Musical interlude for the day

 

Let it snow let it snow let it snow

I have no opinion on the craziness in Washington DC, but like a lot of people, am afraid of a terrorist (domestic or foreign) attack at the inauguration, especially as the President walks up Pennsylvania Avenue. 

 However, as one wag wrote: God apparently was worried too, so he sent in a cold wave, and voila, the inauguration will be held indoors as it was when Reagan took office. 

this is good, not only for security reasons but because crowds and dignitaries are at risk standing around in the cold for hours just for a photo op.

Indeed, one might argue that the cold rainy weather indirectly led to the death of President Harrison from Pneumonia a month later.

the weather also led to Reagan's inauguration being indoors, so there is a precedent.

 the first inauguration I ever watched (on TV) was that of JFK, where it was snowing and the wind was so bad that Robert Frost couldn't read the poem he had written, so instead he recited one of his other poems: the Gift Outright: (fast forward to two minutes):

Catholic film to fight against the church of what's happening now

A couple of bishops that Pope Francis has tried his best to silence have released a film that is a shot across the bow to remind him of what the catholic church is: An institution to help people meet Jesus. Yes, you can find him at home praying, but the cross reminds us of the two directions of faith; one that connects us to God, and the other that connects us to our neighbor. The first gives strength for the second.

LINK:

Bishop Strickland is particularly forthright and clearly not afraid to ruffle episcopal feathers in his defense of the authentic Catholic faith.

“[W]e’re in a time when too many of the present-day successors of the apostles are saying, ‘Oh, we can abandon what the apostles said,  and we’ve got it figured out, and we’re going to take a different path. And what was sin is no longer sin; what was true is no longer true.’

That’s not apostolic,” he says firmly. “To be apostolic … is to be rooted in the tradition and history of the apostles, and as Pope Benedict XVI said beautifully, we need a continuity of faith and not a rupture,” he continues.

warning: The film is aimed at Catholics so others might not comprehend the allusions. But it is mainly aimed at bishops and the Pope who are trying to change the church from an institution that helps people find God to the church of what's happening now; a modern secular non judgemental woke NGO where people can proudly do their own thing instead of finding God .

,,,,,,

Is there a balm in Giliad? Yup.

There is a famous verse (in Jeremiah 8:22): 

Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people?

The Levant is a dry climate, so the reference is probably to a skin ointment

 

In regards to the balm of Gilead, this balm is related to the balsam poplar (Commiphora opobalsamum) and is considered a myrrh-like resin/chemical compound found in the Arabian Peninsula, specifically in ancient Palestine east of the Jordan River; it was used for medicine. ... The balm was known to be combined with other ingredients to increase its potency....(such as) oil or lard for bruising, swelling, or damage to the skin. Inflammation is what the balm of Gilead is used most for, presently, especially for sunburns or arthritis. Some ancient historians say that Queen Sheba gave a gift of the balm to King Solomon.

 Here, coconut oil is a commonly used for dry skin or to treat dandruff/dry scalp; and our staff uses it with guava leaves for wounds

Whole leaves can be lightly crushed and placed on top of wounds to help heal them and prevent infection.  

Ointments are expensive: 

We used to give out Fluffo from one clinic for ordinary dry skin problems, because our budget was limited.

Fluffo is yellow Crisco, a lard substitute used in cooking but I haven't seen it on the shelves for 40 years.

In Africa, they used chicken fat ointment Mafuta to keep their skin from drying out: But even when I worked in one country 40 years ago, they were starting to use Vaseline.

Vaseline of course is still used in the black community.

but what about chapped skin or minor abraisions? 

Well we used to use BagBalm for sore nipples for our breast feeding ladies because it was cheap and available in our rural area.

The active ingredients of Bag Balm are 8-hydroxyquinoline sulfate 0.3% (antiseptic) in a petroleum jelly USP and lanolin base.[2]

 ... Originally, it was used for only cows' udders, but farmers' wives noticed the softness of their husbands' hands, and started using the product themselves. 

