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 Vaktathi wrote:
The fact that numerous people in this thread are apparently not merely ok with, but seem to actively support, on demand extra judicial murder of people arbitrarily deemed "bad" simply for being involved at any level with a subset arbitrarily chosen intoxicating substances, has dramatically reduced the level of respect I had for the members of this board.

The mental gymnastics going on here is mind boggling, and an excellent view into how quickly people willingly embrace murderous regimes.

There's a bit of a continuum here. If the status quo is rival strongmen thuggery that indiscriminately kills/levies with threat of violence against everyone in a quasi-feudal setting, then a strong central authority that kills "bad guys", even one that accepts loss of some marginal types as collateral damage, can understandably be seen as a better alternative.

I'm very opposed to this sort of extreme Leftist/fascist government structure, but I can absolutely understand the appeal for the normal person on the ground that simply wants to be left to live their own life and sees their immediate surroundings getting cleaned up. If the government begins to descend into the same sort of thuggery as the "bad guys" they're kicking out versus normal everyday citizens, then that's the tipping point where it really is a fascist regime, but that's up to the people of the Philippines to figure out and prevent.

 Ketara wrote:
Good rule of thumb for life:- If genocide has become your solution, you've become the problem. And all you can do is hope that people like you aren't the ones who eventually deal with you.

Yeah, my favourite example of this is Robespierre. He had the idea that there was specific number of bad people in a society, that could corrupt the rest. So his simple solution was to kill the bad ones in order to create a good society. In one sense he was kind of right, because Robespierre and people like him were some bad dudes, who produced a horrible, murderous society, and it was eventually, in part, solved when they cut Robespierre's head off.

 Vaktathi wrote:
The fact that numerous people in this thread are apparently not merely ok with, but seem to actively support, on demand extra judicial murder of people arbitrarily deemed "bad" simply for being involved at any level with a subset arbitrarily chosen intoxicating substances, has dramatically reduced the level of respect I had for the members of this board.

The mental gymnastics going on here is mind boggling, and an excellent view into how quickly people willingly embrace murderous regimes.

There is no actual moral difference between what the Filipino government is doing and other western governments. Extreme action is commonplace, Obama authorises assassinations and drone strikes with regularity, often violating international borders to do so. Nobody here complains at that, because the targets are *OUR* enemies.

If you are a peacenik condemining all violence then you would have a point, Dakka usually isn't flush with those, and most here are fairly hawkish about bombing the usual suspects. Filipinos are currently content with their presidents decision to rid the nation of its endemic drug crime problem, it may well be brutal, but it offers results; in this is is little different from the extra judicial killings our own society condones, endorses and actions. If they are content what business is it of ours. By what right to we say that we as 'civilised' nations have the right to bomb who we please to defend our interests, and play that reach globally, while others cannot deal with what is to them as serious a threat from within their own borders.

 Orlanth wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
The fact that numerous people in this thread are apparently not merely ok with, but seem to actively support, on demand extra judicial murder of people arbitrarily deemed "bad" simply for being involved at any level with a subset arbitrarily chosen intoxicating substances, has dramatically reduced the level of respect I had for the members of this board.

The mental gymnastics going on here is mind boggling, and an excellent view into how quickly people willingly embrace murderous regimes.

There is no actual moral difference between what the Filipino government is doing and other western governments. Extreme action is commonplace, Obama authorises assassinations and drone strikes with regularity, often violating international borders to do so. Nobody here complains at that, because the targets are *OUR* enemies.

If you are a peacenik condemining all violence then you would have a point, Dakka usually isn't flush with those, and most here are fairly hawkish about bombing the usual suspects. Filipinos are currently content with their presidents decision to rid the nation of its endemic drug crime problem, it may well be brutal, but it offers results; in this is is little different from the extra judicial killings our own society condones, endorses and actions. If they are content what business is it of ours. By what right to we say that we as 'civilised' nations have the right to bomb who we please to defend our interests, and play that reach globally, while others cannot deal with what is to them as serious a threat from within their own borders.

Okay, so just because some Filipinos are currently content with his decision, it is okay for him to kill other Filipinos, who are clearly not content with his decision?

I would think there are plenty of Filipinos that are not okay with him calling for their violent, extra-judicial murder. I would assume anybody that cared about their laws would have an issue with it.

You know what, who needs laws if a leader can just say and do what he wants. A lot of people back him, he should be able to disregard them and lets his citizens disregard them. Lets go full blown anarchy boys!

 sebster wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
A mere technicality. After all many terrorist organisations are very different from each other in goals and methods. Some are dealt with almost entirely from within the rule of law, others cannot be.
However drug cartels including those in the Phillppines usually mimic the latter.

Organisations that are operate within existing social structures to make profit, even if they their methods and product are illegal, are not the same as organisations attempting to destroy the existing government.
You can keep ignoring that basic reality all you want. But the only result is making you look silly.

You are labouring under the delusion that cartels cannot be an existential threat to society as much as terrorists. The reality is they can.
Also there is an enormous amount of crossover, many terror networks fund themselves with drugs and many cartels become politicised due to their growing powerbase.

 sebster wrote:

I understand perfectly well. You fail to understand that drug cartels are indistinguishable from the terrorist networks in terms of everyday reality to its victims.

A person hit by a drunk driver and a woman deliberately run over by an abusive ex-partner could have identical injuries. Arguing that the perpetrators should be treated exactly the same is bonkers.

You are placing a false flagged analogy there. It is not a matter of identical injury its on level of threat. In terms of societal harm a cartel has more in common with a terrorist movement than it does with a gang of thieves.

 sebster wrote:

That would make sense in your naive cops and robbers show world.

You keep saying this. It is empty and puerile. There is nothing naive in what I am saying, it is informed by the reports of how powerful organised crime groups have been dealt with around the world.

Actually drugs cartels are normally dealt with by military means, the alternative is to invite failure. The only exceptions are in highly developed countries that have a large enough infrastructure to be resistant to organised crime. Cartels cannot effectively subvert the entire justice or prison system of the US or a European state, and can be dealt with within the framework of policing. The same is not true of smaller developing countries.

 sebster wrote:

What is hopelessly naive is your insistence that simple brute force can resolve or overcome complex social, economic, legal and institutional issues.

And yet you aren't protesting direct brute force action against Al Quaeda.

 sebster wrote:

It is the mindset of the 80s action movie, if only someone would just go and shoot all the baddies in that bad gang then we'd have no more problems from the baddies in the bad gang. It would be comical if it wasn't for the actual dead people in the Phillipines.

That is the general idea, but it involves more thought than you are assuming. The Pentagon thinks as you described pretty much all the time, and its not taken as being an 80's action movie plot.

 sebster wrote:

the cartels form an existential threat to government in anything but name only.

Well, name and reality. To go back to the FARC example you produced, with nothing like the numbers or firepower of the Mexican cartels, came awfully close to toppling the government. But in Mexico, with far greater numbers, guns and resources, the cartels never even tried. This is for the simple reason that taking over government is bad for business. It is expensive, and if you win then you have to run government, which doesn't make anything like the money that drug smuggling makes.

Mexico is bigger than Columbia, there are more government controlled areas. The Philippines is on the small size, and its at risk to the same level as the threat posed by FARC.
anyway what you are forgetting is that a cartel doesn't need to completely remove the government to form an existential threat to society. The people in the regions controlled by the Sinaloa and Zerta etc are still Mexicans, but the cartels are an ever present danger, with enormous reach, and the ability to touch just about anyone, at any time, anywhere. This is far more than say ISIS or most other terror groups can or could do in Europe.

 sebster wrote:

Different organisations. Different goals. Different actions. You don't understand this and it is quite amazing.

I will explain for the hard of thinking.
- I do understand that the organisations and goals are different. It is not really relevant though.
- The actions towards the local populace actually are very similar between a terrorist group and a cartel.

Again I make the point. there is no real difference between farmers tortured to death for failing to plant drugs in their farms as ordered and people tortured to death for failing to convert to radical Islam. When both live under the thumb of a paramilitary system that controls the geographical region.

 sebster wrote:

Actually there's been effective efforts to remove cartels and other criminal gangs from lots of places. Go read about Brazil, about Mexico. These efforts have involved militaries police and have been pretty direct use of force. But they've never required police or non-government groups operating as authorised death squads.

However those efforts failed in the Philippines and the people had enough, and voted in someone who would step up.

 sebster wrote:

Sorry, you are talking bollocks. Cartel violence has massively changed but this is because the cartels now have saturation.

Yes, there's millions of people leaving the US and going back to Mexico now that finally they can live in cartel controlled hellholes like they always dreamed. That's a thing. Good point.

Mexico is a large country, and actually quite rich. There are whole swathes not under cartel control. You will find that is where the returnees are heading, and not the cartel controlled hellholes, which certainly do exist.

 sebster wrote:

So why the the Mexicans use their special forces and not their police to arrest Gusman, why cant the government keep him in prison without the CIA providing double watch and a direct promise from the President of Mexico.

