It's finally here. The drug war film so controversial that even the Palace had to issue a statement before they saw it. On the President's Orders. I actually watched it while eating my breakfast. Oatmeal with a fried egg all chopped up and mixed in. A perfect way to start the day. Coffee too! And not that 3-n-1 junk. Now that I have seen it I want to share my thoughts with you all. Let's get right to the punch:
This documentary film is all lies and propaganda and none of it is true.
To prove this assertion I am going to walk you through this film. Spoilers abound so do watch first.
The documentary was shown on PBS as an episode of the Frontline television program and before the proper film starts we get a thank you to us the viewer and a thanks to various foundations.
The MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation, Abrams Foundation, Park Foundation, John and Helen Glessner Family Trust, Frontline Journalism Fund, the Jon L. Hagler Foundation, Thomas and Karen Hamilton, and the Bertha Doc Society. If you are not aware that these big monied foundations set agendas and dictate policy then you need to watch this interview with Norman Dodd about how that all works.
Right off the bat we know we are dealing with people who have set an agenda. But what is that agenda? Once again I will lay my cards out and tell you. It is to discredit the PNP.
After hearing a speech from the newly installed Caloocan PNP Chief Modequillo about how he wants to instil discipline in his officers one of the first scenes we see is a this same Chief Modequillo instructing officers on the firing range. He says to them, "Fire one shot and holster." They pull out their guns and then BLAM BLAM BLAM!!! Modequillo screams "Hold fire ***** damn it!!"
"Do you understand one round?"
"Yes, Sir!"
"You say yes sir, yes sir, but then you can't follow instructions!"
Are we supposed to laugh at the contrast between Chief Modequillo promising to instil discipline in his men and these undisciplined PNP officers who, when they are told to unholster their guns and fire one shot, continue firing? Are we supposed to laugh even harder when Chief Modequillo gives them a second chance and someone messes up and he threatens to shoot them?
Do you think that's funny? It's not funny. It is absolutely pathetic and it is only kept in the movie because it makes the PNP look bad. Who's to say they didn't get more discipline as time passed? But we don't see that. Instead we see bumbling officers who can't follow a simple command and their Chief threatening to shoot one of them.
Neither is the scene where the Caloocan Jail Warden tucks his shirt into his underwear as he sings and dances funny.
He's just having a good time before he has to go to work and beat the inmates. Give him a break! Imagine if you had to oversee an overcrowded jail and you had to beat the inmates because as Sgt. Augustin says:
Yes, I hurt the detainees. I give them punishments.
If you don’t spank a child, he will not obey you. In prison you need to act like a gangster.
How would you make it through your day if not by singing and dancing?
It's just a way to make this guy look silly. Look at this scene where the warden brings his weapon to the mess hall table.
Sgt. Augustin points his gun at a man who gets a little sacred and ducks out of the way. Is that funny? There could have been a round in the chamber. The trigger could have accidentally been pulled and someone seriously hurt. You think the jail warden pointing his weapon at some guy in the mess hall is funny? It's not and tell me what value does this scene add to the movie which is supposed to be about the drug war? It only serves to make this man look foolish.
Just before we meet this jail warden we are introduced to the S.O.U. or Special Operations Unit of the Caloocan police who operate directly under Modequillo. Specifically we meet Captain Will Cabrales who is the S.O.U.'s Team Leader.
Like flies on the wall we are privy to this pre-raid conversation between Cabrales and one of his men.
"So this suspect, Jimmy Aussa, is well known in his area. He's been reported as a headache in his area. It's drugs, right?"
"Yeah, but we don't have a search warrant. We know he has drugs, but we don't have a search warrant."
"No, what we do in this case is focus on the gun. Always where there is a gun the drugs will be the second offense. He’s definitely got drugs?"
"He's definitely got drugs. Someone like Jimmy Aussa, sir, if he gets out, he'll keep going back to his old ways. We will have to hunt him again and again. That's why we need to finish him right away."
"No, I asked the chief if we can go overboard, but he said it has to be clean."
Come on man. For one thing we should not be privy to such a private and sensitive conversation. For another....it's just more reason to look down on the PNP. These men are actually discussing how to get around not having a search warrant and one of them is actually advocating taking Jimmy Aussa out! PNP officers advocating murder? It's left in the "documentary" to make the PNP look bad.
