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Comment by bigbugbag | Hacker News Reader

From what I gather of this article I should be siding with rappler but I can't help but strongly dislike rappler for being part of facebook's effort to destroy the internet with their internet.org thing.

I also have a hard time having sympathy for a news outlet that choose to live inside facebook and then complains for having to deal with facebook's shenanigans. You should know better than that and you kinda deserve what happens to you when you choose to be subservient to a global master.

On the other hand this Duterte guy seems to be the usual violent dictator kind and there is no way I can get behind that.

I guess it is a story of two evils, one involved in violence and death but limited to a national local reach and the other empowering the first while having deep global reach and influence on a third of the world population.

Reading this was informative and I've learned about something I was not aware of but this leaves me in an incomfortable place where I feel powerless to help and unhappy to choose the 'right' side.

I wish we could get rid of facebook, this thing is epitome of everything wrong in our western world.

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> I also have a hard time having sympathy for a news outlet that choose to live inside facebook and then complains for having to deal with facebook's shenanigans

This is like complaining about anticapitalists participating in capitalism. Just as capitalism is society here, so too is Facebook basically the Internet in Philippines. There isn’t really a choice.

Isn't he more complaining about capitalists participating in capitalism until other people make more money than them, and only then becoming anticapitalists? It's not a group that has always been anti-Facebook. It's a group that has been on the inside pushing Facebook for a long time until other groups co-opted Facebook to push an agenda they don't like. Now they want Facebook to silence those people.

They're closer to crony-capitalists who like capitalism as long as it benefits them, and then want to pass regulations keeping everyone else out.

Yeah, because they on Facebook's side as long as it didn't seem to be threatening human rights for them. Don't assume anyone not living in your cultural area has the same attitude against facebook on the spot. The Philippines were new to it, and Rappler now learned how dangerous it can be the hard way.

What do you mean by 'pushing Facebook'? Is someone with a blog 'pushing Blogspot'? I'm guessing they started on Facebook because it's free and that's where people are. You seem to be judging it like a startup whose primary aim is profit.

As stated by bigbugbag above:

> I can't help but strongly dislike rappler for being part of facebook's effort to destroy the internet with their internet.org thing

They weren't just users of Facebook. They were involved more deeply in Facebook and spreading Facebook.

https://www.rappler.com/technology/87234-rappler-smart-commu...

The news orgs have discovered placing 10th grade problem sets on the desks of 2nd graders is very lucrative.

It's what the Rush Limbaugh and Jon Oliver types do day in day out (and if you are observant with zero long term impact). All the news orgs are doing it too and they will never regain the trust they once had. Journalism was never about making people feel helpless. Today's journalism is about making people feel helpless for profit.

So my advice don't read stuff that's above your grade level.

I've always perceived how news outlets use fear for driving demand for more news, but this is the first time I read about them using helplessness, and it's intriguing.

And you sound like you have looked into this. Is there any relevant publication piece that goes deeper into this rationale?

Very thoughtful comment, thank you. What do you refer to as „grade level“? Political knowledge, personal range of power, personal sense of empowerment, or psych. ability to deal with hardship?

It is probably a reference to nuance and the fact that the real world is complicated, with multiple competing interests and perspectives. Children learn history in lessons that often have an implicit good-guys/bad-guys story hidden beneath it, while educated adults tend to be able to handle stories that have fewer good guys and bad guys and mostly just a bunch of guys pursuing their own self-interest within a particular environment that provides a specific set of available options. The problem is that the latter sort of lessons involve more cognitive effort and do not lead you to easy answers that make you feel like you are a part of 'the good guys.' John Oliver, much like Rush Limbaugh, tells simple stories of the former variety; stripped of nuance and complications that are intended to lead the recipient to a specific and obvious solution or outcome.

I'd relate it to the strong emergence of rage politics. Rage seems to transmit and spread much faster than any other type of meme.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc

This sounds presumptuous to me. People sometimes think that their perspective is better/more mature/clever/correct, while it is just.. different. They divide people into levels/classes in order to put themselves into the highest class. Given the high complexity of the world, any model falls apart if you look at it hard enough.

As an avid listener to both, Limbaugh is quite a bit more manipulative. I say that as a life-long Republican.

Edit: I should add that Limbaugh demonstrates an ability to use logic and analyze topics that makes me think he is being intentionally deceitful, mostly by leaving out relevant facts.

How does Oliver encourage helplessness? There's often a direct call-to-action at the end of particularly pointed segments, from contacting local representatives to the more frivolous hashtags for e.g. Phillip Morris. While I have issues with his style, the targets are usually well chosen.

With regards to your analogy...you would not have much luck encouraging a 2nd grader to improve their reading comprehension beyond 2nd grade by telling them to stick to a 2nd grade level of reading.

please - oliver is on the so-called-left end of the false dichotomy spectrum, whereas limbaugh is on the so-called-right end. both espouse a faux-popularism rooted in arguing against evil strawmen that lacks nuance and always slants towards greater centralized, large-entity control of society.

