 Since taking office last year, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has been waging war on two fronts, taking on drug dealers and ISIS. For more on this, we are joined by Emil Guillermo. He's a colonist for The Inquirer. That's the largest Philippine daily out of Manila. He joins us today from California. Welcome, my old friend. Yes, it's good to be here with you, David, after all these years. Well, you were on, I don't know, about a month ago. We go back to K-R-O-N, where you were a reporter. And you have covered the Philippines since the early 80s when Aquino was assassinated. You went and covered his funeral in the Philippines. And you are the first Asian-American to host a national news program. Slight correction, the first Asian-American male, the first Asian-American would be Connie Chang when she hosted the CBS Evening News. So it's true, I am the male Connie Chang. So people might recognize your voice from NPR. They can read you once a week in... Well, at the Asian-American Legal Defense and Education Fund blog, and also at theenquirer.net, which is the website of the Philippine Enquirer. American troops have been assisting Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in his battle against ISIS in the southern Philippines. Are they providing technical help? Are they on the ground fighting? To what extent are our American soldiers helping Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte? It's interesting because the American troops have been part of a treaty that's been on since 1951. And they were in the southern part of the Philippines since before May 23rd when everything kind of fell apart there. And what's funny is that President Duterte wasn't aware that the American presence was there. To answer your question, the American troops are there only as advisors. And that always raises red flags because, you know, advisors in the military history of the United States usually does not mean a good thing. And it brings up images of quagmires all over the world. And Vietnam, of course. And so here we have advisors and they say that they're only using the American troops to train, right, to train Filipinos, that there are no quote-unquote boots on the ground. Or at least they're not firing boots or they're not, you know, they're not active boots, but they're training boots. And they also will cop to the idea that there are some reconnaissance unmanned planes that are being used. But they all say that it's all totally legal going back to, once again, that 1951 Treaty, mutual defense treaty that the United States and the Philippines still have that still exist, even though they had a basis agreement that was wiped out in the 80s. And so this is our status right now. The fighting continues into, like, it's fourth week. There are about 200 or more reported dead. They can't really get a good count because the fighting has been intense. Two hundred reported dead Philippine Marines. Not all Marines. It's a combination of Philippine combatants plus the rebel forces plus some civilians that they're able to count. So we're talking about the southern city of Marawi. Mostly Muslim city in the southern Philippines? Yes. We're talking about when the southern part of the Philippines, the Philippines is a 7200 island archipelago. Manila is sort of in the center and to the south is Mindanao. And Mindanao is that Muslim, primarily Muslim country, state island and Marawi's within Mindanao. And when Duterte declared Marshall, I called it partial Marshall because he only extended it to just Mindanao. Duterte, of course, is from Davao City, which is in Mindanao. And that's really the center of all the drug killings and the drug war that he's been waging. It's all centers around his aggressive actions when he was mayor of Davao City. So all of it is now centered in that Mindanao region. And the fear is that all it takes is one little flash point. There are several, there are different groups that are, that he's confronting. He's confronting the traditional Abu Sayyaf, which is, you know, which beheaded a German not too long ago and did not trigger off, you know, martial law. But this has been slightly different because of, say, some foreign interest coming in, the Maute rebels there in Marawi City. And that group in conjunction with the Abu Sayyaf has, in Duterte's mind, made this a different situation. Although, as I pointed out in my columns, nothing really should have required martial law, even partial martial. It just seems that right now, all of it seems to be coming into focus for the ambitions of Rodrigo Duterte as a strongman authoritarian in Asia. He took office a year ago. He has 80% popularity. His people love him. Had he left the southern portion of the Philippines alone, if he just said to Marawi, okay, you're an island, you're Islam, you have ISIS, we're going to stay out of this. Did he go in there to stir up a hornet's nest for his own valor? Is he protecting Catholics who live in Marawi? Well, I think it was the, the Maute rebels were, were very aggressive. They were, there were reports of, you know, arson and bombings and, and, and so I think, and Duterte was in Russia. He was entertaining Putin while all this was happening. And so he interrupted his, his meeting with Putin to come and declare martial law. And it's unclear if he had all the information. For example, he didn't know to the extent that the US was involved. He didn't know he, he cited in one of some of his opening comments that one of his, one of the, the Philippine police in, in Marawi or in that region had been beheaded. And he, he cited that as one of the, you know, most despicable things done by the, the, the Maute rebels. Turns out the, the person wasn't beheaded. And so it's, it's