Two poorly informed comedians, a poorly informed literary man and a highly constrained, fearful academic talk about death squads. The Panel, RNZ National, Wednesday 5 October 2016, 4:13 p.m. Jesse Mulligan, Jeremy Elwood, Michael Moynahan, Megan Whelan
The most offensive aspect to the following travesty is not the two professional stand-up comedians struggling to say something erudite—“I’ve been reading quite a lot about this guy, I mean, ahhhmm, I mean”—and blithely talking, with no apparent sense of irony, about the United States lecturing Duterte about “death squads” and “sanctioned killings”. It’s not the ridiculous comments by Michael Moynahan at the end of the farce. No, the worst part of this shambles is the guest, billed grandly as “the Regional Security Fellow at the Centre for Strategic Studies”, who somehow forgets to mention just why a Filipino president being lectured about “human rights” by the United States should react with such a display of contempt. [1]. But then, on reflection, Paul Sinclair’s mediocrity, timidity, and mealy-mouthedness should hardly come as a surprise, given that he is a departmental colleague of the notorious Lance Beath and Robert Ayson. Like the equally dismal University of Waikato professor Al Gillespie the day before, Paul Sinclair chose to defer to the sensibilities of his colleagues rather than talk candidly.
Here, for those who can bear such naked mediocrity and cowardice, is the transcript of eight miserable minutes of taxpayer-funded dissembling….
JESSE MULLIGAN: Ah, we’ll stay overseas. The president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, has told Barack Obama to “go to Hell.” He doesn’t like the U.S. president criticizing his War on Drugs and Crime which has led to the killing of—oh this is incredible—the killing of three and a half thousand people, the SANCTIONED killing of three and a half thousand people. He-e-e’s also likened himself to Hitler—he’s a real piece of work. He said he’d be happy to slaughter three million drug users, ahem, this guy seemed to come out of NOWHERE, Jeremy.
JEREMY ELWOOD: Yeah, um, I’ve been reading quite a lot about this guy, I mean, ever since he announced that he was running for the presidency, ahhhmm, I mean, I, I guess one of the things here is, no one in the Philippines should be surprised at this. He SAID right from the beginning, when he was mayor of, um, and I’m sorry I’ve forgotten the name of the town.
JESSE MULLIGAN: Yeah, it’s an old school bloodlust town, yeah.
JEREMY ELWOOD: Yeah. I mean, he was mayor of there and there were a lot of allegations about death squads and killings—sanctioned killings—of DRUG DEALERS. I mean, his main push is against the drug trade. Um, and he ran on a platform that he was going to, quote, “wipe out drug crime within six months.” Um, I mean it does, if, if you just come as an observer it reads like the plot for The Raid 3, or some ridiculous action movie. He’s almost like a Bond-esque villain but I think he’s FRIGHTENING, he’s very very frightening.
JESSE MULLIGAN: And doesn’t seem afraid, Michael, to be making international enemies.
MICHAEL MOYNAHAN:[speaking slowly, carefully, to convey moral seriousness] No he doesn’t seem to at ALL, um, it, it is, um, ah, he did, he did ENTIRELY telegraph what it was he was going to do, AND he had done all of this stuff before. What I thought was interesting from some of the stuff I’ve been reading and seeing lately is that the Philippine electorate EMBRACED him because actually he was seen as the ALTERNATIVE to all of the corruption, all of the promises they’d been made post, um, ah, Marcos, ahh, you know, “We’re gonna sort this out, we’re going to organize, a civil society et cetera, none of that happened, and so he’s actually the RESPONSE that the Philippine electorate has given, and he’s PART of, in an extraordinarily extreme way, the whole BACKLASH against the establishment.
JESSE MULLIGAN:[dolefully] Yeah.
JEREMY ELWOOD: Yeah he’s basically Donald Trump with a bloodlust!
JESSE MULLIGAN:[restrained, mirthless, grave] Ah ha ha ha ha.
MICHAEL MOYNAHAN: Oh, GOD!