False equivalence. There's a legitimate argument that allowing one media group to stealthily control local media markets creates potential for mass misinformation. Or that allowing tobacco companies to litigate against entire nations health initiatives is a bad idea. Both are large entities wanting to steer society into alignment with their profit motive.

It's not nearly similar in lack of to calling women prostitutes and sluts for advocating that health insurance should cover female contraception. Or calling 13 years old girls, "dogs".

It's not to do with left and right. It's to do with a basic sense of civility.

Oliver’s segments often climax with the host desperately sputtering “its 2016 for Christ sakes!!!” His whole brand is pessimistic cynicism.

The person you replied to gave 2 specific examples of Oliver making calls to action. If you're going to refute that point, you need to provide examples as well, not just vague assertions. Remember, the meat of Oliver's show is the 15-20 minute segment that is well researched, credits sources and contains a call to action at the end. The most famous example is probably Oliver's video about Net Neutrality 2 years ago galvanised support for it and is used even today to explain NN to laymen. Its absurd to claim that the show promotes cynicism when Oliver always exhorts his viewers to do _something_.

If you're objecting to a "its 2016!" at the end of a throwaway 30-second joke then you're being too sensitive IMO.

>"It's what the Rush Limbaugh and Jon Oliver types do day in day out (and if you are observant with zero long term impact)."

Political satire is very different from actual news journalism. I'm not sure why you are conflating the two.

>"Today's journalism is about making people feel helpless for profit."

The news media selling anxiety and fear is not a recent development. There's even a very old newsrooms adage that states "If it bleeds it leads."

>I wish we could get rid of >facebook, this thing is >epitome of everything wrong >in our western world.

Well, if facebook is really epitome of everything, what's wrong in the Western World, then it (Western World) is doing quite well.

>> On the other hand this Duterte guy seems to be the usual violent dictator kind and there is no way I can get behind that.

An actress twitted that Duterte is a psychopath and his response was: "I leave her to her Constitutional right to free expression. She should enjoy that".

Dictator right? Some of Duterte's dictatorship plan include:

1. Federalism so that power can be spread throughout the country not in one place only 2. Freedom of Information

For those reading this thread who aren't aware of what's happening in the Philippines, this is the guy that you are defending:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/30/rodrigo-dutert...

>Rodrigo Duterte vows to kill 3 million drug addicts and likens himself to Hitler

For those who are only relying their information on the internet and who are not physically present in the Philippines that's a rhetoric.

Mass murder is mass murder even if a populace is brainwashed, though I would would wager when you have death squads wandering around and use the cover of drugs to take out political opponents to gain power most people would side with you out of fear anyway, like most oppressive dictatorships. People like you are disgusting, you want to support such mass murder on genocidal levels fine but don't be surprised when people shun you. If it we're up to me you should be the one getting murdered for supporting this shit rather than all the innocents killed so far and pending due to fucking chemicals.

People who have not been in the Philippines and are saying things that they don't know are just plain ignorant. For you to even accuse me of being disgusting just proves how naive you are about me and my country.

It is disgusting to support an administration that lies about the statistics of drugs to justify their failing war on drugs that has also taken the lives of innocents from children to bystanders (which the government simply called as "collateral damage" [0]). How many times has our government lied to us about the statistics?

2015 - 1.8 Million Drug Users from a study by the Dangerous Drug Board [1]

2016 - Duterte claims that there are 3.7 Million Addicts in the country [2]

2016 - Months later, Duterte claims that there'd be 4 Million by the end of September [3]

2017 - On May, Philippine Drug Agency says there's now 4.7 Million Addicts [4]

2017 - On September, Foreign Affairs Secretary (and Duterte's VP running mate) hiked the number to 7 Million Drug Addicts at a UN Assembly [5]

Tell me, if his war on drugs is such a success, then why is the number of junkies growing?

sources:

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/17/duterte-says-c...

[1] https://www.rappler.com/nation/146654-drug-use-survey-result...

[2] http://news.abs-cbn.com/focus/07/25/16/read-transcript-of-pr...

[3] http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2016/09/23/1626648/duterte...

[4] http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2017/05/04/1696547/pdea-ph...

[5] http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2017/09/28/1743577/cayetan...

The number is "growing" to give Duterte and his friends justification to ramp up and continue their mass murder campaign and allow them to continue convincing the brainwashed masses that they're in constant danger and need their "protection" from the evil drug zombie hordes.

It is disgusting to link sources from those Liberal Party leaning media outfit which we Filipinos know that are full of crap. Look for a journalist that is fair when writing news and I will acknowledge it.

So the UK's The Guardian is now a "(Philippine)Liberal Party leaning media outfit". That's an amazing troll.

