musical interludes of the day

music that makes you want to cry:........

..music that makes you want to dance:

War, refugees, and forgiveness

Canadian blogger David Warren who is recovering from heart surgery has a short post, mentioning that he is reading the classic Kim, and also the book Essays in Idleness, link2 by the Buddhist monk Kendo. Which is of course the name of his blog.

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if you want to be depressed, read Michael Yon's reports of refugees at the Darien Gap, a dangerous area in Panama that is being transversed by those hearing the US border is open and deciding to risk their life to get there before they decide to close the border.

.........

one of the least reported stories about Rwanda is the reconciliation program (includes video). Background of the genocide can be found here.

another video here discussing the need to forgive. Caution: uses the G word (God), so not PC for the elites who run Google and blogger.

 

The conflict was tribal not religious in origin.  and like Yugoslavia, there were visions of the Virgin Mary a couple years before it happened, with the Virgin warning of the need to reconcile with each other or war would break out. 

Imaculee has several books about her hiding from that holocaust that could have been stopped by the west but Clinton and the UN/European powers, even the local UN "peacekeepers" decided not to intervene. 

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Nothing new here of course, as posts on strategy Page about Somalia, Nigeria, and the DRC/Central Africa relate. Sigh.

It would be easy to blame all these wars on failed colonialism (Which it is) but a lot of the tribal conflicts predate the European landgrab of Africa. And now one wonders if China will be able to do a better job in developing stealing African mineral and agricultural resources than the Europeans.

China is already moving military assets there to protect their people. and have propaganda films to teach you they will protect their people there:

my take? The US should stay out: the Europeans may not have "broken"the continent, whose tribal wars predate European imperialist takeover, but they made it worse and stole millions of dollars of assets, so maybe they should stay and help fix it.

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as for China: They are pushing into Philippine territory and just laugh and threaten to fight if the Philippine objects or tries to defend our fishermen that have fished there for centuries.

Sigh.

In the meanwhile, the Philippines is busy with trying to give out the vaccine, despite anti vax propaganda (much of it encouraged by China and Russia) that makes a lot of people afraid of taking it.

Lots of propaganda articles out there how China successfully controlled the virus with fewer deaths (80 thousand according to one official report), and they are using this to manipulate the news about India's latest outbreak. Yet one does wonder: Their vaccine only protects 50 percent of those who get it. So one wonders exactly how many cases are there in the past and even now. Presumably we will find out the truth about the 40 million covid deaths there in a decade or so.

Videos for the week

 internet archive has vhs quality cartoon movies to download or watch as streaming videos LINK

Family news Covid? Moi? nah, allergies

 Kuya is busy with the farm and Joy is busy with business meetings, both with the farmers in Bulacan and with the 10 thousand women organization (on line).

I have a new computer so she is able to use my HP while I blog.

They have just started giving out the Chinese vaccine in the area, but only to health care workers. 

Cousin Philip's wife has tested positive for covid: She is a health care worker, and Philip who works with Dr. Angi has to stay home in quarantine... Dr. Angi will have to close the office to disinfect it, and told our cook not to sleep there anymore, and suggested she go into quarantine by staying there during the day.

The cook has refused, since she is mainly sleeping there when no one is there as a night watchman, not in the clinic area, and correctly notes that staying there during the day would put her at a larger risk. Yes, a 90 pound 70 year old lady plus two dogs to guard the doctor's office at night...but since she is related to a lot of tricycle drivers and probably knows the local NPA and ex NPA types in the area, I suspect no one would dare harm her. We offered to let her sleep here to keep her safe, and again she refused. 

It's the local fatalism: What will happen will happen, so don't get your knickers in a knot about it.

 it's about money of course. Lots of grand kids who need school fees paid for and she gets paid. Also when her son comes to do extra work in the area, he can also sleep there at night for free.

The minute I heard about the case affecting our family I noticed a sore throat and cough. Psychosomatic of course: it's just my allergies acting up.

I am high risk, but whatever. At the start of the epidemic, I made a new will, so no problem...As a doc, my only instructions are NO RESPIRATOR AND NO CPR>

It is dry season but we've had a lot of rain recently and when it gets overcast the allergies start. Not helped because the city traffic now goes around our house as the main street is now one way near our house. 

