Starlink to the rescue

 this is an AI answer to how Starlink is helping with local telecoms to help the earthquake victims in Mindanao.

AI Overview\\

Satellite lifeline: 

Globe turns to Starlink to keep Mindanao ...

Starlink is actively aiding emergency workers and affected residents in Mindanao following the recent magnitude 7.8 earthquake in the region. \

Satellite internet and direct-to-device technologies have been deployed by government agencies and local telecommunications providers to restore essential communications, support disaster response, and run emergency command centers. politiko.com.ph +3 

Key Starlink Emergency Services in Mindanao 

Direct-to-Device Access: Globe and Starlink have partnered to pilot direct-to-mobile satellite text and messaging services in hard-hit areas like South Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, and Sarangani. 

This provides coverage to hundreds of thousands of local users without needing specialized satellite dishes. 

 BusinessWorld - BusinessWorld Online +2 Command & Control Hubs: 

The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) has deployed Starlink kits to disaster-affected local plazas, evacuation centers, and the Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office in Alabe. 

 Critical Medical Support: Starlink broadband facilities have been installed at the Sarangani Provincial Hospital and Malungon Provincial Hospital to ensure uninterrupted frontline medical services. 

 Facebook ·Negros Daily Bulletin +1 Government Deployment: President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. personally turned over a Starlink unit to the local government of Glan, Sarangani, to strengthen local disaster coordination and relief operations. ]]

Philippine News Agency Free Public Wi-Fi: 

Local telecommunications firms like PLDT and Smart are operating command centers in General Santos City using Starlink backups to provide emergency personnel and affected residents with internet and mobile charging stations. politiko.com.ph 

Updates regarding these disaster relief efforts are regularly posted by the Department of Information and Communications Technology and major telecommunications providers like Globe Telecom and PLDT.

I am posting this because all the socialists want Musk to give money to NGOs to help the world. Presumably give money to NGOs who pay six figure salaries and have a high overhead and often divert money into woke projects.  

the Hoi Polloi celebrate

 WTF? 

 

Yup. The MSM is upset. How dare he.

The actual match is ongoing so I can't post a video of it.

I am not into wrestling or UFC or similar types of sports, but my sons were, and watched wrestling every day if I left them.

He never will get a good press you know: THey hate him

But anyway, Trump is friends with the low level sports types. Here is a video of Trump with the WWF before he ran for president:

part 2

LOL

a lot of the chaos about Trump's negotiating style is best understood if you realize he doesn't play by the polite rules, and chaos is part of his negotiating tactics because it keeps the other side off balance and frantic.

take last week's incident where after an aggressive interviewer wouldn't let him answer the question he walked out...

 Welker begged him to stay, saying she had traveled to Wisconsin for the exclusive sit-down. 'Mr President please, I traveled all the way to Wisconsin,' Welker pleaded.  

And normal folk just laugh, because we know the high hats ridicule us. When Trumpiboy walked out on an interview, remember she had complained that she was forced to fly all the way to Wisonsin to do the interview and he should respect her for this. In other words, she was implying Wisconsin was outside her comfort zone.

Famous cartoon on the NYC mindset of the MSM:

well, anyway these sports are not my thing, but they are for a lot of folk, including immigrants.

In other sports news, the world cup of soccer is going on aka FIFA... and some of those visiting the US outside the usual tourist stops are astonished to find friendly people and...airconditioners.

USA. Summer. It is 95 degrees outside, and I am shivering inside a sandwich shop.

I have discovered how Americans forge strong souls.

Outside, the sun is trying to kill everyone. Inside this small restaurant, it is winter. My breath does not fog, but it is thinking about it. A… pic.twitter.com/hSaJXpfba2

— NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 (@japan_nobunaga) June 4, 2026

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

and yes people do play soccer in the USA (and it is now officially soccer, not football because Pope Leo called the game that).

My son (born in Colombia) joined a local team that included five Central American college students, one deaf mute from the same college and two girls who were ASL translators, and a steel worker from Johnstown.

After the first game they won every game because they could shout instructions to each other in Spanish or sign in ASL and the other teams couldn't understand what they were saying... 

private enterprise in space

 Musk almost went broke when he started Space X, (2008 BBC article has the story if you aren't aware of it).... but now it is letting him own a trillion dollars of stock, so those unaware of the history of private enterprise in space are hyperventillating.