JESSE MULLIGAN: Well there’s a piece, there’s an interesting piece in the Guardian which quotes a senior Filipino police officer, because the police have been turned into KILLERS really, which’d be an incredible thing to go on if your usual job is keeping the peace and then you get orders to go out and start SHOOTING people.
JEREMY ELWOOD: Yeah, and, and there’s SO many issues that ARISE from that, I mean if you’ve given the police a license to KILL, um, and, and if you have, as Duarte [sic] HAS done, um, enticed public civilians to take the laws into their own hands when it comes to when, if there’s a drug dealer, I mean that just blows open the doors of SO much potential corruption.
JESSE MULLIGAN: Yeah, yeah.
JEREMY ELWOOD: All you need, I mean in terms of, you know, what happened a LOT in Stalinist Russia, you just need to ACCUSE somebody, you know, if you don’t LIKE your neighbor, all you need to do is drop a line saying “I’m pretty sure my neighbor’s a drug dealer” and, you know, problem solved.
MICHAEL MOYNAHAN: And, and, the interesting thing is what IS at the bottom of it? Is it a cynical ploy on behalf of this particular politician who’s in fact, you know, actually BEHIND a lot of the corruption, you know, what lies behind it which we have no way of really TELLING in amongst all the noise that he is making and the, ahh, you know, telling off the U.S., telling off China, or WHATEVER it is? Is there something that lies beyond that, which is even more sinister? And that’s the bit that worries ME.
JESSE MULLIGAN: Well let’s ask Paul Sinclair. He’s Regional Security Fellow at the Centre for Strategic Studies and he joins us now. Hi Paul.
PAUL SINCLAIR: Oh hi how are you?
JESSE MULLIGAN: GOOD thank you. So the, the drug-related killings is one thing, but what’s the purpose behind all the anti-American rhetoric?
PAUL SINCLAIR: Ahhhhhmmm, I think that that’s a reflection of the fact that, ah, he, ah, has got this single-minded agenda, um, ah, to wipe out drug dealers, the Americans have CRITICIZED it, ah, on human RIGHTS grounds, understandably, ahhhhh, and he has reacted very very strongly, ahhhh, that has posed a real conundrum for Washington, ahhh, because it is starting to undermine, ahhh, what the United States regards as a bedrock alliance commitment to the Philippines.
JESSE MULLIGAN: Yeah, what’s the HISTORY of that commitment and that alliance?
PAUL SINCLAIR: It’s, it’s got a very interesting and somewhat checkered history, ahhh, it dates back, ahhhh, post-War, post-World War Two, ahhhhhmm, prior to that, um, the Philippines was an American colony for, um, several decades and there lies part of the ISSUES that surface from time to time between the Philippines and the United States. Ahhhhmm, all went WELL with that alliance, ahhh, between 1951 and 1992, until the Philippines senate at that time, ahhh, instructed the U.S. to leave ALL of its military bases in the Philippines, of which at that time there were very very many. Ahhhh, and, uh, the relationship went into a deep cold FREEZE for a number of years. It’s been built back, in particular in respect of issues over the South China Sea; the Philippines very actively sought U.S. support for the case that it mounted in The Hague.
JESSE MULLIGAN: Yeah that was interesting wasn’t it, I mean, you would certainly put the U.S. and the Philippines on the same side there, and China on the other side, but it sounds like, uh, the President Duterte is warming UP to China a little?
PAUL SINCLAIR: Very much, ahhhhhh, he just said the other day that, uh, if the United States refuses to sell the Philippines weapons because of, uh, human rights concerns, um, he will source them from China and Russia, ahh, they’ll have NO COMPUNCTION, ah, about selling him military equipment, ahhh, he has I understand brought FORWARD his planned visit to Beijing and will now visit next month with a business delegation, and he sees China as the, ahhhh, as a potential source of significant investment that the Philippines badly needs to, um, strengthen its infrastructure.