unclear. But his background isn't the military, right? No, his background was as, as the mayor of Davao city. And he, he ruled for 20 years. I mean, he had a, had a long standing leadership there. And the Philippines has this power vacuum and it's similar to what's going on. And what went on in the United States where the traditional oligarchs were getting long in the tooth. There was no one coming out with new ideas. The country was restless. And then here comes this guy who is a regional force, a mayor. And because he had this get tough, dirty, hairy kind of image as a vigilante, they, he, he really rode that to popularity. You said on a previous show that Ferdinand Marcos had a go once the military lost faith in him. We see that in a lot of autocratic regimes where you have a colorful figure fronting the military. Is Duterte a front for the military or is he a front for the police state? I would assume coming from a city and being a mayor, he has his own secret police. Yeah. I think it's more a police state idea, less mill, less the military. I think when we talked about Marcos, it was, you know, we had, we had people power, right? You had the people in on the streets and they were, were there putting pressure on the military to take a stand. And when, you know, when the, when the moment happened and the, and the army went into, to where Marcos was there on, you know, what they call the Edzo Revolution at the Edzo, the, the main boulevard where all the people were that night and during that people power revolution. The surprise was the military went in and they, they were arresting Marcos. They, they took Marcos away. Is there a military presence right now in the Philippines? We'll get to the drug war in a second. Is there a military presence? Is there a general in the Philippines who is popular? In the, in the Marcos times there were, I would say right now Duterte is the strong man. He's the strong man. He's the strong man. He's, yeah. He's, he's the, he's the lead, he's become, he's the, the leader now. And people take his cues, but, but something very startling happened this week. This week is called, this is the week that the Philippines celebrates independence. June 12th is a day that the Philippines celebrates independence from Spain. And independence from Spain was in 1898. That's 119 years ago. And it's a funny thing because the Philippines assumed that when the Spanish-American war was over, that they would be independent, that the Philippines would be independent. But then the Spanish went ahead and they, they gave the United States the Philippines because the United States was willing to pay money for the Philippines. As I understood it, the Spanish-American war broke out. Admiral Dewey defeated the Spanish Armada. Right. And we, we got Cuba and we got the Philippines and then we had a massacre, half a million Filipinos just to close the deal. Yes. Well, that, that, that happened. But the Philippines, the Filipino rebels led by Emilio Aguinaldo declared, June 12th, 1898, they declared independence. And it's called the Tagalog or the Malolos Republic. And that was the first, the Philippines liked to, to deal with that date and deal with that event because it was the first time democracy lived in Asia. But America rejected that. Yes. Well, America did. And that, that's how he had either you call it the Philippine-American war or you call it the Philippine insurrection. And in history books, most of the time it's called the Philippine insurrection because the United States wants to show it as, you know, that, that it was, you know, these renegade Filipinos who were up to no good and that they had put it down. So when did the Philippines get their complete independence from America? Well, the complete independence happened gradually, you know, from say 1906. There was some self-governance, but it wasn't until 1934 with the Tidings-McDuffie Act that it was set up that the Philippines would be, it's, would be a sovereign the Americans or the Philippine nationals who were Americans as under colonial rule. They became aliens. The Philippine national became aliens and that it was all set up for the Philippines to ultimately be, be, be independent after, after World War II. Right. So it wasn't until after World War II that they became completely independent from the United States. Talk to me about the drug war. There are about three million drug addicts, he claims, in the Philippines. He says he wants to kill them all. How bad is the drug problem in the Philippines? It's bad. I mean, what's the drug? The drug is Shabu, which is a form of crystal meth that circulates throughout Asia. And it's, it's sad because if you, you go into the cities, you know how poor it is. I mean, if you visit the Philippines, you know that, all right, there's the nice part there with the business part, the Makati and Manila. And you go outside of it and you see lean twos and shanties and, you know, and people living in these squalid conditions. And you see the effects of, of meth. You see the people with the teeth and the, that gaunt look. And it's because there's, there's rampant poverty in the Philippines. It's always been a problem. In, when you talk about, you know, an oligarchical situation where, you know, they, they talk about the 1% and 99%. Well, there it's a sort of a hyperversion of that in the Philippines. And when you're talking about people who have problems with poverty and employment and it's, you know, sometimes drugs is, is seen as the answer. And, you know, Duterte saw this growing. And as the, the autocrat that he, that he is saw that the way to, to deal with, with this was to, to crack down these so-called extrajudicial killings based on who you want, whose numbers you believe in. I