The second floor of the palenke was closed for awhile due to structural problem but has reopened; A department store with cheap stuff. and then there is Besco next to us, plus smaller shops that sell appliances nearby. Things are partly open so we again have traffic, crowds, but no parties at the square so the litter isn't too bad.

We still are getting a lot of beggars, but now it's mainly the regulars, plus some coming for help with school fees. And two people asking for help paying for rabies vaccine. The mayor did offer free rabies vaccine shots, but they need a small copay for the shot.... since the shut down there are a lot of stray dogs around who will break your heart when you see them. I want to take them home but don't dare, mainly because we have too many dogs as it is, but also because of the rabies risk.

the only stray dog I ever rescued was Gigi: I heard a dog crying in our drainage ditch, and when I checked I thought it was our dog who was dark brown. But it turned out to be a tan dog covered with sludge, and having convulsions: either from the toxic sludge or from eating poison. The neighbor didn't have the money to treat her, and would have either killed or abandoned her, so I took her to the vet and after five days she was better. She turned out to be a small terrier now sleeps under my bed, along with her son, whose father was large and thin but placid minded.

We bought Ruby a plane ticket so she can come home from college for summer break: But now the quarantine has become stricter and she might have to spend 2 weeks in a Manila hotel, even though she has had the Pfizer vaccine.

Oh well. Usually Manila is a few weeks behind the curve... the rules keep changing, and recently they stopped all visitors from other countries, but not local citizens coming home....

Family news

The latest typhoon stayed off the coast so only some rain and cloudiness. Kuya is trying to dry the last rice harvest, so hopefully it got dry before the afternoon thunderstorm (we plant and harvest fields one at a time so the harvest is spread out over time.. and this is the second harvest, the winter harvest, which requires irrigation which costs money. So the rain is good to keep the price down, but does interfere with sun drying...if it rains too much we need to pay a rice merchant to dry it mechanically).

Joy is still borrowing my computer, so I have pretty well been off line for the last week. Now she is complaining the computer is too "Slow"... I suspect there is a virus on it so am busy running a virus scan and will remove some unneeded and unwanted programs: Alas, she uses a lot of unknown programs so I have to be careful.

Well, anyway since my tax refund (small) came into my US account, I decided to buy a new computer...not an expensive one, but a basic Dell this time. And I'm busy filling it with my favorite programs which will probably make it slow.

The mayor got some Chinese vaccine and is giving it out for free to caregivers/ health care workers. Not yet for we elders  but the plan is that we get it next.

along with the vendors, tricycle drivers etc. who keep the place open. fast forward to ten minutes.

....

the bad news is that our cook says she won't get the vaccine because she doesn't want to die.

The anti vax disinformation is big on the social media, and she says this despite me and also Dr. Angi saying she needs to get a shot.

Ruby has had two shots and hopefully will be able to visit here for summer break (she is in college in the USA and hasn't been home in two years). Foreigners are now banned from entering the Philippines but local citizens can enter. 

Sigh.

Gardens in art

DailyArtMagazine has an article with lots of lovely photos about Monet's garden LINK

one of the videos we brought with us to the Philippines was the lovely series Garden of the world, with Audrey Hepburn: no longer on youtube, except these short snips of the film, and alas it is low pixel since like the VHS video it was made for older tvs.

....

Old Fashioned books

 I find a lot of modern books boring. 

Actually, not just "modern", but maybe I should say "popular" books that someone is pushing as reading for their lady audiences.

Not a new problem:  I read a lot as a child, but when the local library had a "win a prize" for reading books, I found I had no interest in the books on their list. Usually the ones for girls were existential angst about boyfriends and growing up. I preferred biographies (you go girl role models), or borrowing my brother's Sci Fi books, which introduced me to Asimov, Heinlein and CS Lewis.

Now, of course, teenage fiction has lovely characters to encourage girls to get a back bone, while not making them into amoral isolated individuals but including the importance of family (e.g the Hunger Games Triology) and it is the highfalutin adult books I see recommended to me on Scribd that make me roll up my eyes and wonder why I should care about a 30 year old attractive blond yuppie's existential problems. (yes, I hate Hallmark movies for the same reason), or pushing cliches about the gay lifestyle or racism themes that have little or nothing to do the humanity of the protagonists, and the racism stuff has little to help you understand the the problem of keeping your kids safe from drugs and gangs and promiscuity and the amorality of today's world.

