President Duterte in First 5 days killed 30 Dug Dealers - Seized $19M USD 40Lbs Drugs Near Taiwan - China Boundary

Philippine President Rodrigo R. Duterte on his 5^th day of office. Photo: The Daily Caller

President 'Duterte Harry' Of The Philippines KILLS 30 Drug Dealers In First 5 Days In Office

During his campaign, the new president of the Philippines promised that fighting drugs would be bloody and dirty. After less than a week in office, President Rodrigo Duterte has already killed 30 drug dealers, sacked three police officials, and accused two other retired cops of corruption.

"Duterte Harry," as he has been called in the Filipino press, accused the 5 cops of protecting drug syndicates from within the police force. Their crimes were tantamount to treason, Duterte said in a speech Monday.

Police also say they've killed 30 suspected drug dealers since Duterte took office last Thursday. More than 100 alleged criminals have been killed since Duterte won the election May 9.

Five drug dealers were killed over the weekend in a raid of a methamphetamine ring not far from the presidential palace in Manila.

Widely penned as the "Trump of the Philippines," Duterte is also called "The Punisher" for his tough talk during the presidential campaign this spring. He has not backed down from his harsh rhetoric but he understands that his stance on crime strikes many as extreme.

"I know there are those who do not agree with my methods of fighting criminality," Duterte said in his inaugural address."I know that there are those who do not approve of my methods of fighting criminality, the sale and use of illegal drugs and corruption. In response let me say this: I have seen how corruption bled the government of funds. I have seen how illegal drugs destroy individuals and ruin families' relationships," Duterte said.

Duterte, "the Dark Knight of Davao," promised to wipe out drug crime within six months, even if he has to kill criminals and fatten the fishes of Manila bay with their bodies.

Hundreds of drug users from across the Philippines have surrendered to police for rehabilitation, according to the Philippine Star.

Philippine Police Seize $19 Million Worth of Drugs

180 KG (400 Lbs) Drugs Worth ‎₱900 Million Peso / $19 Million USD seized in Northern Philippines easy access from Taiwan and China. Photo: Philstar

Philippine police have seized about 180 kilograms (400 pounds) of high-grade methamphetamine worth 900 million pesos ($19.2 million), officials said Monday, in a major haul for the government of new President Rodrigo Duterte, who has promised to wipe out crime and corruption within six months.

National Police chief Ronald dela Rosa said police and drug enforcement agents seized the methamphetamine hydrochloride, known locally as shabu, in 180 plastic bags on Sunday in an abandoned farm in northern Cagayan province's Claveria town following a tip from an informant.

Authorities are investigating whether it was smuggled into the Philippines by a foreign syndicate or was manufactured locally, officials said.

"We know that there in the north, in the Cagayan area, which is the nearest point going to China and Taiwan, the shabu coming from abroad is docked there," dela Rosa said.

He also said more than 100 armed drug dealers have been killed in gunbattles with police since last month and thousands of drug users have surrendered to authorities during the intensified anti-drug campaign. The drug users will undergo mandatory drug treatment.

Nine policemen from different regional offices who tested positive for illegal drugs in mandatory tests last Friday will face criminal and administrative charges, he added.  – The Daily Caller / ABC News

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Can Philippines Correct the Independence day to July 4, Just changed to June 12 worth $73M ??

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Filipino Marines raise their country’s flag for Independence Day on June 12, 2012. For the first decade and a half after World War II, the country actually celebrated its independence on July 4.

By Becky Little

The Surprising Connection Between the Philippines and the Fourth of July

Seventy years ago, the Philippines won independence on the famous American holiday.

The United States isn't the only country to ever celebrate independence on July 4. In the mid-20th century, people in the Philippines also marked July 4 as the day that they broke away from a colonizing nation. But in this case, that colonizing nation was the United States.

It’s no coincidence that the Philippines shared an independence day with its former colonizer. But this overlap was short-lived. When the Philippines changed the date of its Independence Day holiday in 1962, it marked yet another step away from a long history of western interference.