Behind the Black points out that the socialists salivating about how they could steal some of this money are missing the real story: it is about free enterprise, using money efficiently, giving many people jobs, and bringing things like starlink internet coverage to the world.

That last one is a game changer: does anyone remember how when the Ukraine was invaded, and the west dithered on whether to intervene because the experts figured the Ukraine would fall in a month, that one thing that helped them was Starlink communications>

and Starlink is providing communications for the Philippines after that terrible earthquake a few days ago. From PNA govt website:]

The deployment marks Globe's first use of Starlink’s satellite-to-mobile technology for disaster and emergency response in the Philippines. Over 700,000 Globe and TM customers stand to benefit from the deployment, receiving messaging via WhatsApp and SMS at a time when it is needed most. Globe will offer the service free of charge for up to 30 days as critical support to affected communities until Globe’s network is fully restored.

Not just coordinating help, but letting families communicate with each other Here in the Philippines, a lot of help is personal, families sending money or going down with supplies for their relatives. And when we had a bad typhoon, and had no electricity, city water, and had blocked roads, the first things our neighbors came for was to charge their cellphones because we had a generator, and fill their water jugs from our well. 

In the typhoon, the cellphone towers were working, but with an earthquake a Starlink would enable communications in areas where the lines etc were damaged.

biolab: yup the conspiracy theory guys and the Philippine watchdogs were right

three years ago, I noted that Ecohealth was tryin to build a biolab here in the Philippines, but was stopped when a Solon noticed it wasn't funded by HHS but by the Dept of Defense.

 even after the HHS stopped funding all ecohealth projects apparently Ecohealth was getting money from the Dept of Defense. (Ecohealth connected with the Wuhan lab covid scandal).

But the Phil gov't noticed the source of the money and refused it....   the money was never used according to the website that tracks govt grants, and the grant time ended. 

PhilStar has the 2022 story:

The lawmakers warned that the US-DRTA is the official combat support agency of the US for countering weapons of mass destruction: chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and high explosives.

“A civilian laboratory was constructed using funds of a foreign military agency, which has the responsibility of managing and integrating the US defense department’s chemical and biological defense science and technology programs,” the measure reads.

 

The resolution stressed that the task of civilian cooperation on bilateral agricultural concerns lies with the US department of agriculture and not on agencies under the defense department.

 I kept an eye on the webpage for the grant money, and eventually the date expired and it was removed.

well, anyway, there also has been a lot of conspiracy theories about biolabs, including those in the Ukraine.

I didn't follow it so no opinion on it except biolabs in countries are needed for tularemia, anthrax, brucellosis, q fever etc and other animal diseases that can destroy farm animal and spread to humans. 

The  detection by monitoring farm animals is routine to prevent epidemics (see last year's All Creatures Great and Small, which included plots on TB testing of cattle, and later Brucellosis was discovered: And infected one of the vets).

so anyway I figured biolabs were legitimate...except a small nagging problem, i.e. that the Lab in the Philippine had it's goal to collect and seek possible pathogens not in farm animals but in wild animals that could crossover and infect people.

In other words, looking for possible infectious stuff not checking for diseases that are actually infecting animals and hurting people.

So why worry? Uh, they are seeking out these diseases, collecting samples, and then doing investigations on the germs...does this include to collect it and investigate it (including gain of function research) so they could either start an epidemic or evolve it for biowarfare?

So anyway, Tulsi Gabbard, who was a Democrat who won more votes in the primaries than Kamela and then promptly got onto a terrorist watch list for air travel, which made her mad enough to change   parties and Trump put her in charge of the various intelligence agency stuff. 

She is leaving due to her husband having cancer (in our prayers) but has posted some stuff about the corruption in those agencies including this post about biolabs:

Today, I’m releasing never before seen intelligence revealing new evidence of past US government funding for more than 120 biolabs in over 30 countries, including Ukraine.

In support of President Trump‘s Executive Order to end federal funding of dangerous gain of function… pic.twitter.com/RkPHnAbka9

— DNI Tulsi Gabbard (@DNIGabbard) June 12, 2026

...>

check out the thread if you are interested.