It's not just me, of course: 

One writer pointed out why K Dramas are so popular: They tackle complex modern problems, stress working to get ahead, and everyone has a family, even if it was 800 years ago in a past life (e.g. Goblin). And there is an underlying sense of right and wrong. Heh. Who wudda thot?

Well, anyway, what brought on this rant was an essay on this blog: about Elizabeth Goudge.

Cynical Modern types would dismiss her as a writer of fluff, but you know, they aren't: and the characters are quite detailed in some of her books.

another blog with related essays with photos of Devon are HERE and HERE.

I brought two of her books with me: The Dean's Watch, and the Scent of Water, but now I have discovered more of them to read at ScribD, and enjoyed them.

the Scent of Water is about a woman retiring to the country who finds renewal in her life (i.e. the water here refers to the living water of the Scriptures). And I believe it was one of Oprah's book club selections.

Some of them can be found on internet archive, for your reading pleasure: most need sign in to borrow, but a few of them are posted by the Library of India so you can actually download them to read at your leisure/ including the Eliot family saga the Bird in the Tree Pilgrim's Inn 

 Two of her books were made into popular movies, both of which are under copyright and not available for free: Green dolphin street and  the Secret of Moonacre,  Probably guarded by copyright cops.

The first is an oldfashioned melo rama, but alas I never watched the second one all the way through, because the cinematography was ugly, but fans seem to love it in youtube reviews... 

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another old fashioned book I ran across on archives and on a webpage HERE is the old novel: the World the Flesh and Father Smith. 

A Bread and butter story of a priest working in the slums of Scotland, and those he works with..., and like Goudge, the people are not twisted and evil as one sees in "modern" novels, not even the bitter veteran who is executed for murdering his wife. Despite being a pre WWII era novel it does bring up a lot of the way that the church gives lives meaning:  meaning that the PC post Vatican II types get it wrong when they see the church as merely something to manipulate to push their pc agendas.

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

and for those interested in the pre Vatican II cloister story: Mother Catherine Thomas' book My Beloved can be read at Hathi Trust. 

more cheerful and like most of the nuns I have worked with, she is more down to earth than the usual books of this type, which tend to hagiography or emphasis on scandals.

and of course living in an Oklahoma cloister is  less dramatic than a more famous story popular in the 1950's: The Nuns story LINK which was made into a movie with the luminous Audrey Hepburne. 

that is a fictionalized biography of MarieLouise Habets: the Wikipedia page suggests the story is a bit more complicated: But it is interesting to note this part:

...(she) later moved to California, where she nursed Audrey Hepburn after a horse-riding accident which occurred during her filming of The Unforgiven.

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Finally, I am listening to the Summer of the Great Grandmother, by Madeline L'Engle. (at Scribd) I brought the book with me along with several other of her "Crosswick journal" books. This one is about her mother's slow dying of Alzheimer's disease, and the story of various ancestors and members of her extended family.  soundcloud excerpt

Like the previous books, the anti Christian bigots will simply shrug and ignore her books, but actually it was recommended to me by a friend, an agnostic Jewish psychiatrist, who knew that I was facing the problem of an aging parent.

Some of her essays including some of the Crosswick Journal books can be read for free registration on internet archives LINK and her scifi/fantasy books are there too.

Youtube has several of her sci fi books as audiobooks LINK 

Alas, the main book A Wrinkle in Time, was made into a film that not only had bad cinametography (Svorski crystals on Oprah's eyelids? Give me a break... and WTF is that part about the flying cabbage?) but my main problem is that, although it was recasted as a biracial family (ok with me) they made the important character of Charles William a white kid. What? No young black child actors available? The movie explained this as saying he was "adopted". Sigh.

so anyway skip the film and listen to the audiobooks on youtube.

and here is Ms L'Engle discussing her writing:

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update: This is one of the few "coming of age" stories that I enjoyed: Jacob I have loved.

because it is about a girl who is always seen in the shadow of her older sister and how she finds her own place in the world.

a comfort to those of us who only made the "B" list in high school.

