressing the Filipino community in Beijing on Wednesday, the firebrand leader said the Philippines had gained little from its long alliance with the US, its former colonial ruler.
"Your stay in my country was for your own benefit. So time to say goodbye, my friend," he said, as if addressing the US.
He also repeated his denunciation of Obama as a "son of a whore". :lol:
I guess our supply of nurses will be cut off.
TIME FOR SPONGE BATH MR ANGUL YOU ROLL OVAH NOW
:lol:
It's hilarious, they travel in packs. Little, squat packs.
Where will we get lumpia
As a half-Flip, I give him 2 or 3 years before he's run out of office
Quote from: FunkMonk on October 20, 2016, 07:53:41 PM
As a half-Flip, I give him 2 or 3 years before he's run out of office
Lets just hope he doesn't take down too many people with him; in these coming two or three years he can get a lot of people killed.
Good. Protecting their stupid territory was definitely a drain on our resources. Now China can annex their territory and make them a puppet without any obligations from us. I don't even think that will hurt our commercial interests much.
grumbler's collection of Subic Bay ping-pong balls is going to skyrocket.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on October 20, 2016, 08:40:40 PM
grumbler's collection of Subic Bay ping-pong balls is going to skyrocket.
So it's true, that's why he has such great hand-to-eye co-ordination.
Quote from: mongers on October 20, 2016, 08:35:26 PM
Quote from: FunkMonk on October 20, 2016, 07:53:41 PM
As a half-Flip, I give him 2 or 3 years before he's run out of office
Lets just hope he doesn't take down too many people with him; in these coming two or three years he can get a lot of people killed.
He's already killed over a thousand.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on October 20, 2016, 08:40:40 PM
grumbler's collection of Subic Bay ping-pong balls is going to skyrocket.
Subic? Tame. Olongapo was where it was at. Adult Disneyland.
Grumbler has the Ostia wine goblet collectors set.
Quote from: grumbler on October 20, 2016, 09:16:30 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on October 20, 2016, 08:40:40 PM
grumbler's collection of Subic Bay ping-pong balls is going to skyrocket.
Subic? Tame. Olongapo was where it was at. Adult Disneyland.
:lol: "Subic? Ha! It's for tourists!"
QuoteArgument
Duterte's Flip-Flop Into Bed With China Is a Disaster for the United States
With the Philippine president ditching Washington for Beijing, the contest to control the South China Sea just got a lot more complicated.
By Max Boot
October 20, 2016
www.foreignpolicy.com
nternational relations theorists of a "realist" persuasion like to claim that states are rational actors pursuing their strategic interests in an anarchic world where power alone matters. Ideology and domestic politics do not much concern these thinkers; they believe that a nation's foreign policy is much more likely to be shaped by factors such as geography, demography, and economics.
This was the viewpoint of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, who famously tried to realign China from being a foe of the United States to a friend — never mind that the Chinese leader they had to deal with was Mao Zedong, one of the worst mass murderers in history. "Nixinger" believed, correctly, that China's interest in countering Soviet power would lead it to draw closer with the United States.
But even in the case of China the applicability of realist insights was limited. China did not begin the transformation that would make it a leading economic force and trade partner of the United States until Mao had died, replaced by the reformist Deng Xiaoping. Even today China is more foe than friend of America.
Today, the Philippines is Exhibit A in illustrating the limits of the realist conceit that some unvarying strategic logic governs foreign policy. The Philippines has seen a vertigo-inducing change in its foreign-policy orientation since Rodrigo Duterte became president this summer. This crude populist is now transforming the Philippines' relationship with the United States in a fundamental and worrying manner.
The Philippines is America's oldest ally in Asia, and until recently one of the closest. The United States ruled the Philippines as a colonial power from 1899 to 1942 and implanted its culture in the archipelago. In World War II, U.S. and Filipino troops fought side by side against the Japanese occupiers. In 1951, Washington and Manila signed a mutual defense treaty. For decades afterward, the Philippines hosted two of the largest U.S. military installations overseas at Clark Air Force Base and Subic Bay Naval Base. Those bases were closed in 1991 amid a wave of anti-Americanism, but the U.S. military presence has been ramping up again as the Philippines felt increasingly threatened by Chinese military expansionism. In 2014, President Barack Obama signed an agreement with then-President Benigno Aquino III that would allow U.S. forces more regular access to bases in the Philippines and increase the tempo of training exercises and military cooperation between the two countries.
