Duterte, fighting for his country and his life, enjoys outpouring of support from Filipinos

Andre Vltchek
RT

There is a sense of change in those narrow and desperate alleys of the Baseco slum in the Philippines' capital Manila. For the first time in many years a beautiful, noble lady visited; against all odds she decided to stay. Her name is Hope.

Baseco is a tough, crime-ridden region built from cartons and metal sheets, even rusty containers; everything is thrown together in startling fashion, right near the shipyard.

Here, the lips of the people used to be sealed, expressions on their faces incessantly desperate. Now everyone speaks, some even smile shyly, adults and children, women who look sixty at the age of thirty, as well as tough looking men.

"I support Duterte!" declares Ms. Imelda Rodriguez, who works as a physiotherapist here, through the Department of Social Welfare and Development. "Now children get free education and 'medical missions' provide basic medical care. We also receive allowances, and the government provides jobs. We are still lacking electricity, but at least the municipality is providing free drinking water."

Nearby a teenage girl is washing her hair, using a bucket full of soapy water. It is raining and mud is everywhere. Children are running around barefoot, and some are obviously suffering from malnutrition.

"So much has to be done," concludes Ms. Imelda. "But so much had been done already."

People complain about an extremely high crime rate, about drug-pushing gangs. I visit the slums and vast cemeteries inhabited by the poorest of the poor; I also speak to people in shopping malls and at the office towers.

At the South Cemetery, Mr. Rex, a security guard, explains: "President Duterte is strict on the implementation of the rules. Crime is now going down dramatically."

Self-proclaimed socialist 'Presidente' Rodrigo Duterte is enjoying the staggering support of his people, estimated to be well over 70 percent of the population.

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Chomsky: World racing towards nuclear war in 2014

Press TV

Renowned American linguist, philosopher and political commentator Noam Chomsky warns that the world is racing towards “environmental catastrophe” and “nuclear war” in 2014.

Answering a question in an interview with Salon.com about the contemporary issues which particularly concerns him, the scholar answered that there are two major problems from among a long list that are worth mentioning.

“These are issues that seriously threaten the possibility of decent human survival. One of them is the growing threat of environmental catastrophe, which we are racing towards as if we were determined to fall off a precipice, and the other is the threat of nuclear war, which has not declined, in fact it’s very serious and in many respects is growing,” Chomsky said.

He added that these threats are emanating from world’s most power countries while indigenous societies are trying to avoid them.

“It’s quite striking to see that those in the lead of trying to do something about this catastrophe are what we call “primitive” societies. The first nations in Canada, indigenous societies in central America, aboriginals in Australia. They’ve been on the forefront of trying to prevent the disaster that we’re rushing towards."

"It’s beyond irony that the richest most powerful countries in the world are racing towards disaster while the so-called primitive societies are the ones in the forefront of trying to avert it,” he went on to add.

Talking about the scope and depth of US spying scandal, Chomsky said that he was not shocked by the revelations made by Edward Snowden, a former contractor to US National Security Agency (NSA) and CIA.

“Governments are power systems,” Chomsky said.
“They are trying to sustain their power and domination over their populations and they will use what means are available to do this.”

Referring to the US invasion of the Philippines about a century ago as an example, he noted that Washington used a sophisticated spying system to suppress any possible uprising by the nation.

“…right after the US invasion of the Philippines — a brutal invasion that killed a couple hundred thousand people — there was a problem for the US of pacification afterwards. What do you do to control the population to prevent another nationalist uprising? There’s a very good study of this by Alfred McCoy, a Philippines scholar at University of Wisconsin, and what he shows is that the US used the most sophisticated technology of the day to develop a massive system of surveillance, control, disruption to undermine any potential opposition and to impose very tight controls on the population which lasted for a long time and in many ways the Philippines is still suffering from this.”

Typhoon Haiyan: International relief workers fight through chaos in struggle to reach thousands desperate for aid

  

Independent

International relief workers are struggling to reach the hundreds of thousands left homeless in the Philippines by Typhoon Haiyan, as details emerge of the full scale destruction affecting around two million people in all.

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US Marines were dispatched this morning to Tacloban, the remote eastern city worst affected by the storm, along with supplies of water and generators. Flying in from Manila's Vilamor air base, they are among the only contingents of the ballooning aid effort actually able to reach those in need.

 Houses destroyed by the strong winds caused by typhoon Haiyan at Tacloban,

eastern island of Leyte | GETTY

An aerial view of the devastation of super Typhoon Haiyan after it battered Samar

province incentral Philippines November 11, 2013. | Reuters

Click here to see a gallery of images of devastation from Typhoon Haiyan


A flurry of major international relief teams are expected in the coming days, but face a challenge navigating their way through the devastated terrain.

Feeding Tacloban's survivors will be the first priority - but progress on this front has been slow. UNICEF Philippines Representative Tomoo Hozumi said: “Reaching the worst affected areas is very difficult, with limited access due to the damage caused by the typhoon to infrastructure and communications.”

Richard Gordon, head of the Philippine Red Cross, told the BBC: “It's absolute bedlam right now, but hopefully it will turn out better as more and more supplies get into the area.

“It's only now that [relief workers] were able to get in and we're beginning just to bring in the necessary food items... as well as water and other things that they need.”

