...just because Duterte said this in a fit of anger, and justified it by saying it wasn't warmongering enough in Syria, certainly does not make him a good guy. It's Corbett's Law in action.
The recent spat between the UN and the new president of the Philippines is a good case in point.
When Rodrigo Duterte, the former mayor of Davao City, was running for president of the Philippines, he promised he would be a dictator. He said he would authorize the army and police force to wage a drug war and use extrajudicial killings against "suspects" (i.e. literally anyone) who resisted. He said he would shut down Congress if they ever tried to impeach him. But he also said he'd open the country up to foreign investment so the mainstream business press laughed it all off.
Newsflash: he wasn't joking.
For those who haven't been keeping track, since taking office in May Duterte has:
deputized the public to kill accused drug dealers without judge or jury, resulting in 1800 deaths and counting;
threatened martial law if the country's judiciary tries to stop him;
justified the assassination of journalists (but only "if you're a son of a bitch");
and fired every single government official that was appointed by a previous president (thousands in total).
In other words, he's the big strong dictator from the sky that dumbed-down populations around the world are hungering for in this age of rising authoritarianism. But what else would you expect from a man who patterns his administration on Hollywood predictive programming like Dirty Harry and Death Wish?
But however insane things may be in the Philippines these days, there are still "teachable moments" that we can get out of it all.
Take Duterte's most recent meltdown. In his Sunday morning press briefing, Duterte--pressed on a UN appeal to stop the extrajudicial killing spree that he has unleashed--lashed out: "Maybe we’ll just have to decide to separate from the United Nations. If you’re that rude, son of a bitch, we’ll just leave you." From there, he began attacking the UN in general, calling it "inutile" and "stupid."
“Look at the iconic boy that was taken out from the rubble and he was made to sit in the ambulance and we saw it,” he said, referring to a propaganda photograph from Aleppo (taken by a man who proudly pals around with child-beheaders) that is being used for a new push to step up military intervention in Syria. "Why is it that United States is not doing anything?" Duterte asked, apparently miffed that the UN has not given the green light to a full-scale invasion of Syria. He then expressed the hope that China and Africa would start a counter-UN body and that Manila would get its financial contributions to the UN back.
Unsurprisingly, Philippines Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay Jr. was quick to walk those comments back this week. At a press briefing Monday morning Yasay passed the comments off as off-the-cuff remarks by a president who was "tired, disappointed and frustrated and angry" and assured the world that the Philippines was not withdrawing from the UN.
But let's imagine for a moment Duterte wasn't joking. What would happen? How could the Philippines leave the UN?
The surprising answer is they can't. No one can. There are no provisions in the United Nation's charter for the voluntary withdrawal of any member state. In other words, the UN is just like the Hotel California: "You can check-out any time you like, but you can never leave."
As Jon Robin Bustamante points out in a surprisingly informative social media post, this was done intentionally to stop threats of withdrawal being used as a political bargaining chip and to stop member states from evading their obligations under the charter.
As Bustamante notes:
The only country to seriously attempt UN withdrawal was Indonesia in 1965. Indonesian President Sukarno withdrew the country after their then-enemy Malaysia was awarded a seat in the Security Council. The Secretary-General noted their decision, but did not remove Indonesia from the roster of its members. One year later, Sukarno was overthrown in a coup and Indonesia resumed full cooperation with the UN.
During this time, Indonesia established CONEFO—a rival international organization with China, North Vietnam and North Korea as its members. The organization was largely ignored and was dissolved after a year. In 2016, Duterte threatens to do exactly the same.
In other words, Duterte would be unlikely to succeed even if he did try to somehow stop complying with the UN.
Of course, the UN is the epitome of the corrupt globalist institutions that really should be wiped off the face of the planet, but not because the Security Council hasn't authorized the US to pull a Gaddafi on Assad.
The UN was the brainchild of the Council on Foreign Relations' War and Peace Studies Political Group (itself born from the failure of the globalists to secure US participation in the League of Nations).
It is headquartered on land donated by the Rockefellers that just happened to go by the affectionate name "Blood Alley" for the slaughterhouses and cattle pens that it housed before the UN moved in.
Its Declaration of Human Rights was written by eugenicist and globalist insider H.G. Wells and includes a clause that nullifies the rights of anyone who opposes the UN.
It has been complicit in forced sterilization of poor peasants in developing countries.
It has been the vehicle for the corporate and oiligarchical monopolization of the world's resources under its "environmentalist" facade.
Its diplomatically immune "peacekeepers" are mired in scandal after scandal involving child sexual abuse.
It has been the cradle of such warmongering policies as the "Responsibility to Protect" and has given the rubber stamp to multiple wars of aggression and has been passively complicit in others.
I could go on (and I have before), but I think you get the picture. Every person in every nation should be denouncing the United Nations and vowing to withdraw, UN Charter be damned. But just because Duterte said this in a fit of anger (and justified it by saying it wasn't warmongering enough in Syria) certainly does not make him a good guy. It's Corbett's Law in action.
But we can still hope that in the battle of political parasites that seems to be shaping up between Duterte (and future authoritarians like him) and the UN, both sides may be mortally wounded.