How seriously are we supposed to take this documentary anyway when so many reviewers keep commenting on how cinematic it is?
“Cinematic with a capital C”
— BiffBamPop
“It’s a wholly cinematic, sensory experience, with straight-ahead reportage electrified by glaring streetlights and a panicked urban wall of sound; it would make a handsome companion piece to Filipino auteur Brillante Mendoza’s recent “Alpha, the Right to Kill,” a fictionalised Duterte-era action film that aimed for grainy docu-realism as much as Jones and Sarbil’s film trades in more sleekly immersive atmospherics.
Production values here are so dazzlingly high that, for entire sequences at a time, riveted viewers may forget to wonder just how Jones and Sarbil managed to force a camera into the fray. Sarbil, a gifted cameraman who won a cinematography Emmy for his and Jones’s 2017 Frontline episode on Mosul, shoots the nighttime raids with a hot, athletic immediacy that the aforementioned Mendoza (or even Michael Mann) would covet in a fictional context; bodies are silhouetted in the glare of emergency lights, though amid the shadows, we also get close-up glimmers of strained faces on all sides of the law. The idea here is not to aestheticize a human rights crisis, but to show the absurd movie-logic shoot-’em-up that Duterte has allowed the Philippines to become, right down to the “Fury Road”-style death’s-head masks worn by the executors. Populist politics can turn all too easily to popcorn ones; “On the President’s Orders” vividly captures the tipping point.”
— Guy Lodge, Variety
“In this explosive cinematic investigation, directors James Jones and Olivier Sarbil get alarmingly close to the battle for the streets and soul of the Philippines. Their cameras stand before both sides — the victimised slum communities and the police squads blithely executing their countrymen from a perverse moral high ground. The staggering visions of violence, shot with a kinetic slickness and immediacy, are so electrifying that viewers will have to remind themselves: this is happening now, this is real.”
Is On the President's Orders a Hollywood film or is it a slice of real life? You want real life then watch the home videos my parents shot in the 80's on a huge, clunky VHS camcorder. You want a "cinematic, sensory experience" with "dazzlingly high" production values then watch this "documentary" or any other movie from Hollywood like Fury Road or Michael Mann's Thief.
Here's the bottom line: I watched this movie expecting to learn more about the Philippines' drug war and I'll I got were pictures of menacing and bumbling PNP officers. If I wanted that I could have just read the daily news!
Look I am not going to give away the rest of this film. All I will say is it's free to watch and if you have 54 minutes to waste then give it a chance. Breakfast time is as good as any time to watch it. But you should know this Frontline version is truncated because the one which was shown in L.A. was 1 hour, 12 minutes!
How many people have died as a result of Duterte's drug war? That is not as straightforward a question as you may think. What does it mean exactly? What is being asked? Are we asking how many have died as a result of police operations? Are we including how many have died as a result of vigilantes? Are we asking how many drug dealers and users have died? Or are we asking about innocent bystanders as well? It all depends on who you ask.
The official government tally as of July 2019 is exactly 5,526.
The number of drug suspects killed in anti-drug operations has reached 5,526, data from the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) showed Thursday.
Another 193,063 drug personalities, meanwhile, have been arrested in 134,583 operations conducted nationwide.
The data which covered July 2016 until June 2019 were disclosed during the Real Numbers PH presentation that aims to clarify data on the drug war, amid the 27,000 deaths that human rights groups allege could be related to the drive against the illegal drug trade.
This also clarifies the 6,600 deaths earlier reported in the unofficial data of the Philippine National Police (PNP). This earlier figure has not yet been verified with PDEA.
The PDEA says only 5,526 people have died as a result of the drug war. But they are only counting deaths from police operations. This number is also lower than the number PNP Chief Albalyde gave just a day earlier which the PDEA calls "unofficial data!" The data from the PDEA is dated July 18th. Let's go back to one day before, July 17th.
You must go to the link and watch that brief clip. PNP Chief Albayalde quotes from PNP statistics and gives a very specific number which the PDEA contradicts the next day. Not only do they contradict it but they call it "unofficial data" even though it is official PNP data! This official PNP data was confirmed just a month earlier on June 18th, 2019.