LINK

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Canceling Dr. Brauchner: JAMA bows to twittermob

Yesterday I criticized the mob coming for one of the editors of JAMA: Dr. Braunchner.

like the Red Guard, the twittermobs and the professional activists are now fat with money from corporations trying to appease them.

Even medical editors are being removed for their benign comments: Notice the NYTimes report uses language more suited to propaganda or the editorial page?  

Who ordered his removal? A "committee" of the AMA.....

the AMA claimed they responded to "complaints" from people who were hurt and objected, but I suspect it would be more accurate to say "complaints from activists who monitor what you say and then pounce so they can take over".

This is manipulation, and speaks poorly for academic freedom. 

The original podcast is here, since it has been removed from the good doctor's website.

But you can hear it on the Washington Times article LINK

Now what you need to know is that Dr. Brauchner is not a social justice commentator trying to make the world politically correct: he is a scientist, and his podcasts discuss medical issues for regular practicing physicians, most of them about the Covid epidemic. And you can go and look at his Website.LINK

Here is a list from his RSS feed:

and a podcast in late March does have an activist discussing racism in medicine.

so it's not like the subject hasn't been discussed by activists.

But the irony is that Dr. Brauchner did not utter the comment for which he is being fired: It was another physician, Dr. Livingstone, 

Since the NYTimes is behind a pay wall, I found the UKGuardian has the details: LINK

The comments at issue were made by Dr Ed Livingston in February, in conversation with Dr Mitch Katz on a podcast entitled “Structural Racism for Doctors – What is It?”

“Structural racism is an unfortunate term,” Livingston said. “Personally, I think taking racism out of the conversation will help. Many people like myself are offended by the implication that we are somehow racist.”

A tweet promoting the podcast said: “No physician is racist, so how can there be structural racism in healthcare? An explanation of the idea by doctors for doctors.”

Actually, as I have posted in the past, it's a cultural problem more than race per se: And the structural problem is indeed there: but the point is that it is "structural": more a problem of the money grubbing medical industrial complex than it is of ordinary physicians, who unlike 50 years ago who would have their own practice, now have to cope with paperwork and rules that steals precious time from caring for the sick. 

You don't start accusing a person who sacrificed years of their lives studying and works long hours to care for the sick and call him or her names like "racist" in a podcast, or they will turn your message off.

and that is why he said that calling people racist was not the way to discuss the problem.

Ah, but don't dare protest that smearing 600 thousand physicians as racist is a bad idea: Because his comments (taken out of context of course) hurt their feelings

Speaking to the New York Times, Blackstock said: “I think [the podcast] caused an incalculable amount of pain and trauma to Black physicians and patients. And I think it’s going to take a long time for the journal to heal that pain.”

Really? As if they listened to the podcast. One does wonder how many people actually heard the discussion? Most practicing physicians are too busy to listen to social justice discussions, which seem to be a bit absurd when one confronts death and disease every day.

as for the protests: no it was not by those who listened to the podcast, nor was it from members of the AMA, or practicing physicians>

It was an organized protest:

Nearly 7,000 people signed a Change.org petition calling for Jama to “stop perpetuating racism in medicine”.

Dirty little secret: These twitter mobs are organized, and all it takes is two minutes to sign a petition and feel good with yourself.

 and as in other victims of the twittermob, apologizing and removing the podcast did not appease the blood lust of the twittermob.

and now they will pressure JAMA to become more "inclusive" in their board and editors, as if expertise and knowledge and clinical experience doesn't matter: Only those who conform to the politically correct line will be the gate keepers, meaning more SJW friendly articles taking up space, and no proper discussion of actual medical opinions.

And will you trust a medical journal whose experts are chosen by race and politically correct opinions rather than those who actually can interpret statistics and have knowledge and experience of treating patients/

?............

the American Immigration Council notes that one quarter of docs are foreign trained docs, mostly immigrants like my husband. And they often work in rural or minority communities.

So when these activists make it a "evil white man" problem, they are not noticing all those Pakistani/ Indian/ Iranian/ Egyptian/ African/ Filipino doctors.

it's a cult

is anyone noticing that the present day BLM/Antifa/Political correctness is a cult?

Yup. and just like other cult leaders, televangelists, or demagogues, they are not giving money to the schools to help educate the poor out of poverty, but buying mansions in the ritzy neighborhoods.