mean, the government has its own numbers, which are up into the thousands. But the human rights people, human rights organizations set the number at about 8,000. So this is happening primarily around. When you say extrajudicial killings, those are paramilitary groups. Yeah. Are they bikers? Are they Duterte loyalists? Who are these? Some are. Well, a lot of these are the, the Philippine police that the official numbers come from the Philippine police, but they're off duty cops, in other words. Yeah. And when, yeah. And when it becomes like a, and sometimes on duty. And, and when it becomes sort of when everyone has the green light and Duterte himself says, Hey, I'm going to go shoot you. You know, if you're going to come and you're going to, you know, create this problem in my city, I'm going to go after you. You see people feeling free to take the law into their own hands. And they're not just killing drug dealers. They're once, once it's open season on drug dealers and it's extrajudicial, you can kill somebody just because you owe them money. Say, Hey, he was a drug dealer. That's certainly, yes. Suddenly the, the lines blur and, you know, killing just happens. And in a place like the Philippines with the kind of economy it has, you know, life is cheap. And so this is one of the problems, you know, they had a poll taken in the country and a majority of people said they were fearful for, for their lives, you know, that they could be shot, you know, accidentally. And yet you'll, you'll have people say at the very same time, they'll say, you know, but, you know, deterred he really has done wonders to help stabilize, you know, the country. And, and so we're not really as scared as we once were. So there's a lot of contradictions, but, but this is the state of the Philippines now. Is this the worst you've seen it as an adult? It was pretty bad under Marcos, you know, I'll say, I'll say this about Duterte, he has taken the, it's not as bad as Marcos because he hasn't applied full martial law. But what he's done is pretty bad. I mean, I think that the kind of Philippines that that existed in this, you know, in the 70s and 80s under martial law, that was pretty bad. The way it's being painted in the press is chaos. The impression I got from Marcos was it wasn't the police, it was the military and it was fascism, cronyism, martial law, but there was order. This just seems like it's a Hobbesian nightmare. All of that that you described still exists, the oligarchy, you know, the military to some degree, but, but they all take their, their cues from, from Duterte. I wouldn't call it chaos necessarily, but I would say that, well, maybe chaos is the word. But because, because you have not only the police, you have, you have the green light given to all vigilantes to go after the drug lords and, and sometimes accidents happen. And that's the sad part. They're saying that this is a drug war that's more steeped in violence than what's going on in Mexico. You know, I've heard that too. And it's hard to believe, I know some people have been down in Mexico and, and, you know, it's, I guess it's like any situation where you're in the good parts of the, of the city and, you know, you have no problems, but then you go into the more desolate areas and, and the strong man wins. So I, I, I don't know how really it compares with, with Mexico, but I will say this, that the drugs were never, I mean, Shabu has been around for a long time in the Philippines. I remember stories about Shabu in, in the 80s, but it, just like drugs everywhere else, there's a bigger market. There's a bigger market for it. And, and so we're going to see these stories and, and we're going to see more reporting about it. You said before the show started, do Terte probably a drug addict and he's sick? I said that he did something extraordinary in that during this week where the Philippines celebrates independence and they take this independence day seriously, July, June 12th, because it establishes the Philippines as the oldest democracy in Asia. And they like that, they like that, that, that, you know, that title. And so it's important that the, the leader of the country participates in the ceremonial, you know, effects of all the, you know, the hoopla. He didn't show up and people have started to speculate that maybe he's sick and they said that he is, he's taking a little rest. How old is he? He's in his 70s. And I, I, I don't know precisely offhand, but he's in his 70s. He's older than Trump and his hair is as black as mine. So that's just that Filipino magic for you. And, you know, but he's a, I, I know that he suffered from, from some back pain and that he is resorted to fentanyl and that during the Back pain because he does his own stunts, right? And he fell the wrong way. You know, I, I don't know exactly how he got, how, you know, what happened, but I know that he's, he's been taking fentanyl to relieve some of that pain. What is fentanyl? Fentanyl is a, it's, it's like an artificial opioid that, that people take to, to, to combat pain. And it was one of the things that Michael Jackson's doctor, right, was, was meeting out. That's not the drug that puts you into like a twilight, is it? I don't know exactly what it does. I know that it's, it can be addictive and that I know that in reports, you know, it's, the drug has been connected to, to deterte. Whether it's addictive, I mean, whether he's addicted, it's unclear. Let's say he dies or gets removed. Things are not going to change because he's serving his oligarchs, right? The oligarchs will put somebody else in. Here's the problem. We're not going to see a populist uprising, are we? In fact, he's probably a populist. He's a populist, yes. But here's the problem. The problem is