Off Topic Politics Thread

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Ian Thumwood said:
Shandy

I have been following the election in PH too as I am in a similar situation. I am not sure how versed you are in the history of the Philppines but I have had the discussion with my friend who comes from Mindinao about this too. The whole raison d'etre for voting for "BongBong" Marcos seems absurd to westerners given the People Power revolution that previously swept aside his parents. It seems crazy that they wish to give this achievement up whilst at the same time recognising that Marcos is replacing Duterte who has his own questions to answer regarding serious human rights abuses.

I find the whole thing staggering. My friend's late brother was arrested and detained by the police on trumped up charges with the consequence that his health seriously declined. I find it staggering that, even after that experience, my friend was still very much for Duterte and has subsequently voted for MArcos and Sara Duterte as vice-president. They cannot see a link between the behaviour of their police and their government. I am aware that all her PH colleagues have voted the same way as well but I think the election of Marcos goes beyond the "fake news" Facebook campaigns which give the impression of being far more devastating than anything we have so far witnessed in the West. They seem oblivious to what they are voting for, It is very much a wake up call if you thought that the Brexit result took some explaining due to mis-information. This is on a far grander scale than anything attempted by Trump and significant enough to produce an over-wheming landslide victory. We are not talking about small margins here. I find this to be extremely alarming as the Marcos family's reputation has been remarkably salvaged.

Websites such as the BBC's and even right-wing newspapers such as the Sunday Telegraph have been extremely negative about Marcos and the hopes for the country but the majority with which Marcos has been re-elected is a salutary lesson for the West. You have alluded to Leni Abredo whose belated campaign was undermined by the fact that she was seem as very much part of the PH "establishment." Whilst I concede that she is very much in the model of liberal lawyers such as Sir Keir Starmer, there is an added problem for her insofar that PH politics has been dominated by a number of families who are very much part of the establishment over there and have been since the closing days of Spanish occupation. These "establishment" families have dominated politics there for well over a century. There is a great mistrust of these families and it does help explain the reluctance to vote for them amongt the population. In so many ways, you could imagine someone like Robredo succeeding in the UK yet they have consistently chosen unbsuitable "strong men" as leaders such as Duterte and Estrada who have proposed to solve the country's issues as opposed to the establishment figures like Acquino who is associated with corruption. Political candidates from the Left are very much a fringe / novelty act albeit I believe Communist guerillas were at one time operating in the north. The situation in Mindinao to the south is more worrying as this is the second largest island and was predominantly Muslim until re-settlement of Christians post-WW2 changed the situation - largely to the detriment of the Muslim population.

There appears to be no Socialist party in PH and the political views of people from that country I have spoken would be considered to be amongst the lunatic fringe of the Conservatives in this country. I knew little about the PH until I had read William Boyd's exceptional novel "The blue afternoon" which led me to read more on the history of the country. I think that the American involvement in the country between 1899 and 1946 did not really do much to rectify the misrule of the Spanish and instead appears to have simply passed on their bad habits to this country. The Philppines are deemed to be amongst the most stable in SE Asia yet independent journalism has been under constant threat even though a website like Rappler that is well respected and considered necessary in the West is not so well considered over there. As much as we can admire the Nobel Peace prize winner and figurehead for Rappler, Maria Ressa, a large proprtion of Filipino's actively dislike her. TV stations have been taken off the air in PH on the pretext of unpaid tax albeit this is really to silence anti-governement opinion,

I think we are used to seeing the likes of Facebook manipulate and distort political opinion aftet the electrion of Trump , Johnson and the Brexit farago yet what has happened to day is probably the most serious instance where it has generated the manifeslty "wrong" result.
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I have to admit I am not quite as up together on it all.

The main root seems to be a mixture of poor education, corruption that bleeds down to a local level, apathy, but more than anything else the Philippines is terminally addicted to social media and celebrity culture.

Essentially the Marcos family have been able to use their masses of stolen wealth to rewrite history via social media, many now believe that martial law was a golden age.

I think Marcos winning isn’t the most shocking part, it’s more the sheer extent of his victory. Made even more staggering by the fact that Robredo beat him in the vice presidential election just six years ago, how has he been able to turn so many peoples heads in that time? What is also frightening is that he has even managed to convince people who actually lived through his Fathers dictatorship.

I think we really need to define democracy as more than just a free and fair vote. If people are winning based on altering reality, we need to consider it as invalidated as if there were missing votes, that’s been my attitude since Brexit here. False media needs to be considered as election tampering. Unfortunately I don’t see a world where that will happen.
 
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Shandy_top_89 said:
I have to admit I am not quite as up together on it all.

The main root seems to be a mixture of poor education, corruption that bleeds down to a local level, apathy, but more than anything else the Philippines is terminally addicted to social media and celebrity culture.

Essentially the Marcos family have been able to use their masses of stolen wealth to rewrite history via social media, many now believe that martial law was a golden age.

I think Marcos winning isn’t the most shocking part, it’s more the sheer extent of his victory. Made even more staggering by the fact that Robredo beat him in the vice presidential election just six years ago, how has he been able to turn so many peoples heads in that time? What is also frightening is that he has even managed to convince people who actually lived through his Fathers dictatorship.