At least 6,600 suspected drug offenders have been killed in police operations since President Duterte took office in 2016, the Philippine National Police (PNP) reported yesterday.
Maj. Gen. Ma-o Aplasca, chief of the PNP Directorate for Operations, said the suspects were killed in alleged shootouts with police officers from July 1, 2016 to May 31, 2019. Aplasca presented the report during a command conference at PNP headquarters at Camp Crame in Quezon City.
The report said 240,565 suspected pushers and users were arrested in the same period. PNP chief General Oscar Albayalde presided over the meeting attended by regional police commanders and heads of national support units.
6,600 is official PNP data. Was it just a joke? Why should we disbelieve them when they are at the forefront of the drug war? Surely their numbers are as good as gold? It is very believable that the number was 6,600 at the end of May and increased to 6,739 a month later. This is still 1,000 more deaths the the official PDEA figure. Why the difference? Why do the PNP and PDEA contradict one another?
Two months before that in April Ateneo University released their findings and came up with a comeptley different number.
More than 7,000 drug suspects—mostly poor, male breadwinners from Metro Manila—have been shot dead during the course of the Duterte administration’s three-year war on drugs, according to Drug Archive, an independent listing of alleged extrajudicial killings nationwide.
The Ateneo School of Government on Friday released the updated number of drug-related killings from the Drug Archive, the academe-led database prepared by Ateneo de Manila University, De La Salle University and the University of the Philippines, which was launched in 2017.
7,000 is more than the PDEA and PNP's official tallies. How is it that their numbers are more than the official government numbers but less than those of various human rights organisations which allege many more deaths have occurred? How is it that the Durg Archive, which is "compiled and validated through news reports," records 7,000 deaths between May 2016 and December 2018 but Rappler reported 7,000 deaths back in 2017?
Rappler, along with other news outfits,presented a tally of 7,000 deaths as of April 2017 but clarified that the number is cumulative of all the deaths linked to the war on drugs. They are both deaths from legitimate police operations and deaths from vigilante-style or unexplained killings.
Rappler's 7,000 includes deaths from police and assassins. But so does the Drug Archive.
Most of the reported killings -- 4,152 people or 59 percent of the total -- involved police operations, while 2,469 individuals or 35 percent were "killed by assailant." A relatively small fraction, 402 people making up 5.7 percent, consisted of bodies discovered or found.
It is the tally of those deaths, deaths from assassins and unexplained killings, that have caused a lot of the confusion over the official kill count. The official terms used for such deaths related to the drug war but not as a result of police operations are "Death Under Investigation" and "Homicide Cases Under Investigation." It is the number of those deaths that have pushed the kill count to over 20,000.
“The drug policies in place in the Philippines, and its lack of respect for rule of law and international standards, should not be considered a model by any country,” she later added.
Sought for comment, Malacañang said on Thursday that the figures Ms. Bachelet was citing on the number of drug-related deaths at 27,000 was wrong.
“The problem with that statement coming from that UN official is that… she relies on what she receives (as) information coming from the critics and the detractors of the administration. And we have been saying that this information is wrong. Like, for instance, when she claims that there were 27,000 deaths, the official count is only 5,000,” presidential spokesperson Salvador S. Panelo said during a Palace briefing.
These numbers are from March 2019. Bachelet says 27,000 Panelo says 5,000. Where did she get the number 27,000 from? Official government statistics of course.
The Philippine National Police (PNP) has recorded a total of 22,983 cases of killings that were classified as deaths under inquiry (DUI) since President Duterte launched the war on drugs.
In a report, the PNP Directorate for Investigation and Detective Management (DIDM) said at least 33 persons were killed daily from July 1, 2016 until May 21 this year.
Earlier, Presidential Communications Operations Office Secretary Martin Andanar said the #RealNumberPH was the consolidated numbers in the administration’s accomplishment against illegal drugs.
“These are real numbers that we need to know, the others are either false, misinformation or fake,” he said.
Those numbers are from May 2018 so of course they are less than any numbers from 2019. What's important to note is that PCOO Secretary Andanar tells us that #RealNumbers PH is the official tally. But does the PCOO really believe that? No. They don't.
The Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) on Tuesday said the total number of homicides cases under investigation (HCUIs), under the "Fighting Against Illegal Drugs" chapter in its 2017 accomplishment report, were included to create a distinction on the number of deaths that were all related to the administration's anti-illegal drugs operations.