Largely because of chronic police corruption. Also because when acting against criminal gangs you have to bring heavy firepower - this is the same everywhere, you might have noticed the existence of special weapon and tactics units in every country on the planet.

Ask yourself this: how did police corruption get so bad? Police services don't just spontaneously decided to be on the take, there is a long and drawn out process of threats, infiltration and bribery with hidden paymaster at the other end.
Also the use of heavy firepower is NOT universal for handling regular drugs crimes or small scale terror operations. Handled well and even major arrests can occur without armed support. The Al Quaeda cell involved with the soda bomb plot in London in 2005 was rounded up without the presence of armed police at all. Though that was an extreme case.
However against cartel or terrorist saturated regions heavy firepower support need is universal.

 sebster wrote:

You will notice what Mexico didn't use - death squads operating with government approval. Probably because such squads are a terrible, stupid idea supported by total fething lunatics and no-one else.

Lunatics like the UK and US governments, amongst other major western democracies? We use death squads, we just give them fancy names, and apply other fancy names to what they do.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dreadwinter wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
The fact that numerous people in this thread are apparently not merely ok with, but seem to actively support, on demand extra judicial murder of people arbitrarily deemed "bad" simply for being involved at any level with a subset arbitrarily chosen intoxicating substances, has dramatically reduced the level of respect I had for the members of this board.

The mental gymnastics going on here is mind boggling, and an excellent view into how quickly people willingly embrace murderous regimes.

There is no actual moral difference between what the Filipino government is doing and other western governments. Extreme action is commonplace, Obama authorises assassinations and drone strikes with regularity, often violating international borders to do so. Nobody here complains at that, because the targets are *OUR* enemies.

If you are a peacenik condemining all violence then you would have a point, Dakka usually isn't flush with those, and most here are fairly hawkish about bombing the usual suspects. Filipinos are currently content with their presidents decision to rid the nation of its endemic drug crime problem, it may well be brutal, but it offers results; in this is is little different from the extra judicial killings our own society condones, endorses and actions. If they are content what business is it of ours. By what right to we say that we as 'civilised' nations have the right to bomb who we please to defend our interests, and play that reach globally, while others cannot deal with what is to them as serious a threat from within their own borders.

Okay, so just because some Filipinos are currently content with his decision, it is okay for him to kill other Filipinos, who are clearly not content with his decision?
I would think there are plenty of Filipinos that are not okay with him calling for their violent, extra-judicial murder. I would assume anybody that cared about their laws would have an issue with it.
You know what, who needs laws if a leader can just say and do what he wants. A lot of people back him, he should be able to disregard them and lets his citizens disregard them. Lets go full blown anarchy boys!

You could word replace 'Filipinos' with 'Americans' in your last comment and it would read exactly the same. The result: War on Terror. The people on the other end of drone strikes don't get trials, they get summary executions. The voters in the US and elsewhere vocally back up their government in its own extra-judical murders, because it is in tune with our rhetoric.

So yes the public mandate does make a difference, even if the actions are extreme, because those are the standards we set for ourselves. At least the Filipino government are only exercising their mandate within their own borders.

 Orlanth wrote:
There is no actual moral difference between what the Filipino government is doing and other western governments. Extreme action is commonplace, Obama authorises assassinations and drone strikes with regularity, often violating international borders to do so. Nobody here complains at that, because the targets are *OUR* enemies.

Orlanth believes that no-one complains about the drone program. Orlanth seems to believe there wasn't a whole ton of threads about the drone program on dakka. Orlanth chooses his own reality.

 Orlanth wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
The fact that numerous people in this thread are apparently not merely ok with, but seem to actively support, on demand extra judicial murder of people arbitrarily deemed "bad" simply for being involved at any level with a subset arbitrarily chosen intoxicating substances, has dramatically reduced the level of respect I had for the members of this board.

The mental gymnastics going on here is mind boggling, and an excellent view into how quickly people willingly embrace murderous regimes.

There is no actual moral difference between what the Filipino government is doing and other western governments. Extreme action is commonplace, Obama authorises assassinations and drone strikes with regularity, often violating international borders to do so. Nobody here complains at that, because the targets are *OUR* enemies.

If you are a peacenik condemining all violence then you would have a point, Dakka usually isn't flush with those, and most here are fairly hawkish about bombing the usual suspects. Filipinos are currently content with their presidents decision to rid the nation of its endemic drug crime problem, it may well be brutal, but it offers results; in this is is little different from the extra judicial killings our own society condones, endorses and actions. If they are content what business is it of ours. By what right to we say that we as 'civilised' nations have the right to bomb who we please to defend our interests, and play that reach globally, while others cannot deal with what is to them as serious a threat from within their own borders.

I would posit that the difference is one is acting against a foreign other that is in open and direct two-way conflict with the aggressor, and the other is acting against a vaguely defined subset of the domestic population perceived as the cause of a host of problems that really stem from underlying socio-economic issues.

And yes, people have and do raise objections to things like drone strikes and whatnot, that makes many uncomfortable and has been discussed at length many times, but the nature of that conflict is also different.

 Orlanth wrote:
You are labouring under the delusion that cartels cannot be an existential threat to society as much as terrorists. The reality is they can.

And you are continuing with the old mistake of thinking model and reason for being doesn't exist, and adding a new mistake in thinking all terror groups are the same.

You are placing a false flagged analogy there. It is not a matter of identical injury its on level of threat.

Dude, that was your argument. You tried to reduce things down to purely the impact on victims. I accepted that as it was, but now that it was reflected back at you, then you noticed the problem. Funny that.

Actually drugs cartels are normally dealt with by military means, the alternative is to invite failure.

Here 'military means' has somehow come to include extra-judicial killing by police, and turning a blind eye to extra-judicial killing by vigilante groups. feth me this is bonkers.

And yet you aren't protesting direct brute force action against Al Quaeda.

And now we're going full circle, back to that stupid argument you made earlier that citizens operating criminal operations within a country's borders are the same thing as non-citizens operating terror cells in another country.

That is the general idea, but it involves more thought than you are assuming. The Pentagon thinks as you described pretty much all the time, and its not taken as being an 80's action movie plot.

While the US military has targeted various terror groups and other enemies of the state, this is in concert with massive amounts spent on capacity to remove the base cause of the problem. In Afghanistan alone $85 billion has been spent on reconstruction efforts by the international community, with the US providing the most funds. To characterise that as a focus purely on going in an killing the bad guys so there are no more bad guys is ridiculous.

Mexico is bigger than Columbia, there are more government controlled areas. The Philippines is on the small size, and its at risk to the same level as the threat posed by FARC.

Okay, so in addition to everything else your geography really sucks. Mexico has 120 million people. The Philippines has 100 million people. Columbia has 50 million. You have now learned that the Philippines is much closer to Mexico than to Columbia.

Anyhow, the sillier thing you just claimed is that the cartels are an existential threat like FARC was. Is the worst part of that statement that you still don't understand why profit seeking criminal organisations are different to revolutionary organisations? Or is the worst part that you said that just because Mexican cartels aren't an existential threat to Mexico doesn't mean the cartels in the Philippines won't be... when the spike in cartel growth and violence in the Philippines has come from the Mexican cartels moving in to the Philippines?

anyway what you are forgetting is that a cartel doesn't need to completely remove the government to form an existential threat to society. The people in the regions controlled by the Sinaloa and Zerta etc are still Mexicans, but the cartels are an ever present danger, with enormous reach, and the ability to touch just about anyone, at any time, anywhere. This is far more than say ISIS or most other terror groups can or could do in Europe.

You've just tried to argue that just because something isn't an existential threat, that doesn't mean it isn't an existential threat.

- I do understand that the organisations and goals are different. It is not really relevant though.

And I will explain it yet again - what you've just said is bonkers. An organisation working towards destroying government is a totally different kind of threat to an organisation working to maximise profits, even if both use similar criminal operations.

Again I make the point. there is no real difference between farmers tortured to death for failing to plant drugs in their farms as ordered and people tortured to death for failing to convert to radical Islam.

And again I point out how inane that is. You don't manage a threat based only on the harm done, you manage it based on the most effective means of controlling each, based on the nature of the organisation producing the threat.

However those efforts failed in the Philippines and the people had enough, and voted in someone who would step up.

And here you've all of a sudden found a new respect for democracy and the rationality of the population. Let's just forget how this conflicts with plenty of other stuff you've written, and look at the issue of assuming rationality of the average Philippines voter - 40% have completed high school. In countries with 95% high school complete it's a stretch to claim that political victory comes down to citizens calmly and rationally deciding whether policy initiatives have proven effective.

Claiming that for the Philippines is hilarious.

Ask yourself this: how did police corruption get so bad? Police services don't just spontaneously decided to be on the take

The Philippines has a long cultural tradition of corruption, like much of Asia. If you didn't know this, then is this really an issue you need to be giving an opinion on?