Now that achievement looks increasingly like a dead letter. Duterte journeyed to Beijing this week to announce his "separation from the United States" in military and economic terms. "America has lost," Duterte said. He claimed that a new alliance of the Philippines, China, and Russia would emerge — "there are three of us against the world." His trade secretary said the Philippines and China were inking $13 billion in trade deals; that's a pretty hefty signing bonus for switching sides. Duterte said he will soon end military cooperation with the United States, despite the opposition of his armed forces.
What could account for this head-snapping transformation? Manila's strategic and economic interests have not changed. While China is the Philippines' second-largest trade partner, its largest is Japan, a close American ally and a foe of Chinese expansionism. The third-largest trade partner is the United States. The fourth-largest is Singapore, another U.S. ally that is concerned about China's vast territorial ambitions and aggressive behavior. Taken together, the Philippines sends 42.7 percent of its exports to Japan, the United States, and Singapore, compared with only 10.5 percent to China and 11.9 percent to Hong Kong. The Philippines gets 16.1 percent of its imports from China; almost all of the rest comes from the United States and its allies, including Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea. So it's not as if there is an especially pressing economic case for the Philippines to realign from the United States to China.
There is a pressing strategic case, however, not to do so. China continues to assert sovereignty in the South China Sea in violation of Philippine claims, as an international court ruled in July in a case brought by Duterte's predecessor. China wants to grab for itself what could be billions of dollars' worth of natural resources, from fish to oil, in the South China Sea.
Moreover, the Philippine people remain largely pro-American. English is the lingua franca of the Philippines. The Armed Forces of the Philippines have many decades of cooperation with the United States and have been built in the image of the U.S. military; they have no experience working with China's People's Liberation Army. Moreover, and despite Duterte's nasty rhetoric and ad hominems, the United States continues to express its desire to protect the Philippines.
This massive geopolitical shift is entirely Duterte's doing. It cannot be explained any other way. It is a product of his peculiar psychology.
He has long been ideologically hostile to the United States — he has called Obama a "son of a whore" — and he feels an ideological affinity with China's authoritarian rulers. Although elected democratically, Duterte is a strongman in the making. He has already violated the rule of law to unleash death squads that are said to have killed at least 1,900 people, including a 5-year-old boy, in the name of fighting drugs. He has cited Hitler as his role model: "Hitler massacred 3 million Jews. Now, there is 3 million drug addicts. I'd be happy to slaughter them." He has also said "I don't give a shit" about human rights. China's rulers don't put their worldview quite so crassly, but they, too, don't care much for human rights. The Duterte-Xi Jinping marriage thus seems like a natural match.
From the American viewpoint, Duterte's flip-flop — assuming it leads to a lasting strategic shift — is a potential disaster. Aligned with the United States and its regional allies, the Philippines can provide a vital platform to oppose Chinese aggression in the South China and East China seas.
If the Philippines becomes a Chinese satrapy, by contrast, Washington will find itself hard-pressed to hold the "first island chain" in the Western Pacific that encompasses "the Japanese archipelago, the Ryukyus, Taiwan, and the Philippine archipelago." Defending that line of island barriers has been a linchpin of U.S. strategy since the Cold War. It now could be undone because of the whims of one unhinged leader.
China could either neutralize this vital American ally or even potentially turn the Philippines into a PLA Navy base for menacing U.S. allies such as Taiwan, Japan, and Australia. At the very least, the U.S. Navy will find it much harder to protect the most important sea lanes in the world; each year $5.3 trillion in goods passes through the South China Sea, including $1.2 trillion in U.S. trade.
The opposition is already making hay over Duterte's China trip. A Supreme Court justice in Manila has warned the president that, were he to give up sovereignty over the Scarborough Shoal, it could result in his impeachment. The only good news from the American standpoint is that what Duterte is doing could be undone by a more rational successor, assuming that democracy in the Philippines survives this time of testing.
Max Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Quote from: 11B4V on October 20, 2016, 11:04:18 PM
Quote
nternational
:huh:
The first letter of the article is an art I, not a text I.
Quote from: grumbler on October 21, 2016, 04:59:58 AM
Quote from: 11B4V on October 20, 2016, 11:04:18 PM
Quote
nternational
:huh:
The first letter of the article is an art I, not a text I.
And even if it wasn't, seems a bit odd to call attention to a simple copy/paste error.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/21/asia/duterte-china-philippines-us/
tldr
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi1.kym-cdn.com%2Fphotos%2Fimages%2Foriginal%2F000%2F738%2F025%2Fdb0.jpg&hash=0e7cc0b55a85d4c88bce98a121e10b148675f9de)
So...wait what? Damn I guess back to the stupid South China Sea stuff.