Subject: Re: Called this one
I was just talking about some of this yesterday. My physical therapist for my carpal tunnel is Filipino and the whole office is Filipino. We went back and forth on Duterte. So I told him about an interview that Reza of Rappler did with Duterte and that Duterte was favorably disposed toward China long before he ran for Pres. He told me Rappler was no good and I told him Reza wasn't against him back then. But you see Duterte actually say that he prefers China to the US. (There's an old story to this.)

The old story is there was a fellow looking for Japanese treasure on Mindanao who, among other things, would go to the back and parts of caves and blow them open to see if there was treasure hidden there. He searched in a lot of places. He was fiddlin with the dynamite in a hotel, it blew up, and was rushed to the hospital. Duterte is pissed so he puts armed guards at the guys hospital room. The fellows wife is a nurse who flies to Manila and the embassy arranges for him to be picked up out of the hospital flown to Manila and put on a plane to the USA. She does all of the nursing during this. Duterte's guards weren't there when they came so Duterte decides the CIA came and got their CIA agent. He's pissed at the US, but he's normally pissed at the US.

Anyway there's the incident where the US won't sell em the M4s for the police. The police are doing the drug operation and have launched into ferreting out the drug operations and executing drug gang people. If you are on top, you're generally not executed, but there was a political drug clan in Mindanao where they surrounded a politico's ranch house and went in shooting. Quite the shoot up and the message was out.

Anyway, Duterte became disenchanted with the Chinese when they continued to screw with his fishermen and then reneged on the big loans for him to create huge infrastructure for the nation. There were these huge plans that just fizzled out and went nowhere. There was going to be a train connecting parts of Mindanao to each other, and then a train from the top of Luzon ( the biggest island) to the bottom. Nothing. And if he did something they didn't like they'd stop buying bananas and farmers were hurt.