Also the use of heavy firepower is NOT universal for handling regular drugs crimes or small scale terror operations.

Now you decided to ignore the difference between having heavy firepower on hand just in case, and routinely using it.

Lunatics like the UK and US governments, amongst other major western democracies? We use death squads, we just give them fancy names, and apply other fancy names to what they do.

And now you've gone back to conflating international terror operations with operations against domestic criminals.

 sebster wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
There is no actual moral difference between what the Filipino government is doing and other western governments. Extreme action is commonplace, Obama authorises assassinations and drone strikes with regularity, often violating international borders to do so. Nobody here complains at that, because the targets are *OUR* enemies.

Orlanth believes that no-one complains about the drone program. Orlanth seems to believe there wasn't a whole ton of threads about the drone program on dakka. Orlanth chooses his own reality.

Orlanth knows that despite there being a drone program, and the fact that some do complain about it, it nevertheless is conducted openly by a government with large scale consent of the populace. Last time I checked Obama wasnt being threatened with international court, or facing impeachment for murder/extra judicial killing etc.
Orlanth also knows that any policy is seldom if ever universally accepted, there will always be dissenters. Everyone else knows that too, but Sebster likes to assume I dont so that he can make a cheap shot.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
The fact that numerous people in this thread are apparently not merely ok with, but seem to actively support, on demand extra judicial murder of people arbitrarily deemed "bad" simply for being involved at any level with a subset arbitrarily chosen intoxicating substances, has dramatically reduced the level of respect I had for the members of this board.

The mental gymnastics going on here is mind boggling, and an excellent view into how quickly people willingly embrace murderous regimes.

There is no actual moral difference between what the Filipino government is doing and other western governments. Extreme action is commonplace, Obama authorises assassinations and drone strikes with regularity, often violating international borders to do so. Nobody here complains at that, because the targets are *OUR* enemies.

If you are a peacenik condemining all violence then you would have a point, Dakka usually isn't flush with those, and most here are fairly hawkish about bombing the usual suspects. Filipinos are currently content with their presidents decision to rid the nation of its endemic drug crime problem, it may well be brutal, but it offers results; in this is is little different from the extra judicial killings our own society condones, endorses and actions. If they are content what business is it of ours. By what right to we say that we as 'civilised' nations have the right to bomb who we please to defend our interests, and play that reach globally, while others cannot deal with what is to them as serious a threat from within their own borders.

I would posit that the difference is one is acting against a foreign other that is in open and direct two-way conflict with the aggressor, and the other is acting against a vaguely defined subset of the domestic population perceived as the cause of a host of problems that really stem from underlying socio-economic issues.

And yes, people have and do raise objections to things like drone strikes and whatnot, that makes many uncomfortable and has been discussed at length many times, but the nature of that conflict is also different.

It doesnt matter that they are different case . They need not be identical, and the underlying actual difference is that the problem matters to us, whweras people forget all too easily what happens to Filipino farmers and victims of endemic drugs violence.

Fact remains that state sanctioned extra-judical killings are commonplace. The US, for example, justifies it and the US populace, or large numbers of them back the government in doing so. The Philippines have freely elected a government which made stated claim to take extreme measures against the drugs infrastructure, and that support remains during this stage of implementation.

 Orlanth wrote:
Orlanth also knows that any policy is seldom if ever universally accepted, there will always be dissenters.

Your words; "Nobody here complains at that".

Apparently under Orlanth rules when he says 'nobody' and you assume he means 'nobody', then it is your fault.

 sebster wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
You are labouring under the delusion that cartels cannot be an existential threat to society as much as terrorists. The reality is they can.

And you are continuing with the old mistake of thinking model and reason for being doesn't exist, and adding a new mistake in thinking all terror groups are the same.

Far from it, or I wouldnt have posted, in the post you are critiqueing, that some terror groups are handled differently to others.

 sebster wrote:

You are placing a false flagged analogy there. It is not a matter of identical injury its on level of threat.

Dude, that was your argument. You tried to reduce things down to purely the impact on victims. I accepted that as it was, but now that it was reflected back at you, then you noticed the problem. Funny that.

No it wasn't you were misrepresenting it. the actual point is that there is a similarity of scale and a similarity of saturation of the local social structure. A gang might torment a victim in the way a cartel or a terror group might. But a gang operates on a personal scale, one has to be unlucky or in the wrong place to be victimised. A cartel or terror group may achieve a social saturation, the torments can be the same as a gang metes out, but the reach means there is little escape.

 sebster wrote:

Here 'military means' has somehow come to include extra-judicial killing by police, and turning a blind eye to extra-judicial killing by vigilante groups. feth me this is bonkers.

Perhaps, but then a lot of

 sebster wrote:

And yet you aren't protesting direct brute force action against Al Quaeda.

And now we're going full circle, back to that stupid argument you made earlier that citizens operating criminal operations within a country's borders are the same thing as non-citizens operating terror cells in another country.

The arguement is not stupid, you just cant grasp it. Dont assume your lack of understanding means that there a lack of intelligence behind a presentation. Your failure is your own.
'Citizens operating criminal operations' can range from muggers to people who fiddle their taxes, you are making an unfair distinction. cartels are closer in operation morality and ehos to terror groups than tax dodgers, even though cartels also dodge tax. Acaretls are also international concerns, though whether a threat is not international doesnt detract from its validity as a major threat.

 sebster wrote:

While the US military has targeted various terror groups and other enemies of the state, this is in concert with massive amounts spent on capacity to remove the base cause of the problem. In Afghanistan alone $85 billion has been spent on reconstruction efforts by the international community, with the US providing the most funds. To characterise that as a focus purely on going in an killing the bad guys so there are no more bad guys is ridiculous.

Even you in more lucid moments admitted that Dutente is also backing up his eradication plan with alternative means:

 sebster wrote:

You reform police, you fund rehab, you work on renewal of afflicted areas. What's even crazier is that Duterte has actually made concerted efforts in most of these areas, with debatable success,

But are now backtracking and claiming this is just a case of solely 'shooting all the bad guys'. Make your mind up.
Also The Philippines doesnt have $85 billion to spend on reconstruction, that is about 30% of the nations GDP.

 sebster wrote:

Mexico is bigger than Columbia, there are more government controlled areas. The Philippines is on the small size, and its at risk to the same level as the threat posed by FARC.

Okay, so in addition to everything else your geography really sucks. Mexico has 120 million people. The Philippines has 100 million people. Columbia has 50 million. You have now learned that the Philippines is much closer to Mexico than to Columbia.

Economic size.

 sebster wrote:

Anyhow, the sillier thing you just claimed is that the cartels are an existential threat like FARC was. Is the worst part of that statement that you still don't understand why profit seeking criminal organisations are different to revolutionary organisations?

Sigh. Lets explain in simpler language.

It doesnt matter of the organisation intends to formally replace the nation state with say an Islamic republic or communism. We can take is as a given that cartels arent interested in that. They still take over. Take over as in control the courts, control the police, control the local government etc etc. Whether they do so by replacing everyone in aurthority with comrades, forcinbly converting everyone in authority to Islam or by widescale bribery extortion and threats; doesn't matter so much.
Terrorists try to take over, cartels try to take over, gangs dont/cant.

 sebster wrote:

Or is the worst part that you said that just because Mexican cartels aren't an existential threat to Mexico doesn't mean the cartels in the Philippines won't be... when the spike in cartel growth and violence in the Philippines has come from the Mexican cartels moving in to the Philippines?

Pay attention. I said that cartels are an existential threat to society, not to the nation state itself. Even the most drug wracked Latin American state still retained its national identity, but that might just be a facade. Also cartels ARE an existential threat to society in Mexico, however that threat is regionalised.
If you think about it for a second you will understand better. An existential threat to society doesnt need to destroy all society everywhere. More usually the damage is localised, but even 'local' might refer to large percentages of the country.

We can see that the cartels are an existential threat to Mexican society because of ther deep reach the cartels have into the prison system , courts and police. That reach is undeniable, effects large percentage of the national system and is esential to maintaining a stable society.

 sebster wrote:

anyway what you are forgetting is that a cartel doesn't need to completely remove the government to form an existential threat to society. The people in the regions controlled by the Sinaloa and Zerta etc are still Mexicans, but the cartels are an ever present danger, with enormous reach, and the ability to touch just about anyone, at any time, anywhere. This is far more than say ISIS or most other terror groups can or could do in Europe.

You've just tried to argue that just because something isn't an existential threat, that doesn't mean it isn't an existential threat.

Thank you for quoting what you evidently failed to understand even when written in plain English. Highlighted in bold above.
Somehow you somehow grasped an almost entirely opposite meaning to what was clearly presented. You are very confused today.

 sebster wrote:

- I do understand that the organisations and goals are different. It is not really relevant though.

And I will explain it yet again - what you've just said is bonkers. An organisation working towards destroying government is a totally different kind of threat to an organisation working to maximise profits, even if both use similar criminal operations.

