the AI center fight is about the future and the Philippines is part of the plan

I am not up on what is going on in the USA except that the left hates anything Trump is doing, and now is busy pushing outrage against AI Centers in the USA.... which of course would let China become the lead for the AI Future.

From Instapundit:

I’ve been lurking in anti-AI, anti-data center activist facebook groups just to understand what their arguments are

Guys it’s really not a good sign that they are borrowing the same tactic of framing non-violent things as violence. During the woke cultural revolution, innocuous… pic.twitter.com/EDb3CwKUoy

— Melissa Chen (@MsMelChen) May 19, 2026

.....

I had no idea about this until I read @amuse https://t.co/feIVBBrMIx

— Melissa Chen (@MsMelChen) May 20, 2026

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so what does this have to do with the Philippines? 

Cue up to the Pax Silica plan to industrialize the Philippines.

.. ..Pax Silica is the US outreach to other countries including the Philippines.

This historic declaration hails a new economic security consensus ensuring aligned partners build the AI ecosystem of tomorrow—from energy and critical minerals to high-end manufacturing and models.,,,

We recognize that the technological revolution in AI is accelerating, increasingly reorganizing the world economy, and reshaping global supply chains. We believe that economic value and growth will flow through and across all levels of the global AI supply chain, driving historic opportunity and demand for energy, critical minerals, manufacturing, technological hardware, infrastructure, and new markets not yet invented.

...

so yes the Philippines is pushing this plan: 

We have the resources of our workers, who right now are forced to migrate to other countries to find work. This will allow this talent to stay here and find jobs.

Under this framework, the country is advancing the proposed AI-Native Industrial Acceleration Hub in New Clark City, a flagship project that brings together AI, infrastructure, and high-value industries.

Yup.  Clark city, where there was a US base until politics asked the US to close it and Mt Pinatubo covered it with ash.

Our lovely ex president Gloria comes from that area and has been investing in roads, and infrastructure for years.

Clark industrial zone, was created, roads and rail connected it to other areas, and an alternative airport was opened there in Pampanga, which was traditionally a very poor area of the Philippines.

so what about our area?

well, we grow rice, and thanks to land reform small farmers now own their fields. 

The problem? They remain poor but educated their kids, and the kids don't want to be small farmers. 

So to work our fields we imported workers from Joy's area in the Visayas.

But for several years even though we are organic, profit is small because of the high  price of fertilizer   (after 2022, the prices went up because of the Ukraine war, and potash comes from the Ukraine) and now things are worse, with oil prices up, meaning the price for fertilizer going up, and diesel for farm machinery also going up, and unlike 25 years ago when I first came here, we no longer have farmers willing to plow with water buffalo (they are used for milk now) or harvest by hand (we rent a harvester thresher to bring in the crop).

Allowing people to own large amounts of land and mechanize it using modern seeds and machines would be the answer, but the Govt policy is to encourage small farmers to grow organic rice, which can be sold at a higher profit than traditional rice, which is in competition with other countries that have lower wages for farms.

this preserves the culture and is better for the land of course, so Joy is involved in this outreach in nearby Bulacan.

The good news is that the Philippines is wise enough to promote policies that benefit the small farmer while pushing modernization.

But things are changing.

 

Since farmers can't make much of a profit due to the high price of diesel and fertilizer, some are not planting, especially for the winter dry season harvest where you have to pay for irrigation fees.

so what is going on here is that a lot of local farmers were digging and panning for gold in the unused fields rather than lose money planting winter rice... whether or not they will plant for the main harvest is a big question: We will plant our low lying fields that don't use irrigation, but probably let the higher fields lie fallow. Sigh.

 which brings up another economic change in our area.

The large solar farm is being built on fields here. And yes, what this commercial says is true: many of our farmers and local folk are busy working for this project.

          

so lots of optimistic propaganda out there looking for investments:

 The main problem is corruption of course, but one can only hope workers used to honest work (e.g. working overseas or belonging to Evangelical churches that stress honesty and hard work) will be able to support their families.

S

everyone has a different point of view, but the truth is real

 Dilbert/Scott adams said that in today's world, everyone views the news in their own  bubble: Interpreting what is going on in the world not as it is actually happening but as reinterpreted by our brain based on our own culture, biases, and preconceived opinions

 Traditionally, great books (and nowadays Great films) are the way that teaches us these lessons.

One of my favorite films is Rashomon: And this film analysis explains why

the four stories:

The robber sexually assaults the woman and in his mind he is so sexually wonderful that  she begs him to take her along with him. And that is why he had to kill her husband.