Who do they think they are, the Vatican?

well, maybe, since they are imitating the Inquisition and ferreting out their enemies.

None of this is new, of course: punishing bad thought goes back at least to Daniel or the Macabees or the Roman Empire where Justin dared to object to the propaganda.

but in the modern world, another movement comes to mind, when students were urged to purify the opinions of their teachers etc.

and where are the leaders who object to this destruction? 

well, in the absense of polical leaders, we will have to fall back to humorists.

Lileks fisks an example of fake news reporting from a guy who ridicules anyone who reports on the Minnesota riots, and name calls anyone who opposes his point of view as racist.

It’s an tedious torrent of ignorance and self-righteous BS with one rhetotical gimmick: it conflates disagreement with terror.  

Perhaps you know people like this.  One can say, with a calm mien and civilized demeanor, that you regard the march of Gramscian theory through the universities with alarm, because the traditions of history and empiricism are being replaced with a boilerplate ideology that sees everything through a cracked, filthy prism that denies reduces everyone to tribal identities and denies the foundational precepts of the American experiment....

What may strike the author as a ringing series of J’accuses! might strike others as the obsessive mutterings of a meth-head with one leg jackhammering up and down, but I suppose that’s a matter of opinion.

read the whole thing. Yes, Lileks is a humorist. As in his Gallery of regrettable Food:

presumably he will soon be canceled as a fascist for daring to report that most ordinary bland folks in Minnesota don't like riots that loot their local Walgreens.

Because, like cults, you can be excommunicated and exiled for daring to speak the truth (But it moves/ but there are two sexes).

 like the Red Guard, the twittermobs and the professional activists are now fat with money from corporations trying to appease them.

Even medical editors are being removed for their benign comments: Notice the NYTimes report uses language more suited to propaganda or the editorial page? Who ordered his removal? A "committee" of the AMA. and an organized campaign of complaints.

Reality check: the "committee" did not do a poll of the doctors who belong to the AMA.

The average doc is working his or her Puwit off thanks to an epidemic of Covid and a lot of ordinary diseases that were neglected thanks to the shutdowns so one suspects they neither knew nor cared about this.

Ah, but the AMA claimed they responded to "complaints" from people who were hurt and objected, but I suspect it would be more accurate to say "complaints from activists who monitor what you say and then pounce so they can take over".

This is manipulation, and speaks poorly for academic freedom. 

By the way, the podcast that started all of this was deleted of course, so that you can't hear it and hurt your feelings (but the internet is forever, so it's here).

Presumably the JAMA will quickly morph into the NEJM, Lancet and the BMJ in printing poorly written propaganda with questionable statistical analysis in the guise of scientific medicine: but hey, it's for a good cause.

So, Conspiracy theory, right? I'm just paranoid.

Whoops: These activists even admit that the removal was to make the journal part of their propaganda arm:

many critics of the podcast see this as an important first step.

note: All italics mine. 

The decision to remove Bauchner during the investigation “potentially corroborates JAMA's intentions to become a more culturally competent organization,” says Steven Bradley, MD, an anesthesiologist and fellow of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics. “Hopefully, this signifies an increased effort to diversify the staff at JAMA, as increased diversity will provide additional viewpoints on issues surrounding ethnicity, culture, socioeconomic status,” says Bradley, who hosts The Black Doctor Podcast. “These issues have always been important because these are the issues our patients deal with.

His patients? WTF? How would he know? So he's a GP who works in the slums where people worry about their diabetic control or if their blood pressure is too high? 

Nope. He is a trained anesthesiologist, i.e. a doc who puts people to sleep so they can have surgery. And he's an ethicist, which in today's world means  activist who pushes an agenda rather than ethics (he is doing a racial agenda, which at least is better than the majority of ethicists who are busy being "apologists for deathmaking" and telling you why it's okay to stop feeding your grandmother when she is sick, or why it's okay to put infected covid patients back into nursing homes, or why it's okay not to treat the disabled with a low QALY for Covid because hey, they just might need that ICU bed for a person who is not a "useless eater"..

The irony is that it is the "industrialization" of medicine by big business, the profit motive of the HMO's and of modern medical ethics that promotes efficiency and medical rationing is not so much racist as it is working against poor people of all colours.