What brought this up was in reading Strategypage about skin problems in the Middle Eastern Wars, they noted:

Fifteen years ago soldiers fighting in the deserts of Iraq and southern Afghanistan endured lots of burns, abrasions, insect bites and scratches. While the medics could treat these minor injuries, the troops preferred to obtain their own cures. But none of the available ointments seemed to do the job well. Then the wife of a soldier developed a new skin balm which she called Combat Ready Balm. Commercially this was a profitable item. That made it possible to send thousands of 59 ml jars of Combat Ready Balm to military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. Soldiers and marines bought a lot more at $25 a jar because, as most of them pointed out, it worked. The balm was even useful during Afghan Winters, when dry skin replaced insect bites.

....,,

cross posted from my medical blog

the plague the plague

 Legal Insurrection notes that the experts are planning to make a new plague vaccine.

there has been a vaccine for over a century, but it's not very good, and requires several doses. It was given to the US military recruits who were deployed to high risk areas in the past... 

But it doesn't protect everyone, and alas now there are reports of antibiotic resistance.

I posted a lot of stuff about this on my medical blog.

given the fact that it is present in some rodants on the west coast of the USA, and given the garbage and rat infestations due to the homeless encampments (where already there have been cases of typhus and a Hep A epidemic), there is a bit of a worry. 

Docs in the IHS in the Navajo area would see a few cases a year, and usually if treated with antibiotics would cure it. But in a city, the average doc might not recognize it.

But when is the pneumonic form ( pneumonia), it can kill you within a day and is very infectious. In the past both Russia and the US investigated it as biowarfare agent. 

And of course the conspiracy types (and Russia) point to the biological labs in the Ukraine as a danger, even though most of these labs are about identifying and making vaccines for humans and animals. 

But the USA/EU/Russia/China are not the only ones who have these labs... Iran has one, and of course so does Israel

not only could these labs have a lab leak that could cause an epidemic (Brucellosis release in Chinese lab making a vaccine for example) but if a sociopathic leader got hold of it, it could cause problems.

Key scary scenerio:

Models developed by this expert committee predicted that the intentional release of 50 kg of aerosolized Y. pestis over a city of 5 million would, in its primary effects, cause 150,000 cases of pneumonic plague and 36,000 deaths.

 Tom Clancy call your office. We have a new plot for you.

The Pump handle Lesson

a physician noticed a cluster of cholera cases, traced the outbreak to a certain public water pump, and saved hundreds of lives by simply removing the pump handle so people had to get water from other sources.

easy peasy, and like Galileo, his findings were immediately accepted by the medical community, right? 

t

 

sigh.

the problem was that people were using contaminated water, but back then the theory was that the disease was caused by "miasma": the smell and fumes of rotting garbage, tanneries etc.

The idea that it might be the water, not the stinky air, as the cause of cholera was not understood... until Dr Snow traced a cluster of cases to one area, and figured what they all had in common was that they all got their drinking water from the same public pump

So he figured it was not the smell but the water was bad, removed the pump, and slowed the epidemic.

Such problems continue in today's world: The most notorious was when, after the Hatian earthquake, UN Peacekeepers from Nepal built their latrines too close to a rives, so the germs flowed into the river. The problem? The normal water supply pipes had broken, so people downstream were using river water for drinking.

Ironically, people in the ancient world sort of figured this out, which is why they rarely drank pure water: in one famous passage,  Paul tells Timothy to mix wine with his water "for his stomach's sake"...  

so anyway, at the time Dr Snow removed the pump handle, he was able to publish his findings, even though the germ theory was not a popular theory of disease.

the Lancet notes 

 ...(for) most medical men at the time: miasma, or the stench from decaying vegetable and animal matter, was widely held responsible for epidemic disease.

Snow's On the Mode of Communication of Cholera, first published in 1849, set out the then radical idea that cholera was a disorder of the digestive system not the blood; and that it was contagious and spread through the oral-faecal route, largely through contaminated drinking water.  

Snow's intervention in Broad Street, Soho, in 1854, when he persuaded the authorities to remove the handle from a contaminated pump well, has caught the public imagination, but it was his “Grand Experiment” that same year that secured his huge reputation in epidemiology.