I'll bite. What is your source of "fair" news these days?

You can find other references from both local and international media, even video recordings, if you think the links I posted aren't deserving of your attention.

You know we can read and hear Duterte's speeches for ourselves, right? Also, he's not unique, in either the Phillipines or the world. It's easy to compare him to Marcos or various other dictators that have engaged in brutal public order campaigns.

Are you suggesting that the video of that press conference is fabricated?

Why is my physical location relevant to criticising death squads executing people in the street?

Your physical location is relevant because your knowledge about what's going on in the Philippines is very limited. The fact that you are saying about death squads proves my point. THERE ARE NO DEATH SQUADS HERE! Watching a few videos doesn't make you an expert about Philippines.

I'm from the Philippines. Am I allowed to comment? There absolutely are police death squads roaming around, so much that Philippine National Police's involvement in the drug war had to be removed after there was too much outrage from the populace. They were even caught executing unarmed kids on CCTV for fuck's sake. Just because you're biased towards our fucktard President and can't accept the truth doesn't mean others are just as blind as you.

The "death squads" or criminals that you are referring too are already part of the police several presidency before Duterte took office. Some of them are involve in drugs and have been killing before Duterte came so why are you blaming the president now?

Because back then we didn't have a president that encouraged cops to just kill: http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2016/07/02/1598740/duterte...

Or congratulated cops after they killed 58 people during drug raids in a single week: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/17/544128734....

Those drug raids lead to the CCTV footage of cops executing an unarmed 16-year old kid who was already in handcuffs, btw.

Or has repeatedly vowed to pardon and ask for the reinstatement of the cops that have been charged with the murder of a drug lord inside his jail cell in the middle of the night: http://news.abs-cbn.com/news/03/31/17/duterte-vows-anew-to-p....

Those cops are now free on bail

"And if there is a resistance that would place your life in jeopardy, then by all means shoot and shoot him dead. That is my order"

To defend the people is one of the basic duty of all police here and abroad so what's wrong with that? That's the message of the first article that you linked.

Of course he will congratulate his men about putting their lives on the line for you and others. Plus of course his usual rhetoric (did you take that seriously?)

We all want those policemen found guilty of crimes to be in jail. But did you ever think of who will replace them? You want the military to uphold the law just like back in the martial law days in the 80's? We have a deteriorating police force for a very long time but thanks to Duterte there are a lot of new recruits today. I see them training every day on my way to work.

I assume those policemen would be replaced by other cops that HAVEN'T been found guilty of crimes yet, which isn't going to happen if Duterte keeps protecting dirty cops right?

No I don't want the military to be upholding the law, and I hope you do not too. Which is funny because Duterte has enforced martial law in the whole of Mindanao to quell a conflict in a single city which he himself has declared as already liberated back in October, and now there are rumblings of extending martial law to 2018. Doesn't that alarm you?

Well, there's lots of people who make excuses for police murdering people in the US too. Eventually the scale of the corruption and malfeasance becomes clear and then you'll say you were against these death squads from the beginning.

First you say there are no death squads, not at all no way, no you're saying those people were already in the police. When someone's story keeps changing like that it's always a bad sign.

Some drug people got killed by drug lords to hide their identity but media concluded it was done by death squads since the cases weren't solved until now. Probably there exists, but what's the concrete evidence?

Like this one where Maria Ressa, without further investigation, just published the news. Months later it was found out that the one who killed the guy was an assassin from the drug syndicate.

https://www.rappler.com/nation/185962-pieta-michael-siaron-d...

Actually it was the Inquirier that published that story, not Maria Ressa: http://www.inquirer.net/?page-one=july-24-2016

Your link is actually the government's rebuttal that it was a drug syndicate killing, which Rappler has dutifully published.

But then again, never let facts get in the way of your hate for Rappler right?

What do you mean when you say that's a rhetoric? How does that make it ok when he's saying he wants to be like Hitler and slaughter 3 million people?

it might not be okay in your country but in ours in came to a point that criminals here are not afraid of the law anymore. on my way to work i saw a criminal stabbed someone in broad daylight and then walk away like noting happened without fearing the police which is just a few blocks away.

Do you think Nazi Germany is a good model for how to fix your country?

Are you from Philippines? From what I know people there are quite happy of Duterte work despite the overzealous rhetoric. If you are in US I can't see how can you criticise him given that death penalty is quite widespread there and a lot of times the trial is a farce especially if you are black.

German people were happy with Hitler too. And the US had death penalty in the 1930s.

Do I need to have lived in Nazi Germany to talk about the crimes of the Nazis?

I'm not from the US and I'm a vocal critic of US governments, past and present. But even if I was American, the actions of the US government wouldn't be something it was within my power to change and wouldn't be relevant to what Duterte is doing.