No it doesn't matter if the goals are different. Also you fail to grasp that cartels are not solely occupied with maximising profits. If they were they would cooperate more, as prolonged conflict is unprofitable.

 sebster wrote:

Again I make the point. there is no real difference between farmers tortured to death for failing to plant drugs in their farms as ordered and people tortured to death for failing to convert to radical Islam.

And again I point out how inane that is. You don't manage a threat based only on the harm done, you manage it based on the most effective means of controlling each, based on the nature of the organisation producing the threat.

The only think you are pointing out is that you dont understand the simple scale of the problem. You simply cant lump everything into two categories, crime or terrorism. Some terrorism is small scale enough its treated like regular street crime in most respects, some crime is large scale enough its treated like large scale terrorism.
For example a 'lone wolf' shooter is treated like any other spree shooter. Motive might be reflected on sentencing and the level of security of their confinement but otherwise they are failrly similar. a major cartel can be handles in the same way as a large scale terrorist group, examples here being the prevelant use of special forces and airstrikes against cartel infrastructure including drug farms. Some of these military operations occur across national borders and sometimes without consultation of the local authorities.

Why is this the case - because the scale of the threat merits the scale of response, and the brutality of the threat merits the resolve to respond.

 sebster wrote:

However those efforts failed in the Philippines and the people had enough, and voted in someone who would step up.

And here you've all of a sudden found a new respect for democracy and the rationality of the population.

Actually i have been consistent throughout. Everything rests on the fact that the actions are initiated by the legitimate Philippine government. I even made comment that the threat title is inaccurate as Dutente is not a dictator, but a democratically elected leader enacting the will of his political mandate along the lines of the policies he promised.

 sebster wrote:

Let's just forget how this conflicts with plenty of other stuff you've written,

Yes you can forget that, because it doesnt.

 sebster wrote:

and look at the issue of assuming rationality of the average Philippines voter - 40% have completed high school. In countries with 95% high school complete it's a stretch to claim that political victory comes down to citizens calmly and rationally deciding whether policy initiatives have proven effective.

You have the vote. Why not a Filipino.

 sebster wrote:

Ask yourself this: how did police corruption get so bad? Police services don't just spontaneously decided to be on the take

The Philippines has a long cultural tradition of corruption, like much of Asia. If you didn't know this, then is this really an issue you need to be giving an opinion on?

Question remains, how does the corruption come about. You snipped the quote to avoid the point that it was a rhetorical question intended to channel you into thinking.

 sebster wrote:

Also the use of heavy firepower is NOT universal for handling regular drugs crimes or small scale terror operations.

Now you decided to ignore the difference between having heavy firepower on hand just in case, and routinely using it.

Not at all. I even gave example that the heavy firepower might in fact be entirely absent.

 sebster wrote:

And now you've gone back to conflating international terror operations with operations against domestic criminals.

With good reason. Lets take a simple example. Was Shorty Gusman a 'domestic criminal'?

wikipedia wrote:Each year from 2009 to 2011 Forbes magazine ranked Guzmán as one of the most powerful people in the world, ranking 41st, 60th, and 55th respectively. He was thus the second most powerful man in Mexico, after Carlos Slim.[5][6] He was named as the 10th richest man in Mexico (1,140th in the world) in 2011, with a net worth of roughly US$1 billion.[7][8] The magazine also calls him the "biggest drug lord of all time",[9] and the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) estimates he has surpassed the influence and reach of Pablo Escobar, and now considers him "the godfather of the drug world".[10] In 2013, the Chicago Crime Commission named Guzmán "Public Enemy Number One" for the influence of his criminal network in Chicago, though there is no evidence that Guzmán has ever been in that city.[11] The last person to receive such notoriety was Al Capone in 1930.

Cartels are routinely classified as international not domestic with good reason. Yes there is good reason to treat cartels as one does terrorist networks.

http://fiatsophia.org/2014/10/20/mexican-cartels-are-more-depraved-dangerous-than-isil/

Central American cartels are in hard reality often treated in the same manner as terrorist groups. Extreme measures have been used by some US administrations, though by no means all. I will grant you that p[olicy against terrorism is more consistent than against cartels, but they can and have got the same treatment from Washington when the will is there. Reagan in particular used extreme measure to deal with cartels.

It is not therefore illogical to expect that other nation states might follow the same pattern of policy. The Filipino government is being decidely crass and unsubtle, but iinvolves extra judicial killings of targets which mirror efforts by western powers in recent history.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 sebster wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
Orlanth also knows that any policy is seldom if ever universally accepted, there will always be dissenters.

Your words; "Nobody here complains at that".

Apparently under Orlanth rules when he says 'nobody' and you assume he means 'nobody', then it is your fault.

Nobody here, means nobody here. There have been no threads on Dakka that I can recall on critique of drone strikes.
Never implied that dissent doesn't exist, or that no forum member might object., but nobody complains about it.

This is my point: Dutente is loudly criticised for doing what our governments do, right beneath our noses without anyone being vocal about it.

 Orlanth wrote:
Far from it, or I wouldnt have posted, in the post you are critiqueing, that some terror groups are handled differently to others.

That you’ve recognised that reality doesn’t mean you haven’t forgotten in this part of your post. It doesn’t make the mistake go away, it actually makes it worse.

No it wasn't you were misrepresenting it. the actual point is that there is a similarity of scale and a similarity of saturation of the local social structure.

And now you’re argument is becoming one in which you insist that we must recognise the ability for social saturation, but continue to ignore the basic motivation differences.

Perhaps, but then a lot of

You started an answer here and then moved on. Normally I just let this stuff go, but I really want to see the argument for why “military means” should be assumed to include police undertaking extra-judicial killings and ignoring extra-judicial killings by vigilante groups.

cartels are closer in operation morality and ehos to terror groups than tax dodgers, even though cartels also dodge tax. Acaretls are also international concerns, though whether a threat is not international doesnt detract from its validity as a major threat.

This is a great deal of words that basically boils down to ‘they’re meanies’. It is a purely moralistic argument, it is an attempt to justify an extreme response purely by claiming the target is very bad indeed.
It’s kind of funny considering that you’re the guy who was repeating over and over again that other posters were naive and seeing this as white hats and black hats. But here you are, with an answer that basically boils down to ‘the cartels have the blackest of black hats, so Duterte needs to murder them’.

All the while you continue to ignore the basic problems with trying to murder away problems driven social and economic failings.

Even you in more lucid moments admitted that Dutente is also backing up his eradication plan with alternative means:

Yep, and I criticised you for ignoring those elements and talking only about the importance of killing people, taking a more extreme position than Duterte. And now I’m criticising you for being totally ignorant in the reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan.

Also The Philippines doesnt have $85 billion to spend on reconstruction, that is about 30% of the nations GDP.

Ignoring that the Phillipines would involve a growth and capacity building program, and not a reconstruction… why would the number be the same? What part of your brain decided that any and all reconstruction efforts would need to cost $85 billion?

I mean what the hell dude?

Sigh. Lets explain in simpler language.

Don’t. You’ve repeated it maybe a dozen times now. It’s still terrible.

Pay attention. I said that cartels are an existential threat to society, not to the nation state itself.

I know what you said. It’s a gibberish sentence that shows you don’t understand what existential means in this context. You make a (fairly imaginative) argument that Philippine society might become worse, and try to claim that as an existential threat. Go look up existential, learn, then drop this particular bit of silliness.

An existential threat to society doesnt need to destroy all society everywhere.

Heh. “An existential threat doesn’t need to threaten its existence”. So we’re just going to invent new definitions for words as we go now.

No it doesn't matter if the goals are different. Also you fail to grasp that cartels are not solely occupied with maximising profits. If they were they would cooperate more, as prolonged conflict is unprofitable.

Do we need to wander off in to a lengthy discussion of competition and the prisoner’s dilemma, or should we just note that what you said above is bonkers and move on?

The only think you are pointing out is that you dont understand the simple scale of the problem.

What we’ve established is that you think only in scale, and not in type. Two criminal organisations with 20,000 members and affiliates shouldn’t demand exactly equal treatment, where their methods, means and motives are entirely different.

Actually i have been consistent throughout. Everything rests on the fact that the actions are initiated by the legitimate Philippine government.

As already pointed out, simply being elected doesn’t make you all powerful. Presidents are still constrained by process and procedure. A president simply saying ‘death squads are legal’ doesn’t make them legal. This is a thing I know you understand, because I remember you making similar arguments in other threads.

But it turns out in Orlanth world facts come and go, depending on their political suitability.

You have the vote. Why not a Filipino.

Of course they should have the vote, like everyone. Once again you’re deliberately misunderstanding in order to try for a cheap point. In front of an audience of no-one.

Anyhow, the point that while democracy is great, it is beyond stupid to assume that every democratic election is the result of a calm and rational review of the effectiveness of existing policy by the greater electorate. This is an even stupider assumption in a country where more than half the population didn’t finish high school.