 

During Britain's second cholera epidemic in 1848–49, both the Lambeth and the Southwark and Vauxhall water companies were taking their supplies from the Thames next to where the London sewers were discharged. By the time of the 1854–55 epidemic, however, Lambeth had moved its works up riverout of reach of the sewage. Here, Snow saw, was the perfect means of testing his theory. He compared the numbers of cholera victims whose water was supplied by the two different companies in 1848–49 with the numbers in 1854–55. During 1848–49, the death rates for the two companies were the same, but by 1854, after Lambeth's move, Southwark and Vauxhall's rate was between eight and nine times higher, and in the first 4 weeks of the epidemic, Southwark and Vauxhall customers had a 14-fold higher risk. In 1855, Snow published a much-expanded second editionof On the Mode of Communication of Cholera that included these results. Again he was largely ignored, although by then the idea that polluted water had some part to play in cholera was gaining ground.

the Lancet article notes how his theory was ridiculed at the time, and even his obituary didn't mention this part of his career:

but the point is that they did publish it.

And Dr. Campbell notes that this is in contrast to the censorship of Covid's origins, ignoring/censoring voices that questioned the epidemiological response to the disease, and of allowing poorly analyzed articles that led to the banning cheap medicines that might or might not have worked.

in that last article, on a debunked and retracted article on HCQ, the critical analysis notes:

true researchers generally appreciate a culture of openness, transparency and mutual criticism. It’s considered part of the process of science maturation. This process is achieved through scientific publication as well as interaction in scientific conferences, meetings or any other media.

Dr. Campbell, a nurse educator/public health expert whose you tube channel has been censored at times, points out how these things are important.

why do I bring this up? 

Because the establishment continues to gaslight the public about covid: 

For example, PBS newshour (which your taxes are supporting of course) objects to Trumpieboy appointing him to run the NIH.

President-elect Trump selected a critic of COVID-19 lockdowns and mandates to lead the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is known for co-authoring the Great Barrington Declaration, a 2020 manifesto that advocated allowing COVID to spread in order to achieve herd immunity. It was widely criticized by top health officials.

 italics mine

............................

fast forward to 7 minutes:

the cult of woke

 

posted so I can watch it later.

corruption in the UK? Say it isn't so...

 I vaguely had read about the Muslim grooming gangs in the north of England: but didn't realize it was that bad. 

However, I was aware that some Muslim guys (even the docs I worked with) considered all Christian girls as sluts and thought it was okay to have sex with them, even aggressively. (a relative in Canada was raped by one at her college: No he never was charged, since he claimed she came on to him and was lying, and never was punished even after she got a restraining order on him for stalking and sexual harassment that others verified he was doing).

So anyway, suddenly the British scandal about the Pakistani and Asian grooming gangs who abused young poor white girls is in the news again, with Elon Musk putting his two cents (or should I say two billion) into the discussion.

It is the holiday so I wondered why all of a sudden this (?old) scandal exploded: Is it anti immigrant prejudice (I hope not: We have Filipino relatives there who are now proud UK citizens, but still are obviously not Anglo ethnics). Or is it about an aggressive Islam? The groomers were mainly Pakistani Muslims, yet one wonders why those from the same area and presumably the same culture who are Hindu or Sikh are not involved. Then you have the question: Are these guys immigrants, or second generation types who were inflamed by (Saudi fundamentalist) preachers at local mosques who teach hatred?

Don't ask me.

Presumably the resentment against Muslim immigrants came to a head was because of the attack on young girls at a dance class, where the UK government tried to cover it up and said the perpetrator was a Welshman Christian, when it turned out he was the child of African immigrants and had lots of jihadi stuff in his possession.

Then the government started arresting parents protesting, probably because the good old boys there who tend to be rowdy, were threatening to the innocent or something.

So anyway, after that, the party in power got booted out and another party took over. 

Yeah. The Labour party loves the working class, right? 

So why is the story of the grooming gangs blowing up again? Maybe new reports? Maybe because one extremist who had a film about it was jailed? Anyone? Anyone.

 Canadian journalist David Warren (who also writes on culture on the Catholic Thing) mentions what was the problem:

...the British prime minister, Keir Starmer... rose to power as the prosecutor protecting Muslim “grooming gangs,” and now puts people in gaol who protest on behalf of their rape and murder victims.

