Welcome to Litsy!

“Rodrigo Duterte was not the first politician in the world to declare war on a domestic issue {sound familiar US}. Wars on poverty, pornography, hunger, obesity, cancer, & drugs have been launched & fought by presidents & potentates long before Duterte. None of these wars have so far been won. None of that matters, because for the politician, the declaration is a victory all its own. The headlines are printed. The campaigns get their slogans. The

Really good. Really fascinating recent history of extra judicial killings in the Phillipines. Violent and dark, but great read. Feels a lil too real rn.

#12Booksof2024 July

This stayed with long after finishing

Honorable mentions
Søstrene (The Sisters) by Jonas Hassen Khemiri
Caledonian Road by Andrew O‘Hagan
My Friends by Hisham Matar
The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing

#12booksofchristmas #February @Andrew65

I tried to read all the books nominated for the Women's Prize for Nonfiction, so a couple of these come from there.

“There were corpses every night at the height of the killings. Seven, twelve, twenty-six, the brutality reduced to a paragraph, sometimes only a sentence each. The language failed as the body count rose.”

So #gruesome, it's hard to believe it's non-fiction.

#WickedWhispers

Added to my #TBR pile
#noface #spiritedaway #studioghibli #crossstitch #somepeopleneedkilling #patriciaevangelista #bookmark #books #goodreads #totefairie

I havent read enough non fiction this year so i picked this up. This is one of those “WTF” books where i was constantly reading bits to my husband - saying “listen to this, you won‘t believe it”. It turns out that when Dutertes said in the election campaign that he would kill a lot of people, it wasnt an exaggeration. The drug war he initiated created state sponsored killing squads, with no requirements for justice or legal process ⬇️

I remember some speeches on the news that Duterte made either in the election campaign or as president, and I thought it sounded crazy and not possible.

Reading this, I realized that the reality is way worse. Duterte not only followed through when he declared war on drugs and said it was okey to kill users and sellers, he had already been doing that for 30 yrs as the Mayor of Davao City.

We follow victims, next of kin and the police reports

21-3 June 24 (audiobook)
Evangelista tells of Duterte‘s presidency and the large number of killings at the hands of vigilantes and official police from the perspective of her role as a trauma reporter. It is shocking and relentless. At times I found myself thinking it was all a bit repetitive but then reflecting upon what that actually meant - thousands of people who were considered undesirable for whatever reason dying or disappearing.

An incredible book. So glad it was on the Women's Prize long list for non-fiction. It wasn't on my radar before it was listed. I learned not only a lot about Duterte and his murder squads, but also about the Philippines as a country.
Evangelista is a bad ass. Most reporters in the Philippines are women, covering horrific stories and keeping the public aware. I am in awe of her.
The book itself is not only well written but also well laid out.

“Dead is a good word for a journalist in the age of Duterte. Dead doesn‘t negotiate, requires little verification. Dead is a sure thing, has bones, skin, and flesh, can be touched and seen and photographed and blurred for broadcast. Dead, whether it‘s 44 or 58 or 27,000 or 1, is dead.”

“Slaughter dressed up in bureaucratese dulls the senses, and over time can anesthetize an entire population to the horror happening right where they live. Objective reality is winnowed away by each succeeding government report. The dead perish again, into nonexistence.”

This book has been extremely enlightening, especially around langauge and the Phillipeans. They were colonized by the Spanish and the US which has created a unique use of words

#weeklyforecast
We are going red and orange this week.
Listening to the tagged on audio.

#SpringSkies Day 12: there is a #VillainPOV here with the voices of murderers - who actually believe they are doing a public good - in this chilling journalistic memoir. Perhaps the act of writing this book was to cleanse herself of the toxicity of victims who sing out the praises of their children‘s murderers and call former President Duterte Tatay. My full review here: https://wp.me/pDlzr-qgX

#ItTakesAllKinds Day 5: #FandNFwithSameTopic - both award winning fiction and nonfiction books about the Drug War in the Philippines. Truly horrendous.

