Hacker News Reader

Comment by OoTheNigerian | Hacker News Reader

>It's a stupid, petty argument that is continuously peddled by figures in non-Western countries as a justification for doing whatever they like.

Thomas, you may not not realise you have just written a one line thesis for the justification of colonialism.

"You brutes have no idea to run a society. We'll come show you how"

Of course, you most likely do not think in such nasty terms however, that is the translation.

You're a 20 year old Aussie (I checked your website). You know the history of your country so I will not have to educate you on the result of preventing people "doing what they like" with regard to their culture and customs.

Are you/your ways superior to the people that voted him to do EXACTLY what he is doing? You called his one week old government "totalitarian". Forgetting he was elected for a 6 year term. Is that system they like stupid and petty too? Or should they come take instructions from you? Your country?

View on HN

> Thomas, you may not not realise you have just written a one line thesis for the justification of colonialism.

> "You brutes have no idea to run a society. We'll come show you how"

And you've just proved my point about democracy and human rights being dismissed as Western colonialism.

What's your alternative to democracy and human rights? A dictatorship that can have anyone it dislikes executed?

Colonialism might have been what brought democracy to many parts of the world - but the two are not one and the same (in fact, colonialism was regarded by many in Europe as being opposed to human rights and democracy). Many former colonies have tossed democracy and the rule of law out the window before - and it hasn't worked particularly well.

> You know the history of your country so I will not have to educate you on the result of preventing people "doing what they like" with regard to their culture and customs.

Well, Australia isn't an authoritarian regime, is it? I'd say that having elections with the government's power constrained by a constitution is going quite well.

> Are you/your ways superior to the people that voted him to do EXACTLY what he is doing? You called his one week old government "totalitarian". Forgetting he was elected for a 6 year term. Is that system they like stupid and petty too? Or should they come take instructions from you? Your country?

Of course I think my political beliefs are superior - that's why they're my political beliefs. I don't go around supporting a political ideology I believe to be inferior. It just so happens that extrajudicial executions are fundamentally opposed to my belief in the goal of a liberal democratic society.

I didn't call Duterte's government totalitarian - I agree that one week is not long enough. But if he's still asking for drug dealers and addicts to be murdered in a year I'll happily call him authoritarian, totalitarian, etc.

I understand he was elected for a six year term. That doesn't justify disregarding the rule of law (the same rule of law that make those elections every six years), nor does it morally justify murder.

The Philippines shouldn't be forced to take instructions from Australia - but that doesn't magically make criticism disappear. I'll criticise Duterte all I like, and I hope the Australian government criticises him too in the future.

Let's get to some definitions here. Is a country democratic if it has local elections and at the same time segreggate their own and drone other nations - while removing democratically elected presidents ?

> Is a country democratic if it has local elections and at the same time segreggate their own and drone other nations - while removing democratically elected presidents ?

I assume you're referring to America. And my answer would be that yes, as abhorrent as segregation, drone strikes and backing coups in other countries is, that doesn't nullify the elections held within that country. It's still a democracy.

So You're agreeing with me that this is bullshit and US is not a democracy? After all, Obama was elected to halt Wars and we are on the brink of WWIII. You vote but don't get what you elect. Now, if we add big money to the sum, I would say the American polítical regime is the worst in the world.

No, actually I said that the US is still a democracy.

People voted for Obama and they got Obama. Obama may have said what he wanted to do in office back in 2008 and then not been able to achieve those things, but that doesn't make the US undemocratic. That's how representative democracy works - you vote for representatives, not policies.

Well Filipinos voted for this President who was very clear on his policues and they got him and he is doing what he promised. Democracy right though perhaps not to everyone's taste. What is then the objection?

Well, I object to the policy itself in the first place. Extrajudicial executions, regardless of whether or not a popularly elected president encourages (or even orders) them, are fundamentally contrary to the rule of law and basic human rights.

Edit: Additionally, extrajudicial executions are a sign that Duterte doesn't respect the law. If he continues to encourage vigilante killings, there is precedent for him to encourage law breaking in other areas. Who's not to say there won't be electoral laws being flouted?

