Trumpieboy is a businessman so can make deals with the Arab world who are also business oriented.
But one reason Biden insulted the Saudis did not persue a close releationship was civil rights: The lack of rights of women in that country.
Years ago I read this book by Jean Sasson that inspired this film: there are a series of books about her life: Amazon link.
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a short narration from the book:
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..a CSPAN interview about the original book (there are a series of books about Princess Sultana's life)
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The irony of the book is that at least women in Saudi are allowed to be educated and have some rights (especially if the men in charge of them allow them freedom).
But in one of the later books, they discuss the Houthis whose attitude toward women is worse as is the Taliban of course).
I lived enough in Africa to recognize the tribal reasons for things like forced marriages, veiling/modest clothing, keeping women from being independent: Because in a time when women could not support themselves independently, it is only the family who is able to protect them, and for older women that means the protection of a father, husband, or son... that is why in a poor and primitive world, widows and single moms face starvation, where wars allow the equivalent of tribal raids, kidnapping, slavery, and criminals in charge women are not safe. Hence laws to limit women's freedom are about keeping her safe.
But yes it is a prison.
But in a modern world, is such protection needed? Especially in an affluent world?
You can see the need for women's education, and why caution is needed for those who speak out against these restritcions.
🔥Rogan: Donald Trump is the only person who could have survived what he was put through @joerogan “He’s the Final Boss of Fuck You.” pic.twitter.com/Eb6rHXLTQo
and the latest bad news is that the Pope is appointing people who will lack the courage to confront the culture of death, so I am discouraged more than ever. especially since the Trad Catholic seem more worried about the latin mass and the church of what's happening now is more concerned with global warming than with a policy that will eliminate useless eaters: the dirty little secret is that this is supposed to be volunatary but rogue medical and nursing personnel will take it in their hands to eliminate grandmom. This is known in minority communities, which is why so few minorities will sign living wills etc. Yes there is racism and class bigotry in medicine in the USA, and of course those European and Canadians show how this is done.
But we grandmoms have a weapon and can fight back:
I am old enough to remember my mom and her friends would get together once a week and pray the rosary for the conversion of Russia.
And voila, communism fell without a war and without massacres.
Stalin once quipped: How many troops does the Pope have? And the answer is this:
my previous post was about the wonderful K drama when life gives you tangerines. The plot is about a family and much of it is about trying to make a living, starting in poverty and working their way up to a middle class existance.
One of the major subplots in the middle of the drama was the unemployment and hardships suffered by the family due to the Asian financial crisis of 1997.
that lesson should be noticed by the Yanks who are opposing the DOGE cuts and the financial problems in the USA.
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many Asians think that rich people manipulating the stock market for gain either precipitated the crisis or made it worse.
And high on the list of those manipulating the crisis was Soros.
At the combined annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in September 1997, a conflict raged over who was to blame for the nascent financial calamity, and what kind of economic model would emerge after it.
The main protagonists were Mahathir Mohamad, at the zenith of his power as prime minister of Malaysia, and George Soros, the billionaire who made bold bets against the currencies of Thailand and Malaysia in the run-up to the crisis. A few years earlier, Soros had defeated the Bank of England's efforts to prop up the pound. Mahathir, for his part, had presided over high growth rates for much of his 16 years in office that were now at risk of being undone.
With Thailand already subject to the strictures of an IMF-led bailout and Indonesia hurtling down the path toward one, Mahathir feared Malaysia could be next. Soros was portrayed by Mahathir and other nationalists as representing global capital, in all its fickleness — and drew scrutiny (and sometimes praise) for his ability to spot countries and assets that were starting to go awry.
Investopedia also discusses manipulation and interference that made the crisis worse.
The Bottom Line
In 1997, decades of economic policy planning that featured close relationships among government policy planners, regulators, the industries they regulated, and financial institutions came to a head when markets began putting downward pressure on Asian currencies.
italics mine....the markets did it.
This is like those headlines that shout a car drove into a crowd, or an AK47 killed people: as if these things were independent of human intervention.