But you made this assumption because you just don’t give a feth about what is actually sensible, you’ll say anything you can think of to try and justify a program of extra-judicial killing.

Question remains, how does the corruption come about. You snipped the quote to avoid the point that it was a rhetorical question intended to channel you into thinking.

No, I snipped it down to the opening question because it was a fething stupid question that showed you have tremendous ignorance of the history of the country. There was endemic corruption long before there was anything you could call a cartel. You didn’t know this, because as is becoming apparent you know almost nothing about the Philippines beyond ‘they have cartels’.

Not at all. I even gave example that the heavy firepower might in fact be entirely absent.

And what the hell could that ever possibly mean? Sometimes police don’t ensure they have overwhelming firepower on scene. Uh yep, that’s true, and?

With good reason. Lets take a simple example. Was Shorty Gusman a 'domestic criminal'?

Guzman. With a ‘z’.

And you will note that Guzman was responded to with… ordinary criminal measures. No death squads. No drone strikes.

And if you think that changing that, that if instead of being arrested in the early 90s they just straight up murdered him, that the power of the Sinaloa cartel would have been reduced, and the scale of drug trafficking reduced then you really are living in an 80s action movie.

Reagan in particular used extreme measure to deal with cartels.

And we all remember the 80s as a time when the drug problem was brought under control.

Nobody here, means nobody here. There have been no threads on Dakka that I can recall on critique of drone strikes.

You’re all over the place. You said nobody here. I made fun of that because it was clearly untrue to anyone who’s been on this site for a long time, man did we argue about that.

In response you ignored your own criteria, ‘here’. Instead your response started talking about overall acceptance of the program.

So I made fun of it again, because now you were redefining ‘nothing’ to mean ‘not actually nothing’.

Then you came back, remembering you had the word ‘here’ in there. And so now we’re back to me making fun of you, because man did we ever debate the drone program. There’s nothing wrong with you forgetting that, or just not being aware of it because you didn’t post here, but there’s something very wrong with you just assuming it wasn’t debated, and now getting pissy when you’re getting called on that false assumption.

 sebster wrote:

Perhaps, but then a lot of

You started an answer here and then moved on. Normally I just let this stuff go, but I really want to see the argument for why “military means” should be assumed to include police undertaking extra-judicial killings and ignoring extra-judicial killings by vigilante groups.

Nevermind. I wrote my answer then accidently deleted half the text and didn't notice. Sorry about that.

What was missing: With our sanctioned extra-judicial killings sometimes we use drones or special forces, sometimes we outsource by funding opposed radical, some of which are almost as bad as the people we are fighting.

 sebster wrote:

Yep, and I criticised you for ignoring those elements and talking only about the importance of killing people, taking a more extreme position than Duterte. And now I’m criticising you for being totally ignorant in the reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan.

Yet I am aware that the reconstruction work has failed. as soon as the grip is loosened the Taliban will return.

 sebster wrote:

Also The Philippines doesnt have $85 billion to spend on reconstruction, that is about 30% of the nations GDP.

Ignoring that the Phillipines would involve a growth and capacity building program, and not a reconstruction… why would the number be the same?

Just answering you in the tone you set.

 sebster wrote:

What part of your brain decided that any and all reconstruction efforts would need to cost $85 billion?

I mean what the hell dude?

Nevermind.

 sebster wrote:

Sigh. Lets explain in simpler language.

Don’t. You’ve repeated it maybe a dozen times now. It’s still terrible..

Yep, reality sucks. Its still reality.

 sebster wrote:

Pay attention. I said that cartels are an existential threat to society, not to the nation state itself.

I know what you said. It’s a gibberish sentence that shows you don’t understand what existential means in this context. You make a (fairly imaginative) argument that Philippine society might become worse, and try to claim that as an existential threat. Go look up existential, learn, then drop this particular bit of silliness..

I knolw what existential means, which is why I used the phrase. Cartel infrastructure kills societal infrastructure.

 sebster wrote:

Heh. “An existential threat doesn’t need to threaten its existence”. So we’re just going to invent new definitions for words as we go now.

An existential threat to society, threatens society with its end.

 sebster wrote:

Do we need to wander off in to a lengthy discussion of competition and the prisoner’s dilemma, or should we just note that what you said above is bonkers and move on?

Its normally better to post rational reply rather than fall back on making insulting insinuations about your targets mental health.
However I expect low standards from you, its a course hazard when posting on Dakka.

 sebster wrote:

As already pointed out, simply being elected doesn’t make you all powerful. Presidents are still constrained by process and procedure. A president simply saying ‘death squads are legal’ doesn’t make them legal. This is a thing I know you understand, because I remember you making similar arguments in other threads.

Reality disagrees with you. You are only correct that being elected doesnt make you all powerful, but it does make you able to deal with those that the people who give you the mandate do not sufficiently care about the rights of.
This is a flat fact, backed up by weight of recent history.
I say so because examples can and have been given. American presidents are not all powerful, they can be impeached and are not above rule of law. However they can ignore international law, civic rights for entire people groups, sanction open extra-judicial killings on a large scale, perform large scale imprisonments without trial, torture etc.
I am right and you are wrong. The evidence for this is because George W Bush has never been placed on trial and it is clearly evident he sanctioned all of those things. Do you want to me to list them one by one for you?
ignore international law, = illegal invasion of Iraq
civic rights for entire people groups, = illegal occupation of Iraq, interference with Iraqi elections
sanction open extra-judicial killings on a large scale = drone strike in Pakistan
perform large scale imprisonments without trial = Guantanamo
torture et = waterboarding, CIA special flights.

Now in spite of these flat facts the US can still claim to be a law respecting country, with fair reason, because it restricted these excesses to people that it by and large convinced the world were valid targets for these excesses. Within reason I myself agreed with the actions taken, and the Uk government itself participated in them, and still does.

This is the main reason why I will not critique Dutente. I can and do support using extreme measures against groups like Daesh.

 sebster wrote:

But it turns out in Orlanth world facts come and go, depending on their political suitability.

Welcome to politics. No its not my world, I just live in it with my eyes open.

 sebster wrote:

You have the vote. Why not a Filipino.

Of course they should have the vote, like everyone. Once again you’re deliberately misunderstanding in order to try for a cheap point. In front of an audience of no-one.

Your comment was that Filipinos were too ignorant to make decisions for themselves because only 40% of the electorate had completed high school. You have no special standing to suggest your vote is worth more. All you are proving is your overbearing arrogance in assuming so.

 sebster wrote:

But you made this assumption because you just don’t give a feth about what is actually sensible, you’ll say anything you can think of to try and justify a program of extra-judicial killing.

I will defend a sovereign nations right to raise the stakes when dealing with an insidious a threat as drug cartels. It would be hypocritical for me not to and yet defend the extreme actions taken against Daesh.

 sebster wrote:

No, I snipped it down to the opening question because it was a fething stupid question that showed you have tremendous ignorance of the history of the country. There was endemic corruption long before there was anything you could call a cartel. You didn’t know this, because as is becoming apparent you know almost nothing about the Philippines beyond ‘they have cartels’.

So when you can't make a reasoned argument, try an ad hominem attack.
You arent in any position to be calling anyone else ignorant.

 sebster wrote:

And what the hell could that ever possibly mean? Sometimes police don’t ensure they have overwhelming firepower on scene. Uh yep, that’s true, and?

Now you are getting angry even when agreeing with me.

 sebster wrote:

And you will note that Guzman was responded to with… ordinary criminal measures. No death squads. No drone strikes.

You miss the point again. Guzman was a major international threat, not a 'domestic criminal'.
Also even if a policy of elimination is carried out sometimes it is tactically better to arrest rather than eliminate.
Guzman was on the run from an extant judicial sentence, so it made better sense to force him to complete said sentence rather then shoot him, which in a way enables him to die free.

Also there was nothing ordinary in Guzmans arrest. The arrest team was made of special forces, not police, after his arrest his captors hid him in a brothel because they were concerned the Sinaloa could spring him if he was taken to a police station.

 sebster wrote:

Reagan in particular used extreme measure to deal with cartels.

And we all remember the 80s as a time when the drug problem was brought under control.

There were some successes.
It's a hell of a lot worse now.

I wonder if there's any connection between the 80's hardline approach and the current state of drug cartels?

It's probably because we've been 'soft' during the intervening years, that's probably it.

Orlanth, I have said I do not agree with drone strikes in this very thread in response to you. What more do you want?

Sebster, you have far more patience that I do.

 Silent Puffin? wrote:
Sebster, you have far more patience that I do.

Sebster isn't being patient, he even admits to being intentionally provocative; which is mutually exclusive in that context.

 Orlanth wrote:

Sebster isn't being patient, he even admits to being intentionally provocative; which is mutually exclusive in that context.

I only deal with one item of crazy at a time, he does it all (or most of it). He probably deserves some kind of award.