The husband sees the woman as immoral and has a need to justify her being evil so he can so rejects her...so he claims she kills him.

The wife? She also says she killed her husband when he rejected her.

But the one relating the court to the priest notes that the police say his wounds are that of a sword fight, not being killed with a woman's small dagger.

But the woodcutter saw it from the distance and has another story of what really happened

 Essentially both men reject her: The bandit because he just wanted to get his pleasure and had no need of her, and her husband, it was because he saw her are tarnished and so he neither wanted her nor would fight for her.

and then comes what makes this a feminist drama: The woman accuses both of them of hypocracy.

 the woman gets angry and tells them: You want a beautiful doll, not a woman, a full woman, a woman of passion: a woman that is worth fighting for. And goads them into the fight that kills her husband.

That is why her story and that of her husband is that she killed her husband (which the court rejects because the wounds are that of combat, not the wounds of a woman's small daggar).

and this is what I as a feminist take from the movie: not the question of what is truth, but the importance of those who are helpless. The woman was being thrown away by the men but fights back, and then because in Confucian society she is not allowed full personhood, she essentially accuses herself of murder out of guilt.

and the modern world uses the term the Rashomon effect to insist there is no truth. 

Ah, but the film shows there is truth, as revealed by the woodcutter's story. Each person interprets it differently through the eyes of their own needs, but the story is real and is true.

And the ending? 

The frame of the story is three people at the temple listening to the story of the crime. plus an abandoned baby.

The first man leaves afterward, stealing the money left with the abandoned baby, saying we need to put ourselves first....

and the priest is so demoralized at the story that he doesn't stop him.

but it is the third, a passing woodcutter who revealed the true story to them,  who takes pity on  the abandoned child and takes him home to raise.

and that small act of compassion not only saves the baby's life but gives hope to the priest and the demoralized audience.

Can you speak Whale?

 

Some good news.

“Tonight, at my direction, brave American forces and the Armed Forces of Nigeria flawlessly executed a meticulously planned and very complex mission to eliminate the most active terrorist in the world from the battlefield. Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, second in command of ISIS…” -… pic.twitter.com/KF8MYet9CB

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) May 16, 2026

The western press tends to ignore such deaths because the victims are CHristians and moderate Muslims, and it is not just the radical Islamic types trying to impose a radical Islamic govt but some of the atrocities are tribal feuds between Islamic herders and local farmers, and these tribes are now embracing Islamic extremism to recruit and justify their aggression.

from EWTN:

 56,000 killed in Nigeria’s ethnic and religious violence; Christians disproportionately affected 56,000 killed in Nigeria’s ethnic and religious violence; Christians disproportionately affected

  and that article is in 2024

the Independent Sentinal has a more recent article:

As of August, 2025, 185,000 have been slaughtered by radical Islamists. It includes 125,000 Christians and 60,000 ‘liberal’ Muslims. Those are the tolerant, peace-loving Muslims.

 and more die because they fled and are refugees, and those who stay often can't plant food because they fear being kidnapped.

no water now brownouts

The city is fixing the water supply so no city water. 

Our water pump is working weakly but last night we had a brownout for 3 hours and it was  so hot I couldn't sleep

The maid was in the ER with the same bronchitis I had last week and she is diabetic and they added another medicine to try to control her sugar.

She is too sick to work

so my room isn't being cleaned. I can do a light dusting etc but she will send her sister to do the wash tomorrow if there is enough water 

It is still hot season so I stay in my air conditioned room with the dogs

update

the maid came in to say she is out of the hospital (She had IV for dehydration)  and to get money to buy her new medicines.

She also said five nearby houses burnt down from using candles. No one hurt but the families are now homeless.

Today they fixed the pump so I could shower, but then I went outside and found water cascading from the third floor. We thought it was a leak in the water storage tank, but apparently someone was watering the plants and after they ran out of water, didn't recognize that they hadn't turned off the water.

another fake epidemic caused by not following simple rules

 quarantine has been used for hundreds of years to stop the spread of disease.\

But someone left a lot of infectious people off of the Hanta virus ship to go home and spread it to other countries.

UKGuardian says:

The complex operation to repatriate passengers and crew of the hantavirus-hit cruise ship, the MV Hondius, is almost complete. Up to 150 people have started flying home aboard military and government planes from Spain’s Canary Islands, and the World Health Organization has recommended, but not mandated, a 42-day quarantine once they have landed.

Why

using quarantine to stop the spread of an infectious disease has been around for hundreds of years, but instead of using this policy, someone decided it's okay to let them go home and now we have a lot of hysteria on line.