Which is why the president of Malaysia blamed Soros:
With contagion, the risk of financial crisis to a country is not limited to its own vulnerabilities, but can be a result of market contagion that turns the underlying weaknesses into a crisis. This means, under globalisation, a financial crisis is no longer an isolated individual country problem but a collective problem that needs to be tackled collectively -- through an organised regional or global body whose job it is to prevent and resolve financial crises. so welcome to the New World Order.
italics mine.
So did big shots controlling the world manipulate things so that the ultimate result would be centralized control of the world economy?
are we seeing "markets" manipulating the economies of the world again, this time in the USA under an incompetent Biden, and no one except for conspiracy sites dare to ask the question: What is really going on?
Trump knows business, and knows how to play dirty in business: so right now he is manipulating the world wide financial situation by threats of tariffs: He points out that other countries take advantage of tariffs on the US while the US is not supposed to notice. So since what is good for the goose is good for the gander, he says change or else. Drop the tariffs or else. And saying to companies: Invest in the USA.
Not popular, but a fast way to equalize things to stimulate fair trade.
But China could be the problem: They are calling in the debts from a lot of countries who they sent "AID" but actually what they did was did stuff and it was a loan to be paid back and now the loan is due. And they are threatening war against Taiwan, the Philippines, and India (and if Russia doesn't watch out, Siberia is next on the list of lost Chinese possessions).
which is why Trumpieboy calls Russia crazy for not trying to make peace.
the kerfuffle about Greenland and Canada was actually a headsup that China was expanding their economic control of these countries so they could take over the Arctic trade routes. And this only makes sense if you know that they are also infiltrating Eastern Siberia with a lot of migrant workers.
Well, never mind.
I don't understand economics, but if you read history, you know that economic problems and depressions cause revolutions and wars.
The Chinese curse/blessing goes: May you live in interesting times.
Alas, the trailer, doesn't give you any idea of what the series is about: It is about family and how they support each other through thick and thin.
I see a lot of similarities in our family. The family in the series sells their house to help their daughter get a college education, and we cut corners to get our granddaughter an education including college
I have mentioned Chinese aggression and shenanigans against the Philippines in past posts (building artificial islands, attacking Philippine fishermen and more recentl Coast Guard ships, even within the 200 mile economic zone, the Chinese casinos with many military age men working there, the Chinese mayor who pretended she was Filipino, and all those Chinese students who instead of studying at major universities just happen to be studying in a minor college in the north of Luzon, near to military bases that are protecting the strait between the Philippines and Taiwan).
May 24, 2025: In January Filipino security forces arrested about a dozen Chinese and Filipino citizens and charged them all with spying for China. Some of the accused had been caught while using drones, cameras and other electronic instruments to survey Filipino infrastructure and military installations. The alleged Chinese spies were particularly eager to study bases and areas that American forces would use when they regularly visited to train with their Filipino counterparts.
Read the whole thing for more details.
One problem is that there are thousands of Filipinos working in China; Most of them are in Macao or in Hong Kong, not the mainland, and most (including some of our relatives/friends) are caregivers, nurses, teachers, etc. So these people are open to being arrested or used for human hostages if war happens against Taiwan
Please also note what this article says about Chinese spies, and all the Chinese gangsters, many smuggling or in the drug trade:
The Chinese gangs conceal their illegal operations among the legitimate ones. The Philippines has long had a major corruption problem and the Chinese took advantage of that to pay off the right people in areas where they operated. Since none of the victims were Filipino, the Chinese operations were seen has beneficial to the Philippines and Filipinos. It required federal Filipino intervention.
These actions have been more frequent as allies of the Philippines complain that Chinese espionage operations are regularly traced back to the Philippines.
There have been several crackdowns, but the Chinese gangs were prepared for this and sacrificed some portions of their operations while the majority went silent and unseen.. The Chinese government assists the gangs as long as the gangsters provide support for Chinese espionage efforts. This is a problem that has defied numerous efforts to eliminate it. Now you know why...
I wonder if one of the reasons that the internationalist elites and CIA hated Duterte was because he was going after the drug gangs,
Coast guard ships are not usually heavily armed but the Chinese ships are increasingly being seen equipped with water cannons, extra searchlights and equipment for grappling with other ships. These tools are used to interfere with foreign fishing ships and transports that go to parts of the South China Sea that China has declared Chinese territory, even though other nations have a stronger legal claim.