the second coming of Ferdinand Marcos in the, in the form of Marcos Jr., aka Bong Bong Marcos. Bong Bong ran for vice president and lost, but the current vice president isn't considered as strong. And so the chances are, if something should happen to, to deterte, heaven forbid, I don't know. I mean, it's like the devil you know is sometimes better than devil you don't know. But it might mean that the prospects are great for someone like Bong Bong Marcos from reemerging. And it's almost set up for that because earlier this year, Ferdinand Marcos' body was finally buried in the, the National Hero Cemetery in Manila. And it was given a hero's burial after all these years where it had been lying sort of in this frozen state in his home base of Lalag, which is north of Manila. Was he a hero during World War II? Not really, no. He was the looter of the country. He was the perpetrator of martial law. And he was seen as not a hero, but a, a villain of democracy. And yet deter, one of the things deterte did as soon as he was elected is he began the rehabilitation of Ferdinand Marcos. And so with the burial, which caused a worldwide protest, we have, which, which did not, you know, but to no avail. Marcos was buried. It was almost like they buried him after, you know, they, you know, there was a little bit of deception. And when they, when no one was expecting it so that no one could assemble to protest, they put Marcos's body in the grave. They called him a hero in the Hero Cemetery. And that was that. And so the speculation is that, well, you know, deter to is trying to get in the good graces with the Marcos's, who still have a certain amount of power north of Manila. And that maybe this would set up Bong Bong's emergence. How old is Bong Bong? Bong Bong is about late fifties, early sixties. And his sister crack pipe. Crack pipe. How old is she? Crack pipe. His sister is maybe slightly younger. Maybe you're in her fifties. The baby brother Roach Clip. Roach Clip is he from the Imelda Marcos, Ferdinand Marcos Union? Or is that from a mistress? The rumors were that Roach Clip, Roach Clip. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know about Roach Clip. I mean, but Bong Bong, Bong Bong is the one who would emerge. And that would be, I think that would be the giant step backwards. Although a lot of people, it's funny. The Marcos is, even though for all the sins that Marcos perpetrated on the Philippines and all the money he looted and all the people that he had put to death, there's still some love for the Marcos. Is it just nostalgia? It might be nostalgia, but it also could be that people don't know. I mean, people don't know their own history. Thank God that doesn't happen here in America. Well, I was about to say that it's sort of similar to how people can still like Trump or embrace Trump regardless of, you know, things that are happening or despite, you know, is there a lack of knowledge that goes on? I don't know. I mean, one of the things, one of the criticisms in the Philippine educational system is that after martial law, the people's power governments of Aquino and subsequent governments did nothing to make sure that people understood the history of what happened to the Philippines. And so we have generations of people who are a new generation of people who are just as willing to give Bong Bong Marcos a pass as not. We're out of time. This has been fantastic. And I remembered to hit the record button. Okay, so we can't slander Sally Field. Now we'll have to do that next week. Emil Guillermo is a journalist. You can read him over at... aldef.org. The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund blog and also at theinquirer.net. So I do some things here for the Asian American community and I write for the global Filipino community at theinquirer.net. And David, please don't fail to mention that I also do a one-man show. Well, let's talk about Emil Amuck. Let's talk about your podcast first. Oh, Emil Amuck's Takeout is a podcast. I can't say I do. And it focuses on Asian Americans and Filipino Americans and I have an interesting podcast this week on South Asians not being considered Asian by Asians. I mean, you'd figure that white Americans and Latino Americans wouldn't consider some South Asians. And by South Asians, I mean Indians and Pakistanis. They wouldn't consider them Asian because of whatever biased reasons they have. But oddly enough, some Asian Americans don't even consider South Asians as Asians or Asian Americans. And I suggest it's partly due to a certain Islamophobia that exists within Asian Americans. So I talk about that. And also this week or next week, rather, the 35th anniversary of the death of Vincent Chin who was really the flashpoint in the 80s that sparked off a wave of activism, his death in Detroit at the hands of Ronald Ebbons who suspected Chinese American of being a Japanese American. Ebbons was a Detroit auto worker and used the baseball bat to kill Vincent Chin. Well, let's discuss that next week. Emile Muck, AMUK. AMOK. AMOK. Very quickly, you're also going to be doing a one-man show in San Diego. What's it called and when is it and how can people buy tickets? It's the Amuck Monologues and it's the San Diego International Fringe Festival. It's on from June 23rd through 29th. I'll be there. I'll do five shows. You can go to my website at amok.com and get all the details. But it'd be great to see David Feldman show listeners show up to San Diego right there at Horton Plaza, 141 Horton Plaza in downtown San Diego. I love Horton's Plaza. You do? Late at night, they have Women of the Evening. I wrote a book called Horton, Here's a Ho. Somebody kill me, please? I'll talk to you next week, I hope. Thank you, buddy. Thanks, David. Take care.