There will be no respite from the weather - local forecasters are predicting a “tropical depression” to hit vast swathes of the typhoon-affected area late on Tuesday. Though a minor system compared to Haiyan, it could cause local flooding and will only serve to hinder the relief effort even more.

The scale of destruction visited on the Philippines by “super typhoon” Haiyan started to become clear on Sunday as the winds subsided, with 10,000 people estimated to have died in Tacloban alone, entire villages washed away and hungry survivors looting grocery shops and attacking trucks bringing aid.
After flying over the island of Leyte – probably the worst affected place – in a helicopter, the Interior Secretary, Manuel Roxas, said: “From the shore and moving a kilometre inland, there are no structures standing. I don’t know how to describe what I saw… It’s horrific.” He added: “Imagine … all the shanties, everything, destroyed. They were just like matchsticks flung inland.”

The provincial capital, Tacloban bore the brunt of the ferocious winds and monster waves whipped up by one of the most powerful storms ever recorded, corpses floated in floodwaters, hung in trees and lay among the debris of flattened buildings. Survivors wept as they retrieved the bodies of loved ones from the ruins of their homes.

With emergency teams yet to reach coastal villages cut off by floods and landslides, authorities predicted an even higher death toll. There were grave fears for places such as Guiuan, a town of 40,000 people which was the first to be struck by Haiyan as it roared across the central and southern Philippines on Friday, flinging ships inland and destroying 70 to 80 per cent of buildings in its path.
In Tacloban, which had a population of 220,000, “people are walking like zombies looking for food,” said Jenny Chu, a medical student. Mobs attacked trucks bringing in food, tents and water, according to the Philippine Red Cross, and ATM machines were reportedly broken open.

Troops and police were sent in to restore order after looters raided shops and petrol stations in search of food, water and fuel. President Benigno Aquino, who visited Tacloban yesterday, said the government was considering introducing martial law.

One teacher, Andrew Pomeda, told AFP on Sunday: “Some people are losing their minds from hunger or from losing their families. People are becoming violent. They are looting business establishments, the malls, just to find food, rice and milk… I am afraid that in one week people will be killing from hunger.”

The typhoon – which passed through Vietnam in a weaker state early on Monday and was downgraded to a tropical storm as it entered southern China  – produced tsunami-like storm surges which drowned many in its path. Others died beneath collapsed buildings. “The water was as high as a coconut tree,” Sandy Torotoro, a bicycle taxi driver in Tacloban, told Associated Press.

A Jeep in which he and others tried to shelter was carried away by a wall of water, he said. “I got out of the Jeep, and I was swept away by the rampaging water, with logs, trees and our house, which was ripped from its moorings… Many people were floating and raising their hands and yelling for help. But what can we do? We also needed to be helped.”

Nancy Chang, who was in Tacloban on a business trip, said seawater reached the second floor of her hotel. She walked for three hours, through mud and debris, to reach the airport, where hundreds of people were trying to get flights out. With the airport badly damaged, only military planes  were operating.

Even by the standards of the Philippines, which is prone to typhoons as well as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, Haiyan is a natural disaster of epic proportions – and almost certainly its most lethal to date.

Authorities had plenty of notice, and evacuated nearly 800,000 people. But “how can you beat that typhoon?” asked the head of defence forces, Voltaire Gazmin, questioned about whether the government had been sufficiently prepared. “It’s the strongest on Earth. We’ve done everything we can, we had lots of preparation.”

In Tacloban, “all vestiges of modern living – communications, power, water – are all down”, said Mr Roxas. He described the typhoon, with winds of up to 235mph, as “a great human tragedy”.

Hundreds of people died in the fishing village of Palo, near Tacloban, while on the neighbouring island of Samar 300 people in one town were dead and 2,000 missing, according to provincial officials. Other towns have yet to be reached by rescuers. 

The manager of Tacloban airport, Efren Nagrama, said that water levels rose by 4m. “We escaped through the windows, and I held on to a pole for about an hour as rain, seawater and wind swept through the airport,” he said. “Some of my staff survived by clinging to trees. I prayed hard until the water subsided.” 

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Filipinos struggle to cope with huge typhoon that was 'like a tsunami'

Daily Mail

• Typhoon Haiyan was a maximum category-five storm with gusts of up to 235mph
• Authorities say in the city of Tacloban, Leyte, alone, 10,000 could be dead
• Up to 4.3 million people have been affected, Filipino national disaster agency say
• Bodies were seen floating in flooded streets in reminder of 2004 Tsunami
• Filipino government now considering introducing martial law to combat looting
• Britain has pledged more than £6million in aid and support for the Philippines
• UN says 2.5m people need of food aid and UNICEF estimate 1.5 m children affected
• A team of about 90 U.S. Marines and sailors have been dispatched to the nation
• Hundreds of thousands of people in South East Asia have been evacuated
• Vietnam authorities have moved 883,000 people in 11 central provinces to safe zones
• Typhoon has now made landfall in Sanya in south China's Hainan province 

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Red Cross Fears 1000 Deaths in Philippine Typhoon

 

New York Times

MANILA - The powerful typhoon that swept across the Philippines on Friday cut a path of destruction though several central islands, leaving the seaside city of Tacloban in ruins and leading to early, unconfirmed estimates of at least 1,200 dead.