 Orlanth wrote:
What was missing: With our sanctioned extra-judicial killings sometimes we use drones or special forces, sometimes we outsource by funding opposed radical, some of which are almost as bad as the people we are fighting.

Just a repeat of your main, and only, premise. Wasn’t really worth me asking for the follow up, or getting you to type it up. Apologies.

Yet I am aware that the reconstruction work has failed. as soon as the grip is loosened the Taliban will return.

You’ve got to follow the debate. I pointed out that just boiling things down to shooting the baddie was stupid, the logic of an 80s action movie. You said this is what the Pentagon does. I then mentioned there’s actually been immense efforts to reconstruct Afghanistan, so clearly the Pentagon knows there’s a lot more to the issue than just shooting the bad guy.

Whether or not the reconstruction will work is not the issue at discussion. You tried to claim that the Pentagon just followed the ‘shoot the baddies and problem solved’ logic. That $85 billion was put to reconstruction shows that obviously the Pentagon doesn't think like you do, making your claim completely wrong.

Just answering you in the tone you set.

I set a tone that said every effort at reconstruction everywhere on the planet, at any time, would cost $85 billion. That’s a strange tone for me to set, I’m not quite sure how I did that. Can that even be a tone? It must be a challenging one for an ad libs group to handle.
“Okay, the setting is a birthing suite, and the tone is… every reconstruction effort must cost $85 billion.”

I knolw what existential means, which is why I used the phrase. Cartel infrastructure kills societal infrastructure.

Wow, so I actually start cracking jokes at your expense for not understanding what existential means in this context, and it still doesn’t prompt you to go and look up what the word means. I know you are on the internet when you’re posting in this, so you will have the ability to go look up the meaning of existential. And yet you haven’t done it. That’s incredible.

An existential threat to society, threatens society with its end.

Except you previously posted this;
“An existential threat to society doesnt need to destroy all society everywhere.”

So now we have an argument where the threat isn’t to all society, but is threatening society with its end.

Its normally better to post rational reply rather than fall back on making insulting insinuations about your targets mental health.

You don’t read. I said your argument is bonkers, I have no opinion on you on any level. Why would I, you’re just some guy posting silliness on the internet.

To get back to your bonkers argument that cartels aren’t just profit seeking because if they were they would co-operate, we can extend that argument to claim that car manufacturers aren’t profit seekers, because if they were they wouldn’t compete on price, or look to innovate and develop better cars, because that’s less profitable than everyone agreeing to sell the same car every year at a huge mark up.

If you really don’t understand this, start with the prisoner’s dilemma. Then move in to basic market studies – see how demand and supply changes when you move from perfect competition to oligopoly conditions.

I am right and you are wrong. The evidence for this is because George W Bush has never been placed on trial and it is clearly evident he sanctioned all of those things.

Your argument now is that it is legal as long as you don’t get punished for it. That’s a thing.

Your comment was that Filipinos were too ignorant to make decisions for themselves because only 40% of the electorate had completed high school.

No, that wasn’t my comment. You’re fething lying.

My comment was that it was ridiculous to assume that voters anywhere have made their choice based on a rational review of the effectiveness of existing policies. This becomes an even more ridiculous assumption in places where a large portion of the population hasn’t finished high school.

If you really need this spelled out, consider a guy with a Bachelor’s, a white collar guy who follows politics daily. It’d be fething stupid to assume that guy studied and fully knowledgeable of his country’s history of police and judicial policy, and the effectiveness of each reform. Now put that same expectation on a guy who didn’t finish high school, what was absurd becomes utterly absurd.

But it is the position you’re trying to claim in this thread. It’s comical.

So when you can't make a reasoned argument, try an ad hominem attack.

You can hide behind ‘sebster is a meanie’ if you want, but it still remains a reality that you had no idea of the history of corruption in the Phillipines, but still decided you had an opinion on the country’s police and drug issues that is worth a damn.

You miss the point again. Guzman was a major international threat, not a 'domestic criminal'.

You miss the point. Despite being a major international thread, he was still addressed with conventional police operations, not death squads.

Guzman was on the run from an extant judicial sentence, so it made better sense to force him to complete said sentence rather then shoot him, which in a way enables him to die free.

This is a thing you actually typed.

There were some successes.
It's a hell of a lot worse now.

Oh bless.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dreadwinter wrote:
Orlanth, I have said I do not agree with drone strikes in this very thread in response to you. What more do you want?

He wants people to recognise that he is the hard man with the hard solutions. That he sees it like it is, and how it is is a hard world where we need to make hard choices, which only hard men will do.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Silent Puffin? wrote:
I only deal with one item of crazy at a time, he does it all (or most of it). He probably deserves some kind of award.

Or an intervention.

 sebster wrote:

Yet I am aware that the reconstruction work has failed. as soon as the grip is loosened the Taliban will return.

You’ve got to follow the debate. I pointed out that just boiling things down to shooting the baddie was stupid, the logic of an 80s action movie. You said this is what the Pentagon does. I then mentioned there’s actually been immense efforts to reconstruct Afghanistan, so clearly the Pentagon knows there’s a lot more to the issue than just shooting the bad guy.

Whether or not the reconstruction will work is not the issue at discussion. You tried to claim that the Pentagon just followed the ‘shoot the baddies and problem solved’ logic. That $85 billion was put to reconstruction shows that obviously the Pentagon doesn't think like you do, making your claim completely wrong.

You really have missed the point. Even with the large restructuring the Taliban will *still* return as soon as it is safe to do so.

 sebster wrote:

I knolw what existential means, which is why I used the phrase. Cartel infrastructure kills societal infrastructure.

Wow, so I actually start cracking jokes at your expense for not understanding what existential means in this context, and it still doesn’t prompt you to go and look up what the word means. I know you are on the internet when you’re posting in this, so you will have the ability to go look up the meaning of existential. And yet you haven’t done it. That’s incredible.

Don't know where to begin with your patronising rubbish. An existential threat is an annihilatory threat. This can be taken either literally, or figuratively if the threat is to something not directly tangible. Society is not directly tangible, there is no nation or land mass called society. Yet an existential threat can exist to society. Some uses of the term refer to existential on that level. For example nuclear war is an 'existential threat', and is considered such politically, however not literally as the planet will still be here and in all likelihood the human race would survive; but whole nation states, whole societies, would cease to exist.
You need to think more and be less literal minded. You whine about how I havent looked up a term I clearly already understood from the context of its use. Do you need to scrape the barrel, to try and make a comeback point.

 sebster wrote:

An existential threat to society, threatens society with its end.

Except you previously posted this;
“An existential threat to society doesnt need to destroy all society everywhere.”

So now we have an argument where the threat isn’t to all society, but is threatening society with its end.

Case in point. You don't need to destroy all society everywhere to have an existential threat to society. Let me give you an example, native american society. They faced an existential threat to their society in the 19th century. However the larger society of the USA was not destroyed, or even under pressure. You cant claim that the threat they faced was not existential simply because not every culture within the US was facing annihilation. Stop being so two dimensional.

 sebster wrote:

To get back to your bonkers argument that cartels aren’t just profit seeking because if they were they would co-operate, we can extend that argument to claim that car manufacturers aren’t profit seekers, because if they were they wouldn’t compete on price, or look to innovate and develop better cars, because that’s less profitable than everyone agreeing to sell the same car every year at a huge mark up..

You will find cooperation between manufacturers. For a start you get price fixing. Also cooperation doesn't eliminate competition, healthy competition is often good in a marketplace as it drives the market forwards.
Also last time I checked Fords and General Motors are killing each other for regional control. Drug cartels do that.

Again you cant see beyond the two dimensional, and make a forced assumption that cartels and car manufacturers would have identical operating methods if they carried the same overall ethos regarding relations between each other. you can hardly accused me of being bonkers and make up crap like that.
Do I need to explain the ethical differences between the manufacturing and the narcotics industry. Do I have to spell it out? In order for you to try and add such flatly bogus comparisons.

Fact remains that military struggle is expensive, just like war is expensive, as its far closer to war than a corporate rivalry. The fact that they use machine guns and not superior product placement should be a clue.
Cartels make war, even though it is unprofitable to do so because they are regional power groups and not just profit seeking enterprises. In fact the major cartels already make so much profit they dont know what to do with it. Unlike just about any other industry spending the money is far harder than making it. One safehouse in Mexico was found filled with $250M in dollar bills, because the Sinaloa didnt know what else to do with it! Car manufacturers et al dont have this 'problem'.
No cartels are not just about profit, though it certainly helps. They are about power.

 sebster wrote:

I am right and you are wrong. The evidence for this is because George W Bush has never been placed on trial and it is clearly evident he sanctioned all of those things.

Your argument now is that it is legal as long as you don’t get punished for it. That’s a thing.