"We included the figures on homicide cases under investigation when we published real numbers to make it clear that there is a different number which is directly related to deaths during drug operations since the opposition had been insisting on the numbers most convenient for them to push their political agenda," Assistant Secretary Marie Rafael said in a phone interview.
From another article we read:
The PCOO reiterated that the numbers under homicide cases under investigation (HCUI) “are not at all related to the anti-illegal drugs campaign.”
“We are not contradicting these data; in fact, we have been updating these data. May we reiterate that these homicide cases under investigation are not at all related to the anti-illegal drugs campaign,” PCOO said.
“HCUI may have resulted out of road rage, land dispute, business rivalry, family dispute, love triangle, crimes of passion or politics, what may be considered as drug-related incidents are those where the victim is killed by non- government elements because he/she is an alleged informant or the victim is killed and/or raped and killed by a person who uses drugs,” it added.
If HCUIs are not related to the drug war then why include them in that data? Here is the controversial page in question from The Duterte Administration Year-End Report 2017 Key Accomplishments report.
No reasonable reading of this report would lead one to believe that the 16,355 HCUIs are anything but related to the drug war. The numbers are on a page titled "Fighting Illegal Drugs." If people are confused about the #RealNumbers the PNP have themselves to blame for appending the dubious label "Deaths Under Investigation" to unsolved homicides and including those numbers in the drug war data.
So it's entirely disingenuous when PNP Chief Albayalde mocks those who use official data from #RealNumbers.
(Can we have a list of names of these 27,000 deaths that they always bring up? Show us the list, the names, and we will gladly investigate all of these if those numbers are true.)
Has anyone presented a list of the names of the dead? I don't think so. But dear readers I happen to have a list of the names of all the people who have died in the drug war using official PNP and PDEA data. Here they are:
That's all of them. Where are the names you ask? Well you see names belong to people and no people have died during the drug war because drug users and dealers are not people!
“The criminals, the drug lords, drug pushers, they are not humanity. They are not humanity,” Aguirre told reporters when asked to comment on the Amnesty report.
“In other words, how can that be when your war is only against those drug lords, drug addicts, drug pushers. You consider them humanity? I do not.”
“Ang tingin ko dun pa lang sa charge, hindi pwede, eh. Pag sinabi mong ‘crimes against humanity,’ eh sino ba yung humanity na binabanggit?…Humanity ba ang drug pusher at mga abusadong drug user (I think that the charge can’t be. When you say ‘crimes against humanity,’ who is the humanity being mentioned? Are drug pushers and stubborn drug users considered part of humanity)?” Sotto said in a radio interview this afternoon.
Sotto continued on, saying “Kung sagot nila oo, aba, eh isa sila run o suportado nila ang mga yun (If their answer is yes, then they’re either one of them or they support them).”
“That’s why I said, ‘[W]hat crime against humanity?’ In the first place, I’d like to be frank with you, are they (drug users) humans? What is your definition of a human being? Tell me,” he said.
The numbers may vary on how many have been killed in the drug war but it is a fact that since drug users and drug dealers are not human no people have died as a result of Duterte's drug war.
CCTV footage of a brazen daylight hit in Sta Rosa Philippines. Very professional. Not the work of amateurs. PNP says the victim was involved in illegal drugs.
Shabu. Weed. Ecstasy. Cocaine. The Philippines has declared war on all illegal drugs. Except for steroids. Are steroids even illegal? Yes they are but no one seems to care as you can walk into your local supplement store and ask for them by name.
The clerk was even kind enough to write out each name for me. There is anabol, danabol, storm bear, and clenbuterol. Storm bear? No wonder someone I showed this picture to said these look like ecstasy pills. I think the yellow pills are actually called stanozolol. Searching for storm bear brings up nothing.
Most of these steroids, clenbuterol is not actually a steroid but does increase muscle mass, are banned the world over. These substances are banned not only for personal use but also for competitive use as well. With sport in the Philippines being a huge part of the culture both at the professional and amateur level what exactly is the government doing about the steroids problem? Is there a steroids problem? Has it even been considered? When will the PNP start gunning down jacked up, roided, high test body builders?
Marijuana is also illegal in the Philippines but take a look at all these weed pipes you can buy at the mall.