Because it places all patients and diseases into a box, and makes efficiency and filling out the forms more important than actually listening to your patients.

and the last time I heard about this being a major ethical problem was 30 years ago

Just 9 years before his death, Pellegrino lamented that our cultural climate had called the fundamental means and ends of medicine into question, leading him to propose a renewed reflection on medicine’s basic concepts, including health, disease, and illness.

medicine is about health, disease an illness? heh Who wuda thot?

This call dovetailed with a central theme of his oeuvre, the push for and articulation of a philosophical basis for modern medicine oriented by the realities of clinical practice and human existence

And that needs to be discussed. So Dr. Bradley is correct that there is a problem. 

It is his radical "solution" that I object to.

My point is that, by putting it into the BLM "everyone is racists" box, he is willing to destroy a medical journal. 

He prefers to distort objectivity and stop open discussions of problems by censorship. And those doing the censorship are a small group with a larger agenda, whose ultimate aim is to destroy western civilization in the name of diversity, and replacing it with... what? It's not clear.

Does he want a BLM/race theory takeover of medicine, pushing PC thinking and having struggle sessions to correct your bad think. And if you make a gaffe, will you lose your license to practice medicine?

I should note they did some of this stuff when I was in medical school back in the 1960s...and we had "encounter" sessions that were supposed to make us more honest but were actually about making us conform to the leader's opinion, because hey, who dared to open their mouth and say the discussion was bull....?

In these sessions, lots of personal questions were asked, which if you answered them truthfully let the leaders manipulate you of course....but I figured it was none of their business so I usually lied through my teeth when asked about personal things.

So none of this is new.

And yes, this is not about "racism": this is just the first step to destroy the STEm fields, which rely on evidence instead of ideological correctness. 

Again, this is not a "new" idea: Can you say "Lysenko" children?

so who defends Western Civilization? What did it ever do for you?

If you want to hear the defense of western civilization, a non PC audiobook of the day can be found on internet archives: LINK

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in a related topic:

There are riots over police killings, but not a lot in the news when innocent doctor and his family are murdered by Psychopaths. Indeed, the news stories are now all about the murderer.

This will quickly morph into bad guns memes if they even bother to discuss this atrocity, but although I am pro gun control, I wonder if the doc had a gun at home they'd all be alive.

You see, Lolo always carried a gun in his car and in the house, because he still made house calls so carried morphine etc. with him... and he was at risk for being murdered by druggies seeking drugs. (or druggies who seek revenge because you won't give them drugs).

This doctor was also an author: his book can be found HERE.

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unrelated to above, but remember: most of what is being called "fascism" in the US is not facsicm but ordinary folks who disagree with marxist activists.

But some people just don't go along with the real fascists:

yup the Yanks are here

Duterte was threatening to stop the yearly joint training exercizes with the USA, and in recent weeks we have had another bad surge of Covid in the Manila area.

I had assumed that the exercizes had been  called off again  so I was puzzled why I spotted what looked like an A10 flying over three times in the last week...was there a war going on that I didn't know about?

Then kuya mentioned: Yup. The Balikatan exercizes are back on.

https://www.msn.com/en-ph/news/national/afp-us-military-open-balikatan-exercise-amid-covid-19-pandemic/ar-BB1fyWlK

No this doesn't mean war with China...it goes on nearly every year and except for airplanes and helicopters we never see them training.

poem for today

 when the news is full of hysterical nonsense, it is time to put things into perspective by listening to a beloved classic poem.

Who ya gonna call?

 when your volcano erupts and you live on a tropical island, who ya gonna call?

No, not Ghostbusters.

The Cruise Lines to the rescue.

more HERE

UKMail has more plus photos

...

in our prayers.

One wonders about the logistics of this: The cruise ships were getting ready to restart cruises, and presumably have staff etc. on board. And one wonders where they were docked when the emergency started. Presumably these stories will be in the news in the near future.

We face volcanic eruptions frequently here in the Philippines, and indeed Taal is still smoking at a low level. But luckily we can evacuate by land.

Covid update: Remember the heroes of today and the past.

 We are fine: In partial lockdown and we have a curfew.

My main worry is that again my checks are taking a long time to get sent to Manila for processing.