I think we really need to define democracy as more than just a free and fair vote. If people are winning based on altering reality, we need to consider it as invalidated as missing votes, that’s been my attitude since Brexit here. False media needs to be considered as election tampering. Unfortunately I don’t see a world where that will happen.
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I totally agree. What has happened this week is probably the most extreme case of the influence of social media but, as you said, I think that there are probably fewer places better placed to be exploited in this fashion than PHs. I just find the politics there to be ridiculous even if it is fascinating. As I said, i do not think the influence of social media is the sole issue here as they almost appear to have their own perspective as to what is demoncratic. I am not sure that education in PH is as bad as you suggest yet the impact and influence of social media is demonstrative of what happens where their own culture was wiped out firsrly by the Catholic church and then by the Americans.
 
Gregm1988 said:
Doesn’t it go through multiple “crashes”. Often a year? Which stable one might be about to crash?
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Stablecoins are meant to be permanently pegged to the USD at 1:1; deviating from that for any extended period is fatal. As a result of their intended stability, they end up being the middlemen in a lot of transactions. If they stop being stable, a large part of the architecture of the crypto market goes boom.

TerraUSD is the one that has gone boom here. Right now, you can give them $1, and they will give you back $0.80 (which is a much more direct and transparent way of losing money on crypto, I suppose):

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/UST-USD/chart?p=UST-USD

The problem is that the biggest stablecoin (Tether, which is massive, and tightly integrated into other exchanges and features of the crypto ecosystem; it had $125b in trading yesterday), is widely believed to be a $83b market cap Ponzi scheme, which would be the largest Ponzi in history. It has already been forced to pay a large fine for lying about its cash reserves. And while it would be harder to crash given its size, its size also makes it harder to rescue if it does, and means that there would be extremely large knock-on effects if it did go down. For instance, a long downturn with people getting out of the crypto market (forcing Tether to give people back actual money in exchange for its play money), followed by a sudden sharp event, like a well-heeled group making a targeted attack on Tether in order to try to make money on their other activities.

All of which will probably happen at some point, and it will take a lot of the crpyto market with it. The ease with which TerraUSD has been broken all but guarantees it.

Edit: the associated crypto coin with the stablecoin, Luna, has now dumped almost 90% ($30b or thereabouts) of its value in a week. That's an entity that was valued at more than Tesco as of a few days ago, that is probably going to be worthless in a day or two, and it's just your average Tuesday in cryptoland.
 
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And now Tether is, well, not tethered. A lot of money is going to be thrown at getting it back to 1:1 parity and preventing a run on its (almost definitely smaller than advertised) reserves, but if people noping out of crypto overwhelms that, it's going to have dramatic ramifications not just for the crypto market, but for the financial industry as a whole. A bunch of small-and-medium banks rather stupidly ended up with the assets of crypto firms forming large percentages of their balance sheets...if Tether goes down, and takes a bunch of crypto firms with it, it's also going to wipe out some banks along the way.
 
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The Ides of March said:
Yet more evidence of the lunátics taking over the asylum
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Fun Boy Three bang on the money in so many ways.

"See a clinic full of cynics
Who want to twist the peoples' wrist
They're watching every move we make
We're all included on the list
The lunatics have taken over the asylum
The lunatics have taken over the asylum
No nuclear the cowboy told us
And who am I to disagree
'Cause when the madman flips the switch
The nuclear will go for me
The lunatics have taken over the asylum
The lunatics have taken over the asylum
I've seen the faces of starvation
But I just can not see the points
'Cause there's so much food here today
That no one wants to take away
The lunatics have taken over the asylum
The lunatics have taken over the asylum
The lunatics have taken over the asylum, take away my right to choose
The lunatics have taken over the asylum, take away my point of view
The lunatics have taken over the asylum
The lunatics have taken over the asylum, take away my dignity
Take these things away from me
The lunatics have taken over the asylum
The lunatics have taken over the asylum, take away my family
Take away the right to speak
The lunatics have taken over the asylum take away my point of view
Take away my right to choose
 
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St Badger said:
The funeral of the journalist shot in Israel.
I caught a report about this, on the ITV news bulletin, which clearly showed Israeli troops beating the pall bearers with batons.
Disgusting doesn’t come close to describing the actions of the Israelis.

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I completely agree with your comments about the Israelis (police, rather than troops, I heard). However, I suspect that any negative comments will be construed as (further) examples of Anti-Semitism', and people (OK, the 'Woke' community) will be horrified that people are against Judaeism. Highlighting acts of (State-Sponsored?) brutality does not equate to Anti-Semitic leanings, and should not be identified as such, by anyone.
 
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For those of you still struggling to understand why anyone would vote for Brexit when it brought them no benefits but lost others their benefits of being in the EU might like to listen to this short 15 minute explanation of the 5 theories of stupidity.

294 The Five Laws Of Stupidity - YouTube

Voting for Brexit by this theory was the action of societies most dangerous people and we all under estimate just how many stupid people there really are.
 
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