Don't tell me any of that is for smoking tobacco. This kiosk does not sell pipe tobacco and I do not know of any place that does. There are bongs, one hitters, glass pipes, wooden pipes, and grinders to grind up your dank buds to smoke out of your pipe of choice. Why are these products allowed to be sold? It's like banning ammunition but allowing guns to be sold. When will the PNP be smashing the glass display cases of kiosks like this which openly peddle drug paraphernalia? It doesn't make any sense.
Actually the drug war in the Philippines doesn't make sense at all. It has been violent and very bloody but drugs keep on flowing into the country and onto the streets. The focus seems to be solely on the importation and distribution of shabu to the exclusion of all other drugs. Drug kingpin Peter Lim is still on the lam. Cocaine continues to turn up under the sea on the coasts. Even Duterte admits the drug problem has worsened. There is also not a word about fake drugs which I wrote about previously. That article gets a steady amount of hits and if you read the comments you will see the reason why: fake drugs are still being prescribed and people are searching for information as to why they are not getting better.
A Swiss national was recently detained because the PNP were told he was growing a marijuana plant. They even took a proud picture with him when they came to arrest him.
A Swiss man arrested in Panglao for possessing drugs has been released after a plant on his windowsill was found not to be marijuana.
Maik Kruesi, aged 32, was detained on Thursday (December 27) after neighbours reported seeing the plant growing in full view of the street.
Photographs of the arrest shared on Facebook by Panglao Police showed several officers and a number of civilians proudly posing with Mr Kruesi and the single spindly plant.
As we previously reported, the Swiss man told officers that a friend gave him the plant as a sapling, and he did not know that it was an illegal drug. For this reason, he had not thought twice about keeping it in public view in the window of his apartment in Barangay Danao.
Today (Monday, December 31), Gregorio Perocho of Panglao Police Station confirmed that Mr Kruesi was released from detention on Friday after test results indicated that the plant was not marijuana.
The plant was examined twice at a police crime lab, and both times tested negative for cannabis. The authorities have not yet been able to positively identify what species it is.
A case filed against Mr Kruesi before the prosecutor’s office under section 11 (possession of dangerous drugs) of Republic Act 9165 has been dismissed and he faces no further action.
Kruesi’s arrest came on the same day as a 38-year-old Polish man was arrested for possession of marijuana on Siquijor Island.
As we previously reported, Piotr Galewski was taken into detention after a 5am raid on his residence by anti-narcotics police supported by a SWAT team. Under RA 9165, if he is found guilty of possessing more than five grams of the drug, he could face life imprisonment.
I posted this video my Youtube page last week. It's CCTV footage of a deadly drug raid sped up and set to "Yakety Sax" which, incredible as it may seem, really does make everything funny.
Despite shifting authority from the PNP to the PDEA Duterte's war on drugs is raging full speed ahead. The foundations aren't so shaky. There really is a problem with shabu in this country. There's also a problem with alcohol. But perhaps the most dangerous problem is the relative ease with which fake drugs are being sold in the Philippines.
At a pet supply store amoxicillin was being sold for 5 pesos a pill.
Not only is amoxicillin sold only by prescription but this particular amoxicillin is fake and was recalled by the FDA in 2013.
In an advisory posted on its website, the FDA warned the public against buying Amoxicillin (Ambimox) 500 mg capsule with batch number 130216 and registration number DE- XY40623.
The drug was manufactured by CSPC Zhongnuo Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., a Chinese company, and imported and distributed by AMB HK Enterprises.
“Based on the result of laboratory analysis conducted by FDA, it was found that the label claim of Amoxicillin (Ambimox) 500 capsule is below the required potency,” said the advisory, which was signed by Kenneth Hartigan-Go, FDA acting director general.
Since “it provides only a sub-optimal dose of amoxicillin,” the FDA finds the sale of the product as a risk to the safety and health of the public.
The FDA likewise ordered all drug retail outlets to discontinue selling the product and warned doctors against prescribing the drug.
Despite being recalled by the FDA four years ago this fake medicine is still being sold in stores and online.
Just google "fake medicine Philippines" and 1,270,000 results show up. This is a real problem. Much worse than fake honey or fake Nike's. Medicine is supposed to heal but fake medicine can only harm. So what's being done about it? Who is monitoring the situation? Has anyone been arrested or shot for endangering the public health by selling fake medicine?