Sorry Sebster but welcome to reality. Aerial bombing and submarine campaigns were only kept off the war crimes trials after 1945 because it would be blatantly hypocritical for the allies to put people on trial for that. We did it so it therefore had to be legal.

 sebster wrote:

Your comment was that Filipinos were too ignorant to make decisions for themselves because only 40% of the electorate had completed high school.

No, that wasn’t my comment. You’re fething lying.

My comment was that it was ridiculous to assume that voters anywhere have made their choice based on a rational review of the effectiveness of existing policies. This becomes an even more ridiculous assumption in places where a large portion of the population hasn’t finished high school..

So you aren't saying that Filipinos are too ignorant to make decisions for themselves, they just don't have a rational review because a large proportion hasn't finished high school.
Just a play on words.

 sebster wrote:

If you really need this spelled out, consider a guy with a Bachelor’s, a white collar guy who follows politics daily. It’d be fething stupid to assume that guy studied and fully knowledgeable of his country’s history of police and judicial policy, and the effectiveness of each reform. Now put that same expectation on a guy who didn’t finish high school, what was absurd becomes utterly absurd..

So you assume they are too ignorant to vote. Gottit.

 sebster wrote:

You can hide behind ‘sebster is a meanie’ if you want,....

I can handle you without assist.

 sebster wrote:

but it still remains a reality that you had no idea of the history of corruption in the Phillipines, but still decided you had an opinion on the country’s police and drug issues that is worth a damn.

You don't know what I know, who I know, where I go, what I read. Yet you still make these claims, and on the back of them make dismissive statements, as its easier than to try to articulate counter arguments.

 sebster wrote:

 Dreadwinter wrote:
Orlanth, I have said I do not agree with drone strikes in this very thread in response to you. What more do you want?

He wants people to recognise that he is the hard man with the hard solutions. That he sees it like it is, and how it is is a hard world where we need to make hard choices, which only hard men will do.

And you have delusions of possessing psycho-analytical skill also. You dont know me.

 Orlanth wrote:
You really have missed the point. Even with the large restructuring the Taliban will *still* return as soon as it is safe to do so.

I said your argument was like 80s action movie logic, kill the baddie and problem solved. You said that the US army followed 80s action movie logic, because that's all they try to do. I pointed out that was a ridiculous comment, because they've invested a fortune in trying to rebuild the country.

Whether or not that program succeeds or fails, it shows the intent of the US armed services as something way different to 'kill the baddie and move on'. This makes your earlier argument completely wrong.

Understand now?

Don't know where to begin with your patronising rubbish.

I can't decide for you, but probably the best place to start would be to stop feeding my patronising with so many terrible arguments.

This can be taken either literally, or figuratively if the threat is to something not directly tangible.

I introduced the term, as a means of distinguishing a group that is an existential threat, from a group that is not.

If your counter-arugment to that really is that one group is a literal existential threat, but that's not that big a deal because this other group is a figurative existential threat, then I guess that's up to you. It's a bit funny though.

You will find cooperation between manufacturers. For a start you get price fixing. Also cooperation doesn't eliminate competition, healthy competition is often good in a marketplace as it drives the market forwards.

Obviously. This is the dynamic discussed in the prisoner's gang, where everyone would benefit if they co-operated, but individuals benefit if they compete. It's quite fascinating and you really should read up on it.

But to return to the actual point at discussion - you claimed that cartels aren't just profit seeking, because they compete with each other, when cartels as a whole would profit most by collusion. This shows a complete failure to understand how individual groups can be incentivized to compete.

Also last time I checked Fords and General Motors are killing each other for regional control. Drug cartels do that.

If we were discussing whether major car manufacturers or criminal gangs are more violent, then your comment above would mean something. But as we are just talking about competition and collusion, your comment above is really very weird.

One safehouse in Mexico was found filled with $250M in dollar bills, because the Sinaloa didnt know what else to do with it!

And now your evidence that cartels aren't profit seeking is that they make so much money that they don't know what to do with it.

And yes, cartels are also about power. Just like companies will often expand to a size much bigger than an optimum return on shareholder investment would justify, just because senior executives like empire building. This doesn't mean the organisation seeks to be a profit seeking organisation, it just shows you have a very limited understanding of what a profit seeking organisation is.

Sorry Sebster but welcome to reality. Aerial bombing and submarine campaigns were only kept off the war crimes trials after 1945 because it would be blatantly hypocritical for the allies to put people on trial for that. We did it so it therefore had to be legal.

This isn't even a response. It's just a repeat of the same broken premise.

So you aren't saying that Filipinos are too ignorant to make decisions for themselves, they just don't have a rational review because a large proportion hasn't finished high school.
Just a play on words.

Nope, you're lying again. Those aren't my words, and the only way you could conclude that is a summary of what I said is by being a liar.

So, either say "I understand sebster's position is that no electorate can sensibly be expected to have rationally reviewed all government policy when casting their vote, and this is especially true when education levels are low".... or being a fething liar.

You don't know what I know, who I know, where I go, what I read. Yet you still make these claims, and on the back of them make dismissive statements, as its easier than to try to articulate counter arguments.

I know what you've posted here. Your background is irrelevant, when the arguments you present are ignorant then that is what it is.

And you have delusions of possessing psycho-analytical skill also. You dont know me.

You don't know what psycho-analysis is. Because I didn't do any. I just made a conclusion on your politics, based on your political arguments. That doesn't require psycho-analysis.

 sebster wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
You really have missed the point. Even with the large restructuring the Taliban will *still* return as soon as it is safe to do so.

I said your argument was like 80s action movie logic, kill the baddie and problem solved. You said that the US army followed 80s action movie logic, because that's all they try to do. I pointed out that was a ridiculous comment, because they've invested a fortune in trying to rebuild the country.

Whether or not that program succeeds or fails, it shows the intent of the US armed services as something way different to 'kill the baddie and move on'. This makes your earlier argument completely wrong.

Understand now?

How to put this, a band aid over a bullet wound.
Yes I do understand the situation, in fact I saw it coming, as did many others.. I know Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and know the UK armed forces understood it too and far enough in advance to also see the outcome.. Which is why the emphasis was on low key security, and why initially at least the Uk forces were far better received than the US forces. Though the heavy handedness eventually lumped all the coalition armies under one label.

Now the US approach was so heavily in favour of 'kill the bad guys' that and infrastructure support was futile.

 sebster wrote:

Don't know where to begin with your patronising rubbish.

I can't decide for you, but probably the best place to start would be to stop feeding my patronising with so many terrible arguments.

Well at least you are forced to accept there that you are being intentionally patronising. My points aren't insane you just disagree with them, and have only a different opinion, not an inherently superior one on account of being Sebster. Come off your high horse.

 sebster wrote:

Also last time I checked Fords and General Motors are killing each other for regional control. Drug cartels do that.

If we were discussing whether major car manufacturers or criminal gangs are more violent, then your comment above would mean something. But as we are just talking about competition and collusion, your comment above is really very weird..

You chose the analogy, and insisted they were comperable. I was taking your 'logic' to its natural conclusion.

 sebster wrote:

One safehouse in Mexico was found filled with $250M in dollar bills, because the Sinaloa didnt know what else to do with it!

And now your evidence that cartels aren't profit seeking is that they make so much money that they don't know what to do with it.

Even you somehow worked out that I was saying - cartels are not entirely motivated by profit seeking:

 sebster wrote:

But to return to the actual point at discussion - you claimed that cartels aren't just profit seeking, because they compete with each other, when cartels as a whole would profit most by collusion. .

But your critique here only makes sense if that was *all* they cared about. The reality is that the major cartels have more money than they can spend, and while greed will encourage them to aquire more, they hacve pased beyond the pioint of usable excess and the primary motive for cintinuency and expansion is due to the incumbent power they have. So it order to make a point you try to misinterpret mine to mean that caretls are disinterested by profit, immediately after trying a different interpretation for another point.

You display a complete lack of intellectual integrity when you repeatedly and rapidly flip between mutually exclusive assumptions of opposed comments in order to manufacture cheap and fallacious arguments.

 sebster wrote:

And yes, cartels are also about power. Just like companies will often expand to a size much bigger than an optimum return on shareholder investment would justify, just because senior executives like empire building. This doesn't mean the organisation seeks to be a profit seeking organisation, it just shows you have a very limited understanding of what a profit seeking organisation is.

Blah blah, very limited understanding that the other. You are making cheap shots and not in any way backing them up. If I was this rude to you I would have had a thread ban by now.

 sebster wrote:

Sorry Sebster but welcome to reality. Aerial bombing and submarine campaigns were only kept off the war crimes trials after 1945 because it would be blatantly hypocritical for the allies to put people on trial for that. We did it so it therefore had to be legal.

This isn't even a response. It's just a repeat of the same broken premise.

Why is the premise broken? Evidently only because you cant formulate a counter to it?
Its HARD REALITY, baxckecup historical fact. Nothing broken about the presmise because the realities can be seen in well observered events. There were moves to add aerial bombing and submarine warfare to the list of charges as crimes against humanity, but thisd was dropped because it would be too blatantly hypocritical to only censure germany and Japan over those actions. Legality therefore was based the identity of those deemed culpable rather than the offences committed.