So monitoring diseases that could decimate agriculture and spread to humans is good... but who checks if these labs are doing basic public health, or maybe searching for diseases to use as bioweapons? that is where the conspiracy theories come in. After Covid, the trust in the world wide public health system has gone down, and this is leading to deaths because parents won't vaccinate their kids  

and I won't get into the corruption in the many governments and even in western  NGOs. 

By the way: The US is not the only one funding such labs: global biolab interactive map

This article is about Chinese labs in Ethiopia and this article discusses biolabs in Africa   funded by China etc. 

Remember Hope

all the MSM news is negative and spreading confusion and hatred, so it is good to remember that Hope and peace exist, if you have the courage to notices:

and the story of the Piper who brought hope to the soldiers

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

and there is a lot of videos of Muslim takeover saying prayers in the streets, but is the press noticing when Catholics and other Christians have public celebrations or processions to pray in public?

We have them all the time here in the Philippines:

Ah, but is the MSM noticing the Corpus Christi procession in London? The UK is officially Anglican, but many Immigrants are Catholics: Not just the Irish but Filipinos, Polish and Africans:

and then despite Spanish government becoming more PC and anti life, we see this:

behind the headlines

for watching later on my tablet

 

...

losing trust in science: censorship

 

\

So should I as a physician distrust medical journals? Knowing the bias by drug companies maybe. More serious is that doctors in the US are pressured to follow recommendations based on summaries of medical journal articles, which like AI summaries could be biased because the database was biased,

A lot of this is distrust of vaccines due to minor adverse effects that are less serious than the disease itself. However, since Covid was mainly fatal for high risk types, when you read about side effects, it makes you wonder why they are insisting that young low risk folks were forced to take repeated doses

The AstroZeneca was known to cause blood clots at the time I took it, but the government limited it to those of us who were elderly or high risk.

Ironically the gov't refused to use the mRNA vaccine when first offered it by the USA because they wouldn't sign the agreement not to sue.

and once the Omicron varient hit, one priest/physician with a background in public health said no one needed the vaccine and that was all over social media here. But you know students wanting to attend school still were given a vaccine.

the distrust of vaccines here in the Philippines is due to the Dengue vaccine debacle, but most folks got the shot anyway, 

Now a lot of deaths are being blamed on the vaccine years later: Mainly elderly so probably not true. But I can think of a few younger deaths that might have been blood clots from the shot, and one girl who developed transverse myelitis that might have been from the shot, but without public health investigation I don't know.

I no longer practice medicine, and have essentially been disabled since I had a complicated Dengue infection two years ago, so I can't blame the vaccine. I took the AZ, an adenovirus vaccine known to cause blood clots and strokes, and had three episodes of asthmatic bronchitis when COVID was around, but no major problem since then. But I do have evidence of immune dysfunction including maybe that atypical Dengue episode and shingles.

Or maybe I am just old.

Family news

It is still hot season but the monsoon rains have started so the extreme heat should go down a bit: From 100F to 90. 

 The city water is still off, and last night after a big thunderstorm, water leaked into a electric wire to our water pump, so no bath again today, not even with a bucket (thank God for hanidwipes).

the problem? The same wire kept the pump to aerate our fish pond, so this morning all the fish were at the surface trying to breathe. In the hot weather, we often lose fish from stress, so we were facing a fish die off.

We got our handiman to come and connect the wire to the fishpond pump, so now we are hoping that the fish recover.

The female dog was in heat, so the male dogs were fighting all night, so I have not had a good night's sleep for a few days. Sigh. She is now out of heat, and the neighbor's dog, who she usually mates with when we take her for a walk, came over to look for her when we opened the garage door. Luckily our male dogs were in the garden or it could have been a major fight.

We try to let her mate outside since previous puppies from her brother were beautiful but two had hip dysplasia.

The Baptist church that meets in our meeting room had an anniversary party yesterday: Yum. Filipino food. Actually we eat Filipino food all the time, but our cook is getting old so the recipes are limited, and not always well cooked. Sigh. 

Lots of people sick (blood pressure and diabetes) and a few have died. 

Our next door neighbor's daughter in law was buried after five days wake. The wake included music until midnight. A sad case: In her mid 40s and diabetic and died of sepsis. She was a tomboy, and lived in Manila, but no kids or family there so was buried here.