The Extrajudicial Killings Will Continue Until Morale Improves
To understand Trump’s war on the Constitution, we need to visit the Philippines
First off, a few programming notes…
First…
In my post on A Course in Miracles yesterday, a reader took offense at my portrayal of Marianne Williamson and the Course itself. My apologies to anyone who was offended by my snark. Overall, I’m a fan of hers, and I have used the course to help guide me. The daily lessons at the end of the book are great, although I’ll confess to not finishing them. I should have made it more clear that Ms. Williamson did something I don’t think I could do: distill the Course in a way that makes it accessible to everyone.
That she made a lot of money doing it is not a bad thing — she earned it. My snark was aimed (poorly, I’d say) at our late-stage capitalist society that creates huge wealth gaps, not at her. If it were me, I’d be thrilled with publishers sending me lots of money.
Unlike many people, she has put hers to good use by promoting positive mental health and, more recently, contributing to ways we can address the current madness. Here’s a look-see at her activities collated by one of my readers:
https://suzannetaylor.substack.com/s/marianne-williamson
Second..
In Friday’s post, “Friday Update on the Regime’s War on America,” I told you about an app called IceBlock, which was developed to help citizens alert each other about ICE incursions in their region. Reader
alerted me to a Wired article that reports that the app has been pulled from the Apple Store after pressure from the regime. See the Notes for more info on this. Needless to say, this is an awful development. But it does demonstrate the power of community, as does the critque I mentioned earlier.Third…
Also, the half-off sale on monthly and yearly Ruminato subscriptions ends tonight, Monday, October 6, at 11:59 pm.
And now, it’s time to talk about Rodrigo Duterte.
Who?
As the president of the Philippines from 2016 to 2022, he launched a heavy-handed pogrom against drug dealers in his nation that the current regime in the U.S. seems determined to emulate.
And why not? Duterte’s efforts, which reportedly included enough extrajudicial assassinations in the streets for charges to be brought against him in front of the International Criminal Court, were popular among a large number of Filipino citizens.
It isn’t hard to imagine the mad clown in the Oval Office thinking that he can get his death and hate cult on board with a similar policy in the United States.
Duterte won the presidential election by warning Filipinos that their nation was on the verge of becoming a narco-state. Drugs plagued the country at that time, so the warnings resonated.
He responded to his victory by launching a campaign against drug dealers that included calls for police to shoot drug dealers in the street and promising immunity to those who heeded the call.
Duterte wasn’t the first Filipino president to embrace extrajudicial crimes. The country has a long history of that, from Ferdinand Marcos to Gloria Macapagal Arroyo,1 who turned a blind eye to death squads in the city of Davao, again in part because the general public was fed up with crime and a slowly moving judicial system.
The extrajudicial killings in Davao killed 107 people in its worst year. Among those killed were kids, referred to as “Street children” by the local press. The mayor of Davao during that worst year, 2004, was Rodrigo Duterte.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo subsequently named Duterte as her adviser on crime. After that, he became president and implemented the same policy nationwide that had worked for him in Davao, but as president, he did so much more blatantly.
Estimates of extrajudicial killings during Duterte’s term range from 6,000 to 30,000, depending on the source.
Politico wrote that the mad clown’s own State Department raised significant alarms about Duterte’s policies in 2017:2
According to the State Department’s 2016 Human Rights Report, which was last updated in March, police and vigilantes in the Philippines had killed more than 6,000 suspected drug dealers since July, the month after Duterte took office. An “apparent governmental disregard for human rights and due process” was among the State Department’s “most significant human rights problems” in the Philippines.
So what did Trump do in 2017? He called Duterte to congratulate him on his drug dealer eradication campaign:3
“I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem. Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing and I just wanted to call and tell you that.”
Fast forward to a couple of days ago, when the mad regime, led by someone who seems to be oozing orange gastric juices from his face, deployed this snuff film to the True Sociopath social networking site (it’s just the image of the snuff film, which I refuse to post):
What kind of patriots would we be if we assumed that the mad clown’s snuff film is a video of people doing what people in speed boats do all the time — having fun — before getting killed? Maybe Venezuelans don’t know how to have fun, or can’t afford speedboats unless they’re paid for with drug money?
Let’s check out the route the drug-laden speedboat would have to take to get to the U.S. and kill 50,000 of us, shall we?
Even if we handicap the mad clown trip by letting the speedboat start in Aruba, which is sort of off the Venezuelan coast, and measure the distance as the crow flies, allowing for a super duper speedboat that can drive itself through Cuba like it’s parting the Red Sea, we are looking at a 1,161-mile trip to Key West.
That’s one helluva speedboat. Any Venezuelan with that kind of boat wouldn’t be plying the tricky ocean currents of the Caribbean during hurricane season to sell fentanyl. In a speedboat. They’d be in Key West selling the best speedboats in the world to eager consumers.
Nope, this was, quite simply, an extrajudicial killing by a guy who called Rodrigo Duterte one fine day in 2017 to tell him, “Job well done on those extrajudicial killings, Rodrigo.”