Independence, Kind of

Between the 16th and 19th centuries, the Philippines was a colony in the Spanish Empire. In 1896, the islands attempted to break free in what’s called the Philippine Revolution, or Tagalog War. When the Spanish-American War began in 1898, some Filipinos saw an opportunity to ally with the Americans against their imperial rulers.

The Americans encouraged this alliance, and led the Filipinos to believe that they had no desire to colonize the country once it was free from Spain, says Vicente L. Rafael, professor of history and Southeast Asian studies at the University of Washington in Seattle. This culminated with a Filipino declaration of independence on June 12 of that year. An American officer was even among the signees.

The United States’ disregard for that declaration was made plain a few months later. After Spain surrendered, the 1898 Treaty of Paris gave the Philippines to the U.S. But Filipinos fought this handover, and rose up in the Philippine-American War in 1899.

The year in which that war ended depends on who you talk to, says Rafael. Although fighting continued until the 1910s, President Teddy Roosevelt declared a “victory” over the Philippines in 1902.

July 4, 1902, to be exact.

“That’s the irony,” Rafael says. “The Fourth of July is supposed to be a declaration of independence. But for Roosevelt in 1902, the Fourth of July was a declaration of conquest.”

Independence Day(s)

The Philippines continued to push for its independence; and in the mid-1930s, the United States began a transition toward sovereignty. The day the country was planned to become independent? July 4, 1945. That’s right—the Philippines would be freed on the same day that it was conquered.

World War II threw a wrench into the plan. The Japanese invaded the Philippines in 1942, and independence was delayed until July 4, 1946.

But the Philippines only celebrated July 4 as its Independence Day until 1962. That year, President Diosdado Macapagal changed the country’s official Independence Day to June 12, to mark the day that the Philippines had declared independence from Spain in 1898.

Why did Macapagal dump the fourth? Well, there are a few probable reasons.

It was pretty callous of the United States to “give” its former colony the same Independence Day as itself, especially since that was also the day that the U.S. conquered it. Rising Filipino nationalism in the 1960s could have also influenced Macapagal’s decision to reject the date.

Rafael thinks there was also something else in play.

“It was his way of registering his unhappiness with the U.S. Congress, which had turned down a $73 million aid package to the Philippines,” writes Rafael in an essay he shared with National Geographic. “Though he had also claimed to be bringing Philippine independence out of the shadow of its former colonial master, Macapagal’s decision to change the date was also a piece of political brinkmanship.”

When Macapagal threw out the paternalistically bestowed July 4, he replaced it with a day that represented the Philippines’ rejection of the Spanish Empire. But by the 1960s, it’s not clear that that date still held any real significance for everyday citizens.

Friends With Political Benefits

At the time that Macapagal did away with July 4, the June 12 declaration of independence from Spain wasn’t something that many Filipinos were familiar with. Indeed, Rafael thinks that there is still some ambivalence toward the day because the country remained a colony for decades after. Born and raised in Manila, the capital of the Philippines, Rafael recalls that Independence Day is celebrated on a small scale.

“It’s not like this huge orgy of self-congratulation, which is what you get in the United States,” he says.

Augusto Espiritu, associate professor of history and Asian-American studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, also doesn’t recall Independence Day being a huge deal as a child in Manila.

“What’s interesting though is that when I came to this country, in Los Angeles especially, June 12 was celebrated quite a bit” by Filipino immigrants, he says. (It’s not unusual to see this in immigrant communities: St. Patrick’s Day didn’t become the large celebration that it is today until Irish immigrants began to hold parades in America.)

But what became of July 4 in the Philippines? Since 1962, it’s been known as Philippine-American Friendship Day—a non-holiday that, according to Rafael, is basically only celebrated at the U.S. Embassy.

Internationally, July 4 is mainly only celebrated by Americans. And even some Americans argue that Juneteenth, which commemorates the June 19, 1865, abolition of slavery in Texas, should be celebrated in addition to or instead of the Fourth of July.

To date, the most successful globalization of America’s Independence Day is, and will likely remain, the one in the movies. – National Geographic

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