Do you think the American political regime is worse than Venezuela's? Vietnam? Thailand? Brazil? Libya? I think the majority of people would argue the list of superior systems is 90% shorter than the list of inferior.

Yep. After all, the political problems of the ones you cited all goes back to the American regime.

> I would say the American polítical regime is the worst in the world

But not for the people living there.

People supporting Trump (right wing), people supporting Bernie Sanders (left wing) and BLM (both) don't agree with this. But yeah, you have a great piece of America's population that got a lot from this world-wide regime.

If you're calling the political system in the United States a 'regime', then both Sanders (as a legislator) and Trump (as a member of both parties and donor) are both a part of it. Both Sanders and Trump support the American political system as much as Clinton.

Both are part of the regime, but people that support them do it because they don't feel included in the political system.

To be fair, he is referring specifically to a liberal democracy, which isn't just "democratic".

By the way, I hope you realize this borders Ad Hominem. Does the US have it's issues that it needs to solve? Yes. Does that somehow void out argument that extrajudicial killings are okay? No.

As many others have pointed out, the difference is you have BLM here and Atlantic articles that point out drone strikes publishing in the US, and there is some movement (although, not as rapid as many of us would wish for) on the ground to make things better. With extrajudicial killings, it seems reasonable to assume that if there will be evil, it can be easily covered up by the powers that be, labeling critics as drugees and moving on.

One of the things about the West and the US is that you even hear about our ills and evils, while countries like China and Russia stiffle criticizing voices within their own populace. That gives the appearance of "hypocrisy" while to me, it is more like evidence of a freedom of press that we should be proud of.

> As many others have pointed out, the difference is you have BLM here and Atlantic articles that point out drone strikes publishing in the US, and there is some movement (although, not as rapid as many of us would wish for) on the ground to make things better

Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lybia, Syria. I disagree with you that any of these events created a better ground for the next one. I would say exactly the opposite, as the US govt started to drone even their own citizens.

And Crimea and Tibetan monks is okay?

Again, we aren't perfect saints, and we have evils that we need to fight from certain politicians and yes segments of the population who are ignorant to the effects of our "foreign policy". I'd even argue the anti-interventionist rhetoric of Trump and Sanders is part of why they are popular, so that group of pro-interventionist, I-Don't-Give-a-Fuck-About-Non-Americans group is quickly shrinking.

But the entire point of my comment, which you seem to have filtered out in your reply is that you read in popular US media about these issues, from many in the US mainstream press. Where in Russian media will you hear about the Crimean invasion? (A negative perspective, at least) Or the plight of Tibetan monks in China?

The world isn't black and white, but the idea of liberal democracy I think is a worthy ideal, even if we fall short of it precisely with what we have done in the Middle East, towards left-ist governments in South America. At the very least, the fact we can even have this conversation is a testament to the (possibly degrading) freedom of speech that we are lucky to have in the US and one that seems to be waning now in Philippines specifically.

> At the very least, the fact we can even have this conversation is a testament to the (possibly degrading) freedom of speech that we are lucky to have in the US and one that seems to be waning now in Philippines specifically.

I'm sure some agencies of your country already knows (or may know, if they need/want) that I don't think good stuff about this "western" democracy and the US intervention in other democracies. This is not freedom of speech. This is terror.

> "You brutes have no idea to run a society. We'll come show you how"

That's quite an irrational leap from what he said... It could also be:

"We've tried all this before, we know democracy works better, so we suggest you implement it as well."

"We suggest..?"

Lol

Tell that to the people who had democracy bombed into them.

Austrália and US are a great example of democracy and miscegenation. Bad lucky to the "rhodesian people", they didn't killed enough natives to win the land and Institute "democracy".

Mugabe is trying his best to pick up where rhodesians left off. Not sure if has surpassed them, but he is getting close.

I don't think anyone is claiming superiority either way. Britain just voted brexit in free elections mainly for stupid reasons.

The point is, there are two patterns here which should be of concern: a popular leader calls for violence and vigilante style justice. In the long term this a non-stabilizing policy and likely to do a bit of economic damage. The second is that I give it a fifty-fifty that Duarte will run through a legislation that will turn him into a president-for-life. These types of scenarios usually go bad, take Zimbabwe for example.