JESSE MULLIGAN: Yeah, well speaking of the infrastructure and the economy, this has not been good for business in the Philippines, ahhh, going around and killing people tends to add a feeling of INSTABILITY. Do you think there’ll be a point at which the populace of the Philippines look at what’s going on in the economy and think, Hey well maybe this isn’t working?
PAUL SINCLAIR: Ahhhm, yes there MAY be, ahhh, or hopefully there will be a realization, ahhh, um, that this has NOT been a particularly CLEVER thing for Duterte to do, ahhhh, but there is an element within the Philippines, ahhmm, the nationalist STRONGMAN which still holds quite a bit of appeal, ahmm, and it may take a WHILE for what’s happening now in a business sense to register with the Philippines population. The wealthy elite certainly will have a very strong view about this but whether the population more generally will, it’s really hard to say.
JESSE MULLIGAN: All right, Paul Sinclair, ahhhh, Regional Security Fellow at the Centre for Strategic Studies at Victoria University, thanks so much for your time today.
MICHAEL MOYNAHAN: D’ya know how many PEOPLE live in the Philippines? I just Googled it, by the way.
MICHAEL MOYNAHAN: Hundred million people! ….[long pause]…That’s TERRIFYING!
JESSE MULLIGAN: I wonder how much impact this is having on DRUG USE over there? Whether it’s working? I mean, it’s sort of irrelevant, isn’t it, but it would be interesting to see how the drug community is RESPONDING. Oh by the way, I enjoyed what Paul said there, Jeremy: despite the fact that it might not make sense economically, the people are responding to a strongman who, I think it plays into what you were saying.
JEREMY ELWOOD: Yeah I mean I think you see a LOT of that in, ahem, you know, countries which are, which had a history of both colonialism and often the drug trade. Um, you certainly see it a LOT in South America where, y’know, these, y’know, democratically elected leaders, um, turn into dictators very quickly, um, you look at someone like Noriega back in the um, y’know, eighties and nineties. Umm, there is a response to strong leadership, um, and in this case to the point, like I say, I mean this guy’s coming across like a modern-day Rambo or something, with his personal agenda, it’s ahhh….
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I wrote the host of this débâcle the following email, to which he has yet to reply….
Dear Jesse,
While the terrifying President Duterte is indeed all the things you say, how is he any worse than President Obama?
Sadly, Richard, they were all pretending to be serious. At least Jim Mora would have made a joke about the death squads, kidder that he is.
The funny part of this is entirely unintentional. It’s when Jesse Mulligan, after a lengthy meditation on the evils of President Duterte, then throws to someone even more vacuous than himself: “this guy seemed to come out of NOWHERE, Jeremy.”
If Duterte keeps heading down this road he’ll be set up in the western media for a regime changing “colour revolution”, “responsibility 2 protect” or similar coup.
Great to have uninformed dolts commenting about matters they know nothing about.
Pointlessness.
Whereas Mulligan could have spoken to an expert on the matter.
It has nothing to do with funding. It has everything to do with making sure that whatever academics they have on are inoffensive and unlikely to say something “controversial”, i.e. truthful. Thats why the likes of Robert Patman and Al Gillespie are on so often, but never someone like Mike Joy.
I wrote the host of this débâcle the following email, to which he has yet to reply….
Given that Mulligan probably looked at it, thought “Fuck I hate this false equivalence bullshit” and set a rule directing future emails from this sender straight to the deleted-items folder, I wouldn’t expect a reply if I were you.
and a highly constrained, fearful academic talk about death squads.
The Panel, RNZ National, Wednesday 5 October 2016, 4:13 p.m.
Jesse Mulligan, Jeremy Elwood, Michael Moynahan, Megan Whelan
Morrissey Breen
Northcote Point
You listen to the Panel to save us the torture.
And I really enjoy your transcripts.
I only ever ‘listen’ to the panel via these transcripts now.
We were selling a tshirt with the print;
The afternoon panel on National Radio’.
But they don’t deserve a free shirt.
Pointlessness.
Whereas Mulligan could have spoken to an expert on the matter.
MIke Joy has much to say about compromised academics….
Deal in.
Ad Hominems?