We even have a phrase to describe the process - Victors Justice.

 sebster wrote:

So you aren't saying that Filipinos are too ignorant to make decisions for themselves, they just don't have a rational review because a large proportion hasn't finished high school.
Just a play on words.

Nope, you're lying again. Those aren't my words, and the only way you could conclude that is a summary of what I said is by being a liar.

It must be embarrassing for you to be caught out like this. [i[I directly quoted you.[/i] If you want to whitewash it all away why don't you quietly edit your posts before calling me a liar.
You made the education level of Filipinos directly relevant to their ability to vote rationally. Which is at best arrogant and frankly downright bigoted.
Now you can throw your rattles out of the pram and call me a liar as much as you like, it doesnt help your case.
Now a better educated electorate is always a plus, but no nation has ever had an enlightened plebiscite, but average voters can understand plain issues like drug violence, especially if they are living in the country with the problem, and can listen to their leaders and vote based on the policies presented to them.

 sebster wrote:

I know what you've posted here. Your background is irrelevant, when the arguments you present are ignorant then that is what it is.

Evidently you have a poor grounding with which to accuse anyone else of ignorance.
Your just being a parrot here - "you have no idea what X is" being your persistent squark, even when I demonstrate and articulate at least an equal or better understanding of the topics than yourself.
Come up with an honest argument, and argue the topic, not the person, like an adult should.

 sebster wrote:

And you have delusions of possessing psycho-analytical skill also. You dont know me.

You don't know what psycho-analysis is. Because I didn't do any. I just made a conclusion on your politics, based on your political arguments. That doesn't require psycho-analysis.

You edited away the reason for the reply. You have made repeated insinuations about my mental health.
It was fair reply to say that you have no moral right, reason or evidence to make such suggestions.

Sebster, we used to have good topical arguments you and I. Why dont we call truce and return to that. If you agree you get one free reply in current format.

What if he disagrees? Why does he only get one reply? Why do you get to decide this?

Because Orlanth is the man who makes hard decisions.

I am still waiting for his response to me not approving of US drone strikes, which kind of makes his whole argument pointless.

I think it is an attempt to quell what is becoming an impasse. The same two posters posting the same arguments back and forth is pretty pointless.

 Orlanth wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
The fact that numerous people in this thread are apparently not merely ok with, but seem to actively support, on demand extra judicial murder of people arbitrarily deemed "bad" simply for being involved at any level with a subset arbitrarily chosen intoxicating substances, has dramatically reduced the level of respect I had for the members of this board.

The mental gymnastics going on here is mind boggling, and an excellent view into how quickly people willingly embrace murderous regimes.

There is no actual moral difference between what the Filipino government is doing and other western governments. Extreme action is commonplace, Obama authorises assassinations and drone strikes with regularity, often violating international borders to do so. Nobody here complains at that, because the targets are *OUR* enemies.

If you are a peacenik condemining all violence then you would have a point, Dakka usually isn't flush with those, and most here are fairly hawkish about bombing the usual suspects. Filipinos are currently content with their presidents decision to rid the nation of its endemic drug crime problem, it may well be brutal, but it offers results; in this is is little different from the extra judicial killings our own society condones, endorses and actions. If they are content what business is it of ours. By what right to we say that we as 'civilised' nations have the right to bomb who we please to defend our interests, and play that reach globally, while others cannot deal with what is to them as serious a threat from within their own borders.

Filthy socialist peacenik here. I condemn the use of drone strikes not really because of the fact they are employed, but the more because of manner in which they are used. The current M.O. is to drop munitions, then declare every dead male over 15 and under 60 a terrorist. That's absurd, and no way to conduct a "just war".

The key difference between western drone strikes and the filipino death squads is the deliberate targeting of what basically amounts to civilian bystanders. You seem to be celebrating the execution of the "bad guys", the cartel members, but they could only make up a small portion of the killings. The large part has to be the user.

You have put yourself in the position where you are cheerleading for a guy who calls for his countrymen to round up and murder people who's only crime is to be addicted to drugs. Was that your intention when you opened this can of worms with your first post?

 Mozzyfuzzy wrote:
What if he disagrees? Why does he only get one reply? Why do you get to decide this?

Read carefully. I cant tear a piece back in reply, and then call a truce without allowing fair right of reply.
If he refuses the discussion continues as it has done.
Not implying he cant post what he wants anyway.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 jmurph wrote:
I think it is an attempt to quell what is becoming an impasse. The same two posters posting the same arguments back and forth is pretty pointless.

Exactly that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 feeder wrote:


You have put yourself in the position where you are cheerleading for a guy who calls for his countrymen to round up and murder people who's only crime is to be addicted to drugs. Was that your intention when you opened this can of worms with your first post?

My first post had a different tone. Along the lines of why the specific level of complaint when our governments do as much with less concern.
Also the sort of people who are wagging fingers are doing the drone strikes you dont like, Obama for instance.

The Philippines is in a dire situation, the drug problem is getting worse and worse, and their new government has been given an mandate to govern on the grounds of doing something about it.

Governments from time to time find that extreme action is the only solution to a problem. A justifiable declaration of war is a good example of this. Sometimes a threat grows to the point that rational men believe that bombing shooting or invading it, is th only solution. Sometimes they are wrong, sometimes they are right.

the Filipino people have overall placed their trust in someone who has promised such action. Had Dutente suddenly come up with a 'mad plan' to slaughter everyone he disliked, I would not be backing him. But it isn't a 'mad plan', its entirely premeditated and based on electoral promises that the populace had every opportunity to oppose in a democratic election. This is the kernel of the issue, it is an internal matter and the Filipino people have decided that the risks of the heavy handed action against drugs are worthwhile overall. As with any form of action of this sort, tragedy is inevitable, but tragedy is already long present. The Filipino people have of their own accord decided that the only way out is through. Stopping the campaign now, when the price is being paid but the goal is not yet achieved would be a colossal waste, and a violation of the will of a self governing and sovereign people to make their own solutions to their own problems.

 Orlanth wrote:

 feeder wrote:

You have put yourself in the position where you are cheerleading for a guy who calls for his countrymen to round up and murder people who's only crime is to be addicted to drugs. Was that your intention when you opened this can of worms with your first post?

My first post had a different tone. Along the lines of why the specific level of complaint when our governments do as much with less concern.
Also the sort of people who are wagging fingers are doing the drone strikes you dont like, Obama for instance.

The Philippines is in a dire situation, the drug problem is getting worse and worse, and their new government has been given an mandate to govern on the grounds of doing something about it.

Governments from time to time find that extreme action is the only solution to a problem. A justifiable declaration of war is a good example of this. Sometimes a threat grows to the point that rational men believe that bombing shooting or invading it, is th only solution. Sometimes they are wrong, sometimes they are right.

the Filipino people have overall placed their trust in someone who has promised such action. Had Dutente suddenly come up with a 'mad plan' to slaughter everyone he disliked, I would not be backing him. But it isn't a 'mad plan', its entirely premeditated and based on electoral promises that the populace had every opportunity to oppose in a democratic election. This is the kernel of the issue, it is an internal matter and the Filipino people have decided that the risks of the heavy handed action against drugs are worthwhile overall. As with any form of action of this sort, tragedy is inevitable, but tragedy is already long present. The Filipino people have of their own accord decided that the only way out is through. Stopping the campaign now, when the price is being paid but the goal is not yet achieved would be a colossal waste, and a violation of the will of a self governing and sovereign people to make their own solutions to their own problems.

The answer, Feeder, is yes. Tough times demand tough answers from tough guys, and Orlanth knows them when he sees them.

 Dreadwinter wrote:


I am still waiting for his response to me not approving of US drone strikes, which kind of makes his whole argument pointless.

Very well, but I need not have replied to you, but I will as you are 'waiting'. It doesn't matter if you do or don't approve of drone strikes. It makes no difference to my argument a jot, as I need not find an absolute vacuum of contrary opinion for the premise to remain, and I need not give a rodents rectum what any individuals beliefs are. You sound your own, and I will sound mine.

I really don't even know how to enter into the conversation on this thread, so I'm just going to speak my mind on this horrible situation. On the surface, there's an elected official advocating open mass slaughter of the citizenry. This, simply, is the stuff of hell. Beneath that, is the apparent need...and want...for desperate measures to address a desperate situation. If mass murder is the only perceivable solution, God help us all.

I'll simply say that murder, state sponsored or otherwise, is murder and unacceptable, always. It is unacceptable in a civilized world and indefensible as an act by humans. Drug abuse is but a symptom and indicator of a larger problem and should be addressed accordingly. A bullet to the back of a human being's head is not, and can never be, acceptable as a means to solving the problem because it does nothing to address the core problem.

I truly can't believe this gak is even real and happening.