Using water cannons, bright searchlights to blind the crews of other ships and aggressive maneuvering to include grappling with smaller foreign ships and forcibly moving them the foreign ships are persuaded to back off.
The Chinese coast guard vessels also use these tactics against foreign warships and if the foreigners shoot back the Chinese can declare themselves the victims of an unprovoked attack and call in more fire power.
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in other words, they are practicing on how to block shipping through the area, which is a vital shipping route from the Indian Ocean to East Asian countries.
and of course control of this sea lane can let them block supplies going to Taiwan.
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in other news, China vs the Catholic church is heating up again.
China used bribes to crooked Cardinals in the Vatican to let them take over the underground Catholic church there.
But the agreement is up for renewal, and everyone is hoping that the new pope will refuse to extend the agreement, especially since of course China has been breaking the agreement.
Pope Leo will have to decide whether to continue renewing the accord. There have been some apparent violations on the Beijing side, with some unilateral appointments that occurred without papal consent.
The issue came to a head just before the conclave that elected Leo, when the Chinese church proceeded with the preliminary election of two bishops, a step that comes before official consecration.
...Relations had long been fraught over China’s insistence on its exclusive right to name bishops as a matter of national sovereignty, while the Vatican insisted on the pope’s exclusive right to name the successors of the original Apostles.
the argument about secular authorities appointing bishops essentially is about if the state controls the church, or is the church separate from the state. This argument goes back to the early church, and came to a head in the early middle ages: Wikipedia article
why is this important? Well, if you remember back to the days of the fall of communism, many of these revolutions were led by or inspired by the churches. Here in the Philippines, the People Power/EDSA revolution against Marcos I was led by our Cardinal.
So the church as an independent institution is dangerous to tyrants.
So maybe Pope Leo is sending a signal that he won't bot to tyrants?
Two nights ago, one of our outside dogs slept in my room instead of outside the door as he usually does, and in the morning he did not get up and when I checked him he was dehydrated and too weak to walk, and refused to eat or drink.
So we took him to the vet for antibiotics and IV fluid.
Today he is his old self, and I have a huge bill for his treatment and he has to stay on antibiotics for a month just in case it was leptospirosis,
He tested negative, but the vet worried it might be an early case...he had a shot to prevent this as a puppy but not in recent years, and we had an unvaccinated dog die of it a couple years ago.
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Lots of rats in the area, partly because we live near the palenke and the town square, and people discard trash in the street on the way home from socializing in the town square in the evening, and of course we have to watch it because we store rice. We just put out rat poison so at first I thought the dog had eaten that, but the vet said no.
But as I noted, this is one of the outdoor dogs.
we have a large compound and different dogs in different areas...he guards the kitchen (which is outside but next to our dining room) and he is one of the five dogs that guard the living area and garden and the meeting room area, (and there are five dogs in various places in the business side of the compound.) Everyone here has dogs for safety.
this dog usually hangs around with the cook, and even goes with her to shop so might have eaten or drank contaminated water/food in the street...
I took the cook with me to take him home, and both were happy and smiling at the reunion.
And the latest post points out that deliveries to and from the space station are now so routine that this doesn't make the headlines anymore.
For NASA, SpaceX is acting as its UPS delivery truck, bringing back to several tons of experiments. And like all UPS delivery trucks, making a delivery is not considered news.
And yet, this is a private commercial spacecraft returning from space, after completing a profitable flight for its owners
Four station astronauts worked together throughout their day loading several tons of completed science experiments and station hardware inside Dragon.
NASA Flight Engineers Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers kicked off their shift loading and securing a variety of cargo inside the spacecraft ahead of its departure and undocking planned for 12:05 p.m. EDT on Thursday. Toward the end of their shift, they removed portable science freezers containing research samples from station EXPRESS racks and installed them inside Dragon.
my only comment: Why do the lady astronauts let their hair be long and float around? The lose hairs could clog the filters and spread germs. That is why we wore caps in the operating rooms...