This was a truly eye-opening read; although I was vaguely aware of Rodrigo Duterte's fascist policies & his "war on drugs" & its immense costs, this book put that war into stark context. Grim & utterly brutal. The violence is shocking, but the thing that is most chilling is how people voted for him, & for the most part, took the killings in stride & somehow even lauded it. Evangelista highlights how there was a breaking point for some; but the

Such a great (grim) read. The author recounts her experiences as a journalist as a government-sanctioned "drug war" in thr Phillipines led to executions of thousands of people by the police and paid killers.

Hoping all the #WomensPrize NF list I pick up will be as compelling.

Political signage is not rare in the Philippines. Graduation congratulations and Christmas greetings on tarpaulin banners are holiday standbys. Plastic tents—the sort borrowed for wakes, feeding programs, and mass weddings—are routinely printed with the faces of current officials. There are sidewalks in my city tiled with the mayor‘s initials. This, however, was the first time any of us had seen government compassion advertised on a coffin lid.

#bookreport Started and finished the top 3.

#weeklyforecast Finish Storm Front, Continue Restoration Britain, Start The Dictionary People, and maybe How to Say Babylon.

A Reuters investigation concluded that “data on the total number of drug users, the number of users needing treatment, the types of drugs being consumed and the prevalence of drug-related crime is exaggerated, flawed or non-existent.” ....
“I don‘t see it as a problem,” Wilkins Villanueva, PDEA‘s Metro Manila regional director, told Reuters. The president “just exaggerates it so we will know that the problem is very big.”

Such a difficult read! I cannot believe the widespread and widely accepted state sanctioned killings that occurred in the Philippines during Rodrigo Duterte‘s era. He threatened to take care of the drug problem in his country if he would be elected by any means necessary. Evangelista‘s amazing reporting shows just how far he went and how dangerous and destructive his actions were. The book is full of heartbreaking and personal stories of murders.

...seven days before the elections. It ended with a warning: “If Rodrigo Duterte wins,” we wrote, “his dictatorship will not be thrust upon us.... Duterte‘s contempt for human rights, due process, and equal protection is legitimized by the applause at the end of every speech. We write this as a warning. The streets will run red if Rodrigo Duterte keeps his promise. Take him at his word—and know you could be next.”

I believed in democracy much the same way I believed in short sentences and small words.

Deal on UK price of kindle issue.

#WomensPrizeNF
#KindleDealUK

@squirrelbrain

Facts.
- The Women‘s Prize for Non-Fiction Longlist was announced last night.
- I am absolutely not reading it.
- Apart from the tagged, which I started, & am finding gripping, heart-breaking, and terrifying. Now I‘m into it, I love her voice.
- I might have reserved 4 others. Thankfully the library catalogue went down for maintenance at that point.
- I think this might be a prize we actually need.
- But I‘m absolutely not reading the longlist.

I can see why the NYT included this in its top 10 of the year for 2023. It is a memoir by a Filipina reporter documenting her experiences following the state-sanctioned extra-judicial killings under Duterte. It‘s an imperfect book, unnecessarily repetitive in places, but as a documentation of widespread injustice, it‘s a vital document. As you can imagine, it‘s a brutal read.

#NewYearNewBooks Day 1: With extrajudicial, state-sanctioned killing, it is inevitable that there will be #MissingPerson(s) because of the avid belief that some people need killing. This book is breaking my heart into little bits and pieces. Now back in the UAE and I hope to be more present in Litsy compared to the past few weeks when everything was such a blur before returning home to our haven in Al Ain.

This memoir reads like a dystopia, but chronicles the Philippines drug war. It‘s graphic, and the title warns you that there will be indiscriminate killing. Though it‘s heartbreaking, it‘s believable. I can absolutely believe/imagine voters supporting a candidate who promises to clean up the streets witb an iron fist and kill addicts, drug pushers and thieves. Added bonus of the book: quick synopsis of Phillipine history.

#DecemberDreams Day 19: I am sure I can tell who is #NaughtyOrNice in this journalistic memoir of murder. Must read while in Manila.

#HumbleHarvest Day 10: Always a #Feast of soup and salad from Olive Garden whenever we go to the US. 💕 Our fave restaurant here. AND finally found a copy of tagged book at the Barnes and Noble here in Florida (of all places!!).