I'm not saying 'going tough' would not work in the short term - but there is no reason the president should concentrate on this single issue except to stir popular support. Just removing crime won't make rhe all other problems go away. I would claim 'going tough' is the ultimate cop out move by any statesman since it removes attention from other problems and does not help build anything new.

> Thomas, you may not not realise you have just written a one line thesis for the justification of colonialism.

The point is, how do you rebut this without using human-right thesis ? If enlightenment is to be discarded, why should people not invade your country and reduce its population to slavery ?

He doesn't talk about superiority or not letting people handle their shit. But that doesn't mean you can't criticize them.

"Are you/your ways superior to the people that voted him to do EXACTLY what he is doing?"

Yes, people might have supported him to get results in a serious matter, but people did not (and neither they had the competence to) specify the details. Could he instead tell the masses to rattle out the drug dealers and the junkies so the law enforcement could apprehended them for future trials? No, here was a call for mass murder, plain and simple! Do the killers have to prove that the killed were drug dealers? Are the killers known at all? (You know, to be hold accountable if it happens that their victims had nothing to do with drugs?) We're talking about the difference in the means to the same desired end of drug problem. An important difference!

He was clear with his methods BEFORE electios https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/09/philippines-el...

Not the usual bait and switch.

Like was pointed out, drug dealers are free to surrender. And some have done so.

http://news.abs-cbn.com/news/07/09/16/thousands-of-drug-push...

My own gripe is pontification of the west when it comes to the business of other countries.

West has all the right to "pontification" since only the West has thus far delivered a high standard of living coupled with respect for human rights.

There are no shortcuts, there is no magic authoritarian fairy dus you can apply and leapfrog the West, we have tried it all and it always ended in disaster. We have seen time and time again, both in our societies and in the developing world, that authoritarianism is self-sustaining and despite initial success will always lead to reduced political competition and an economic and social standstill.

You can do whatever you like in your countries and vote madmen, but we will always condemn such moves, we will always refuse to abed them and we will were always proved right. The cry of colonialism is exactly what these mad men need to stay in power and you are uneducated enough to fall for it.

>West has all the right to "pontification" since only the West has thus far delivered a high standard of living coupled with respect for human rights.

I'm not sure if you are being sarcastic. But I am sorry to inform you that "development" of the west was borne out or slave labour. It is just that simple.

The was did not get developed in the past 50 years. I know, it sounds so shocking, but it is true.

In 40 years when countries are going to be invaded for industrial pollution (that's if the concept o countries still exist) the "west" and people like you would be stating, " you can be developed industrially without polluting the environment".

The facts may be unpleasant, but they remain fact.

I am from Latvia. We did not own any colonies and we were slaves ourselves. But we are democracy and we are for rule of law. We have quite high standard of living. And this standard of living was not created by slave labour or oil. Don't fall for politicians who blame everything on West. You have been independent for some time already. Killing of people without a trial will not make Your country any better. It will make it worse.

Didn't think I'd have to scroll this far to see some sense. Thanks

In the last century The west has not only engaged in 1 but 2 global wars. Then topped that by holding the world hostage with nuclear annihilation. In addition to engaging in a variety of proxy wars in developing countries where they liked to install puppet dictators. All of this in the name of democracy.

And let's not even get started with the bullshit in the Middle East.

The west has no grounds to state they respect human rights when history clearly shows they do not.

Two wrongs don't make a right

If those wrongs were 100 years ago that may be the case. But they still perpetuate that violence, as can be shown in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Do as I say, not as I do?

Chile?

"Like was pointed out, drug dealers are free to surrender. And some have done so."

How is this an answer to preventing the worse of what currently is? The extrajudicial killings in the name of wiping out the drug problem can (and I presume that it also will) be abused to whatever means. If murder was present before, this president just made it a whole lot easier! "Killed? Oh, well! Probably just another bunch of drug dealers who didn't surrendered when they had the chance." Is this what you're supporting?

Also some of the drug dealers have surrendered and been killed anyway http://news.abs-cbn.com/news/07/09/16/oplan-tokhang-surrende...

How many widows are alive in India today because of the British?

You bring up a good point; and Pakistan has lots of extra metal to use thanks to the Americans.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com