Adopting the rhetoric of the Stalinist USSR isn't helping your case here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes

You need at least to know something about the things that you speak about. I can't really stand people that feel entitled to babel about everything without having the slightest idea of the subject they are discussing.

Well, as I said above, I'm in the Philippines, and I'm here to tell you that it's rather troubling what's going on here from a civil rights perspective. Hundreds of journalists have been killed here since the era of the Marcos administration, and the Philippines (and Pakistan!) are among the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists.

that's because a lot of journalists here can be paid. this is a fact. for example, a certain mayor in my city doesn't want to pay his electric bills so what he did was pay journalists to write black propaganda about the president of the electric company to destroy his reputation. and when that wasn't enough he paid the news commentator of an infamous radio station. this happened a decade ago.

For someone who likes to make such broad assertions you don't make any effort to substantiate them. And you're implicitly condoning murder as a response to journalistic corruption. How do I know you're not being paid?

The US has problems with criminal justice, but let's not even compare. Duterte is not even on the same league.

> Are you from Philippines? From what I know people there

Is his argument invalid if he's not in the Philippines, but yours isn't?

> If you are in US I can't see how can you criticise him given that death penalty is quite widespread there

Because maybe he doesn't support the death penalty in the US either.

> and a lot of times the trial is a farce especially if you are black.

As compared to the trials in the Philippines? Here's what it looks like:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/12/07/world/asia/ro...

My wife is from Philippines, I go there pretty much twice a year, I know a lot of people from Philippines, so maybe I understand their situation a bit better than the countless keyboard warriors that write here without even having put a foot in the country...

I'm writing this from the Philippines. The problem here is that this country has a very weak commitment to rule of law, even though the Constitution of 1987 is based on the US Constitution. The big difference though, especially with regard to the large number of extra-judicial killings that have been carried out under Duterte's administration and with his approval, is that the victims were killed without a trial at all. Say what you want about the US death penalty and the fairness of it, but you cannot be put to death in the US by the government without a trial and legal representation. The Philippines glorifies vigilantism and "banana leaf justice" (because the murdered victims are often covered with a banana leaf or a piece of cardboard with "pusher" scrawled on it) Whataboutism doesn't change that.

I heard a series of "on the street" interviews with Filipinos recently and one was with a couple, one of whom approved of Duterte and one who did not. When the guy, who approved of Duterte, was asked about extrajudicial killings he said something along the lines of "yes, that goes overboard sometimes. Aside from that he's good."

That attitude is even more unsettling to me, somehow. "Aside from all the murders he's committing, things are going well."

As far as I know he didn't commit any murder, do you have proof of the contrary?

Are you denying that there have been extrajudicial killings, or are you denying that the person who gives the order is responsible? Just curious.

> but you cannot be put to death in the US by the government without a trial and legal representation

I agree with you mostly, but um, if you pay attention our cops shoot and kill thousands of people per year, many of them unarmed. And we have a president that was lauding this practice (and praising Duterte). We're nowhere nearly as bad as Duterte, but we're heading in the wrong direction.

> shoot and kill thousands of people per year, many of them unarmed

Closer to one thousand, 10% of whom were unarmed (that 10% includes all the cases where police believed the victim was armed when they actually weren't; believed the victim was reaching for a weapon; believed the victim was using a car as a weapon; cops killing their wives/girlfriends while off-duty; etc.).

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/... (filter by "Classification" to see only gunshots)

Cops 'believe' everything is a weapon.

Granted.

One innocent person killed by police is one too many. Especially when they are acquitted every time.

you cannot be put to death in the US by the government without a trial and legal representation

You shouldn't, but you can certainly be killed by someone working for the government. You need to check this out, even though the video footage is disturbing to say the very least: http://www.newsweek.com/police-release-graphic-video-officer...

This is literally textbook Soviet-style whataboutism.

1. Assert people are happy with the system

2. Ask "What about the civil rights movement in the U.S.?" to deflect from human rights abuses

You're defending a guy who brags every chance he gets about murdering several guys. Are we supposed to believe that footage of him is fake?

Let me guess, you support Trump, too? I never would have guessed that so many of my fellow Americans were such authoritarians. I knew there were some, of course, but it looks like they may comprise around 30-35% of our population. Tough times ahead for the liberty-minded...

Look, I get the appeal of Duterte. I'm sure that a large percentage of Filipinos are happy with his behavior. That doesn't mean it's right.

Finally, tu quoque is not a very good verbal defense tactic. Most people disregard it other than the people who already agree with you. Most famous example of this technique is Stalin's use of "and you are lynching negroes" [1]. He wasn't wrong, but that didn't mean he wasn't also carrying out political murders on a massive scale. It's just poor rhetoric.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes

We've seen a lot of footage from your media that were edited. How do you explain that?

So you maintain that Duterte has not bragged about committing extrajudicial killings?

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