The idea that Mr Starmer should have a rôle in the government of a civilized country, is as absurd as the idea that the 14-year-old narcissist who has ruled Canada, or the 82-year-old senescent who has ruled the United States...

Duh.

from a UKTelegraph story 

Ms Oliver, who now runs a foundation supporting abuse victims, said that, while previous inquiries had led nowhere, she did believe it was now time for a fresh independent investigation into grooming. She added that as a former DPP, Sir Keir had to bear some responsibility for the widespread failure to bring those responsible to justice.

Writing on X, she said: “Those leading these ‘enquiries’ have always wanted to cover up the truth, to hide it. And I’d say it’s become even worse in recent months with those who dare to speak out finding themselves in prison within a couple of days… when victims wait 6/7/8 years for a trial! Corrupt and just wrong....

so who in the USA is pushing the UK to investigate the story? 

...Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman urged Mr Trump to “consider appropriate sanctions against the UK” over its handling of the grooming scandal.  .... He wrote on X: “Who was the head of the CPS when rape gangs were allowed to exploit young girls without facing justice? Keir Starmer, 2008–2013. “Who is the boss of Jess Phillips right now? Keir Stamer 

 Here is a discussion by some well known podcasters (lotuseaters) of what is going on:

,

sigh.

update: From another popular podcast, triggernometry:

====================

 this wouldn't be the first time the elites ignored injustice against normal people in the UK, and then tried to block inquiries.

It brings to mind the Post Office Scandal, where a computer software glitch caused many ordinary people running post offices to be accused of theft. 

 That story finally was publicized by a miniseries Mr Bates vs the Post Office: 

The Real Story chronicled sub-postmaster Alan Bates’s legal battle against the Post Office, which had falsely accused him and some 3,500 others of defrauding the UK’s postal service. Following the airing of the four-part mini-series, the number of signatures on a long-running petition calling for an official honour to be stripped from former Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells rocketed to more than one million.

more details at Wikipedia  

Vennells was head of the Post Office from 2012 to 2017... of positions despite the rumors about what had happened on her watch.,

 Vennels is still unpunished and got plenty of jobs after the scandal was known but not well publicized.

but the strangest link here is that Vennells is an Anglican priest and almost got appointed to become the bishop of London in 2017.

So it's not just politicians: The head of the CofE Welby also said I know nothing. 

But then of course he resigned recently for being silent about sexual abusers, so I guess there was a lot going on he preferred not to notice.

what both these scandals have in common is that years later, it was the small people who stubbornly pushed for justice who finally got a smidgen of justice. 

as the African proverb warns: Even a small snake has a fang.

Alas, so far the ones who should have stopped these things are still free and have never been punished.

--------------------

Hirsi Ali discusses the culture. In her biography she discusses the threats to women. It is not just in Islam, but universal in many primitive cultures that  sees raping a woman from a different and inferior culture as okay.

What stops this in many cultures is not just keeping women in the homes and veiled, but the knowledge that if you harm a woman, her brothers will punish you. Vigilante justice. 

But in Muslim majority cultures, often the court system looks the other way when Christian or Hindu girls are kidnapped, forced to convert and to marry her rapist.

 But in the UK, this was not forced marriage but grooming for prostitution. And alas they often came from dysfunctional families and were vulnerable because of widespread use of drugs.

The problem in the UK is not just the culture of south Asian Muslims, but the culture of the liberals who didn't want to insult Islamic immigrants, so gave them a pass on their crimes.

a swift punishment of the perpetrators, plus an outreach to the local religious leaders, would have stopped it. But this was not done.

it is a worldwide problem: the background is the idea that women from an inferior group are fair game: in Europe, it explains upper class men raping rural women or seducing servant or shop women,  in India, it means rape of women from lower castes, in the past in the Southern USA it meant black women, in today's USA it often preys on runaway girls or in more recent years, immigrant women, in some areas it means Native American women.

update: Senator Fetterman and several other Democrats are supporting the Laken Riley act.

The Laken Riley Act would require the Department of Homeland Security to take into custody undocumented immigrants who have been charged with theft and other crimes.

Riley was raped and killed by an illegal immigrant while jogging.