What would you do if a group of policemen showed up at your doorstep and asked you to pee into a plastic cup for an on-the-spot drug test that could reveal whether or not you had taken shabu or marijuana in the last seven days?
That is the question residents of Lupang Pangako in Barangay Payatas have been grappling with since June when groups of policemen started going house-to-house, armed with do-it-yourself drug testing kits that show, within seconds, that a person is either positive or negative for the use of those banned substances.
Officials call it a “massive drug clearing operation,” with police conducting surveys of occupants of all houses, mapping the village, and then showing up unannounced and making people take drugs tests or be called “uncooperative” if they say no.
It is the approach local leaders prefer, because it does not involve killing and the barangay is taking an active part in it, with support from the police.
Pretty messed up right? Cops going door to door making people pee in a cup to see if they have been using drugs instead of simply killing suspects point blank. But what if they test positive?
“When found positive, a person’s name is placed on a watch list,” said Barangay Kagawad Alejandro Adan, chairman of the barangay’s peace and order committee.
Watch list? Sure they didn't mean kill list? The suspects are already on a watch list anyway. That's why the cops are at the door conducting an illegal drug test.
And it's not just suspected drug users being tested. It's everyone they live with as well.
The policemen explained that the test covered those on their list as well as relatives who might be home when the police come visiting.
It's also illegal. The PNP has no authority be doing these tests.
Actually, Republic Act 9165 or the Dangerous Drugs Acts also specifies that drug tests must be done by “government forensic laboratories or by any of the drug testing laboratories accredited and monitored by the DOH to safeguard the quality of test results.”
Besides, the law lists only those who should be subjected to drug tests:
• applicants for drivers’ licenses
• applicants for firearms licenses
• high school and college students
• officers and employees of public and private offices
• members of the police, military and other law enforcement agencies
• those charged with crimes whose penalties are more than six years
• and all candidates for public office, whether appointed or elected
The law says nothing about policemen conducting community drug tests.
But who cares about the law? When did anyone care about the law in the Philippines? The law is rarely enforced in the Philippines unless it means reaping huge fines or bribes.
Police going door to door taking drug tests is like something straight out of a dystopian sci-fi film like Gattaca. This is something that would never ever happen in the West. It is unthinkable. Literally the cops in the West would never even think of going door to door to do drug tests of suspected users and their families. The Philippines needs to realise that being first world means more than just economics. Unless the philosophies of individual rights such as the right to be secure from unlawful searches and seizures can be embraced the Philippines will remain backwards and stuck in the third world.
Police doing door to door drug testing is beyond a Philippine fail.
The most famous campaign promise made by Duterte was that he would end crime and drugs and corruption within 3 to 6 months of being elected. How has that worked out?
I will never be able to do it. It's just not possible. The Philippines has a long coastline to watch over and thousands of islands to guard make it difficult to prevent the entry of illegal drugs.
President Rodrigo Duterte's admission that the government cannot control the drug menace in the country is his way of preparing the Filipinos for his failure, an opposition lawmaker said on Tuesday.
"When the President said it would take more than six years to solve the drug problem, he's preparing the people of his failure, because that is an admission of failure that he could not solve the drug problem within his term," Albay Representative Edcel Lagman told reporters at a press conference.
And that is how Duterte's most famous campaign promise, the one responsible for his winning the election, got flushed down the toilet.
Did anyone really think he was going to end drugs and crime and corruption within 3 to 6 months of becoming President? Does anyone really need to be prepared for his failure when his methods were wrought with so much madness and he ignored the advice of everyone?
P.S.
Lest anyone think this is truly an admission of defeat and failure please think again.
Presidential Spokesperson Ernesto Abella said Duterte’s statement that he could not eliminate the drug problem within his term was only meant to show the “depth, enormity and the complexity” of the drug situation which cannot be solved overnight.
“The President’s remarks that the Philippines cannot control the drug problem underscore its depth, enormity and the complexity. PRRD’s statement further points out that the drug situation in the Philippines is a problem that cannot be solved overnight,” Abella said.
“The anti-drug campaign must thus, continue to be unrelenting and unremitting while getting everyone’s full support and cooperation,” he added.
