Drug mules and corruption

The big story here in the Philippines is that China intends to execute three "drug mules".

Appeals hasn't worked, so the papers say folks are now resorting to prayer.

But the real story is, of course, the fact that two of them managed to get drugs on the planes leaving the Philippines...how big is the problem? The Inquirer notes that there are 500 Pinoys on death row on drug smuggling related charges. That suggests a major pipeline, and lots of people taking money to look the other way.

Again, the strict libel laws make a lot of dot connecting difficult, since the primary sources only hint at the problem.
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Another example of how friendship (aka corruption) can let even the best known fugitives hide from the law: Lacson will stay mum on the names of his friends.

So, was he framed by a certain person to stop him from investigating corruption, or did he order the hit job and get away with murder?
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Justice delayed is justice denied, as the saying goes, and that is even more so here than in the US....we're still waiting for the mayor who ordered the hit job that killed our nephew to be tried. If they delay long enough, of course, the witnesses will change their mind, disappear, or die...and in the meanwhile, the US embassy does nothing about the murder, prefering to pretend it was a simple robbery, not a political murder to keep control of the city's funding and siphon off money.

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The background is that China is pushing their weight around now that Obama has signalled the world he is making American less 'aggressive". Of course, the left here hates the US, but China's pushing the Philippines around in the Spratlys isn't helping us at all (not to mention a lot of unsubstantiated rumors about Chinese money, the broadband scandal, and the weakening of Filipine sovereignty in the area in the recent past). Background HERE.

Apparantly, China is also pushing around VietNam (who has a similar claim). Summary at StrategyPage:

here, they are merely disliked because many married into the leading families and their descendants run the country.

the fact that one of our generals went bonkers, hijacked a bus and killed a bunch of innocent tourists from Hong Kong awhile back isn't helping things either.

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Another worry is that there have been so many reports about abuse of OFW's in Saudi, especially of maids, that the gov't says they want to know the addresses of the employers before they let the girls go there. So now the Saudis are angry, and says they won't hire any more maids from the Philippines.