Philippine news

not all murders here are related to Duterte's War on Drug pushers, but the US press often pretends they are and lump all of them in the headlines.

Our local news paper has a summary of things going on here: The main problem is that typhoon that hit in the midst of rice harvest flooding ready to harvest rice crops and making the newly harvested rice hard to dry so the quality is lower than normal.

the harvest continued after the typhoon and is now about ended.

As for murders, the paper includes the rumors of the hit that may or may not be due to the feuding mayors here (i.e. payback for the previous mayor and her father trying to kill the family of our present mayor in two hits, one of which killed our nephew in the crossfire).

They also note one killing that was of a drug pusher, but one never knows if this was a government hit or if it was the killing by a drug gang of a suspected snitch... the thing is that these murders were going on before Dutarte took over, although fewer of them.

Oh yes: also a love triangle murder. Fueled by passion, or did drugs/alcohol get into the story?

there is also a report of two cops murdered. Payback, or were they crooked cops?

Locals know these things (usually I find out what is going on from our cook, whose sons drive tricycles. Tricycle drivers know all the rumors).

but what outsiders don't realize is that their statistics on drug murders is a blip up from the background level, and that a lot of the "political murders" that go on are about corruption: Who controls the money (and can skim off the top). Our area is often called the "wild west", after a few years ago the body guards of the two candidates for governor had a shoot out.

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In other news, the polls suggest FilAms are very pro Hillary.

Yes, it's the immigration stupid. Trump pushes the idea that immigrants harm America because they take jobs, but most of my relatives are immigrants go "SAY WHAT?" and figure he is just a bigot.

Hillary's corruption is a "so what else is new?" story, and although most are Catholic, they don't realize the most or the ominous stuff like same sex bathrooms and the lawsuits against Catholic institutions don't affect their daily lives, whereas anti immigrant policies and attitudes do.