Theory one: These passengers are rich 

Two: it allows the WHO to complain that Trump cut their funding and if the epidemic spreads, blame him, not the fact that basic public health policy was ignored.

Three: Vaccines already are in the pipeline to be made.

Four: Expensive medicines will be pushes to treat it.

(will Ivermectin work? Some sites say maybe. And ivermectin has few side effects. So why not treat before symptoms start?)

CDC says they will let people self monitor their health. WTF?

they are insisting there is no risk, but this policy is based on the US version that does not spread person to person.

WTF? 

Hey RFK Jr, maybe tell the CDC to check on the reality that unlike the Hanta virus we had in New Mexico etc a few years back, this one spreads person to person so they need to update their rules.

update

stories below the fold: Conspiracy theories again

 

 the Catholic church is imploding but the press loves Pope Leo for being obedient to the fads of the global elite. 

Global warming for example. 

Here in the Philippines for example, the church is backing no investment in fossil fuels at a time when people are hurting from the high price of Diesel and they now found a natural gas field that could help the Philippines. 

But the bishops are pushing solar panels all over the place.

I haven't heard if they have approved of the valuable rice land in our area being diverted into solar farms to supply electricity to Manila   ... And of course no one wants to ask what will happen when a typhoon hits (they will just blame it on global warming of course). 

but the main problem is the synodality scam is the blurring of the importance of chastity. Pope Leo already has said he wants to decrease the emphasis on sexual sin (never mind that the sexual revolution has led to the breakdown of families with the resulting drug use, depression and abortion).

 So how will he do this? Quote scripture? Stay true to the traditional teachings of two millenia?

Nope. Let the synods do it and then claim that they are the voice of the people and therefore the voice of God.

Synodality is of course a scam. 

 Supposedly the parishes met with people who were asked what they wanted the church to do: 

but this ignored that such meetings tended to be hijacked by  those who have time to be involved political activism, which results in normal folks being silenced or just not coming to the meetings.

This remind me of the encounter groups we were forced to attend in medical school: at the start of the first session we were always asked personal questions supposedly to enhance trust but in reality   they would remember what we said and would bring it up later.  In other words, it was not helping us to communicate as much as to intimidate those of us who tended to be disagreeable and of course it was a warning to the  quiet to remain silent.  

Me? I always arranged to get an emergency call from the nurses during the meeting so I could leave.

But once  my roommate's group met in our apartment, and when she objected they all attacked her. 

Although it was not my group, I came over and pointed out they had their facts wrong and since unlike my group, who could use the embarrassing information we gave at the start of the meeting, they didn't have any way to destroy me and of course they didn't use things like facts to disagree with me, so voila, they then shut down  the meeting.

But you can see how easily such meetings can be manipulated.

To make things worse:

quiet believers and those busy with their families and those like me who are essentially home bound were not involved, 

hence the data base they are using is not an accurate survey, so the reports will not represent the actual opinion of the average practicing Catholic. 

In other words, the reports of these synods are:

GIGO: Garbage in, garbage out. 

Father Murray, best known from the Prayerful posse with Raymone Arroyo, has several essays pointing out some of the other problems: they are being used to destroy the sexual ethics in the church.

His latest from the Catholic thing:

The latest imposition of the Synod is the recently published full-fledged endorsement of the homosexual lifestyle in the Final Report of Study Group Number 9 “Theological Criteria and Synodal Methodologies for Shared Discernment of Emerging Doctrinal, Pastoral, and Ethical Issues.”

This report attempts to dismiss Catholic teaching on the inherent immorality of homosexual acts – and the disordered nature of the homosexual inclination – by stigmatizing that teaching as the expression of an obsolete “paradigm” that no longer can be relied upon to communicate God’s will to His people. Even worse, Report Number 9 considers all Catholic teaching as subject to change...

The Synod has become the Holy See’s officially sponsored agent of destruction of Catholic doctrine, which is disparaged and dismissed.........

He then gives this example: 

The Synod office has decided to publish the claim of a lobbyist for the homosexual lifestyle that, “I know of many priests who have been attacked because of their support for LGBTQ folks. . . .they get hit by the hateful arrows of homophobia.’

Then Father dares to sardonically point out 

Is this claim an example of the “sense of faith of the faithful”? Or a repudiation of the Faith of Christ on behalf of immorality?

He summarizes that this won't stop with this report: 

This Vatican-sponsored destructive subversion must come to an end now. Souls are endangered by the scandalous false teachings being propagated by the Synod. Pope Leo needs to strengthen the brethren in the Faith by putting an end to this poisonous betrayal of God’s truth.

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

sigh.

happy mother's day

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