You might be thinking, well, whatever, fun story, but I have a plane to catch.
You might also think it won’t happen here.
Tell that to the folks in Chicago who are dealing with rogue ICE agents rappelling off their apartment roofs from helicopters and zip tying their naked children together before sending them off to the nearest detention camp.4
Tell that to Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, who now has to contend with a madman deploying the Illinois and Texas National Guard to try to crush legitimate protests.56
Even Trump-appointed judges are trying to warn us about the possible imposition of martial law (search the interwebs for info on the threats against Portland, Oregon).
It’s only a matter of time before an extrajudicial killing happens here, if it hasn’t already, and we just don’t know about it yet.
What will we do when that happens?
Notes
More about that IceBlock disappearance…
According to Wired:7
In April, developer Joshua Aaron created the ICEBlock app to allow people to anonymously report nearby sightings of immigration enforcement officials and help protect at-risk communities. Hundreds of thousands of people quickly flocked to download Aaron’s app, which was only available on iPhones. That is no longer an option.
Apple has now removed ICEBlock from its App Store—as well as other similar services—after US attorney general Pam Bondi claimed officials had “reached out” to Apple and were “demanding” it take down the app. Apple staff had previously reviewed and approved ICEBlock’s inclusion on the App Store. The company claims it has now removed the app and others based on “information we’ve received from law enforcement about the safety risks.”
“We are determined to fight this with everything we have,” Aaron told 404 Media after the app was pulled. “Our mission has always been to protect our neighbors from the terror this administration continues to reign down on the people of this nation.” An email from Apple shared with the publication says the app was removed due to violating Apple’s policies on “objectionable content” and that “its purpose is to provide location information about law enforcement officers that can be used to harm such officers individually or as a group.”
Since Aaron launched the app, it has provoked a ferocious backlash from Trump administration officials, who have led an unprecedented expansion of ICE agency. Earlier this year, Bondi said officials were “looking at” Aaron and that he “better watch out.” The attorney general has also said officials were considering prosecuting CNN for reporting about ICEBlock. Legal experts, however, have told WIRED that ICEBlock clearly falls under protected free speech under the First Amendment and that prosecuting the creator would be illegal.
Another case of a big company surrendering in advance, especially by Apple CEO Tim Cook, whose 2024 total compensation was approximately $74.6 million.
Another ICE tracking app, Red Dot, also came under attack by the regime and was removed from Apple’s App Store and Google Play.
Three-day sale!
Or fund me one time…
Even restacking helps fund me indirectly…
Footnotes
Conde, Carlos H. 2005. “Philippine Death Squads Extend Their Reach.” The New York Times, March 23, 2005. https://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/23/world/asia/philippine-death-squads-extend-their-reach.html.
Nelson, Louis. 2017. “Trump Praises Duterte for ‘Unbelievable Job’ Cracking down on Drugs in the Philippines.” POLITICO. Politico. May 24, 2017. https://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/24/trump-rodrigo-duterte-call-transcript-238758
Via The Intercept: “Trump Duterte Transcript | DocumentCloud.” 2017. Documentcloud.org. 2017. https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/3729123-POTUS-RD-Doc/#document/p1.
Rahman, Billal. 2025. “ICE Agents Dragged Naked Children out of Homes in Chicago Raid: Neighbors.” Newsweek. October 3, 2025. https://www.newsweek.com/ice-agents-dragged-naked-children-out-homes-chicago-raid-10823150.
The National Guard is unlikely to show willingness to fight protesters, but I guess we won’t know for sure until that theory is tested.
Mercado, Melody, and Charles Thrush. 2025. “As Trump Calls 700 National Guard Members to Illinois, Judge Blocks Deployments in Oregon.” Block Club Chicago. October 6, 2025. https://blockclubchicago.org/2025/10/06/as-trump-calls-700-national-guard-members-to-illinois-judge-blocks-deployments-in-oregon/.
Burgess, Matt, Andy Greenberg, and Andrew Couts. 2025. “Apple and Google Pull ICE-Tracking Apps, Bowing to DOJ Pressure.” WIRED. October 4, 2025. https://www.wired.com/story/apple-and-google-pull-ice-tracking-apps-bowing-to-doj-pressure/
someone has pointed out that there are numerous apps that alert motorists to speed traps. Don't those also provide "location information about law enforcement officers that can be used to harm such officers individually or as a group.”
oddly, not a whole lot of those caught in speed traps assault the cops. Could the difference in risk be in how the officers treat those around them?
thank you for your honesty and kindness. i don’t think anyone who is paying attention is still defending the obscene obsession with collection of wealth. there’s no need for you to apologize. people deserve to be paid for their work but NO ONE “deserves” to be a millionaire.
period. most authors are not wealthy. let’s not pretend that she “deserved” to get filthy rich off of what was essentially a translation.
i don’t pay for any subscriptions here because i don’t have a job and can’t seem to find one. the minimal amount i make working local elections goes to people rescuing and caring for animals. i hope that knowing that you’re not taking money away from animals softens the blow.