The good news: All my W2 forms arrived in Early March (two months late) so I did my income tax on line with Turbo Tax. In the past, Lolo and I had an accountant, but when he got sick, I was unable to get his information from the US banks so started filing on my own. And although it is simple, it's worth it for me,  especially since they keep my old information on their website so now all I have to do is change the numbers of my IRA etc.

The only problem is if they get hacked, of course, but since my federal OPM (Personnel file) was hacked by China a couple years ago, and now I find that my facebook information has also been hacked, well, WTF...

in the meanwhile, we are being asked by a lot of people for monetary help to pay for their medicines. Sigh. Hope my funds hold out... because if I get sick, I will have to empty my bank account.

We have quite a few cases of covid in our area... now we hear that the owner of one of our local grocery stores was reported to have died, and his wife is sick in the hospital.

I'm not sure of how many people are sick here, but the mayor is giving out food to covid positive people, i.e. those who are in quarantine at home so can't work.

Manila is in full lockdown and hospitals are full.

......

but being in partial shutdown again means a lot of poor people out of work (including people from Manila who came here to live with their families because they lost their job).

Sigh.

the high risk are being given the vaccine in Manila, and a few caregivers here have gotten it, but not for we elders yet.

2 million shots from China and Russia to be delivered this month.

But my maid said you can pay to get a dose locally, but it is suspected that it is a fake vaccine. Yup. If there is money to be made, someone will do it.

as for Ivermectin, the DOH here echoes the US FDA and say no it doesn't work. 

But today's paper reports the FDA says it's okay for hospitals in the USA to use it. Ah, but won't that be too late? Or will they let them give it to the cases early who show up in the ER? 

Another opinion on Ivermectin here:

They are giving out the vaccine in the cities here: Mainly the crappy Chinese version. 

I found it was interesting that there was an article insisting that unlike the Pfizer etc vaccine, the Chinese vaccine was made without destroying fetuses (i.e. using cell lines from aborted fetuses, a big topic in the USA). 

This is a big concern for devout Catholics, although my sarcastic opinion is that the pro life types should have brought up this ethical problem a couple years ago with the drug companies (they did, over stem cells, and got such negative MSM propaganda against them that they sort of shut up, and ironically it was a devout Buddhist in Japan was disturbed by the idea that he was destroying life, so he figured a way to make stem cells from adult stem cells, so the controversy sort of disappeared).

well, anyway, the Chinese vaccines are old fashioned vaccine, similar to the Moderna and Sputnik vaccines, which use old fashioned adenovirus techniques to cause immunity... but since Covid works with T cell immunity, it is not certain how long this immunity will last, whereas the more innovative RNA vaccines induce T cells or something like that to cause long term immunity.

One caveat: Just because you test negative for antibodies doesn't mean that you are no longer immune. It might just mean that it might take a few days to up your sleeping immune system to make them. which is why there is talk of who might need booster shots.

This is why the experts are insisting that if you had covid you need another dose of the vaccine, since often you revert to negative antibodies.

Dr. C's discussion today is about vaccine side effects here: 25 million doses given a couple dozen deaths.

 

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in other news: Today is a holiday here in the Philippines: The Day of Valor. It is the anniversary of the fall of Bataan, and the start of the Bataan death march.

photo souce: http://www.aiepro.com/closed-day-valor/

Duterte is comparing the frontline workers to the brave Filipino heroes.

The USA is not good at remembering those who died to let them live in freedom, and the cancel culture Karens and woke types despise any talk of heroism, and so would probably condemn any commemoration of this as being a celebration of whiteness.

The problem? Most of those who died were Filipinos defending their country against a very cruel invader, and the Americans who were there included many NM NG members, who included Anglos, Hispanics, and Native Americans.

Which is why the only place I have seen this commemorated every year is in Alamagordo, New Mexico. 

....

 MacArthur needed anti aircraft weapons and so they sent the NM NG units to Manila just before the invasion, and many were in the Battle of Manila, and in the Bataan death march.

NMNG Wikipedia article .

I first learned about their history when I worked with the Apache in Mescalero, and found a plaque commemorating Bataan in the church.

 Several local Apaches served there, and the priest in charge of the mission went with the NMNG to Manila, and survived Corrigedor, the death march, the POW camps, and later the hell ships that took them as slave labor to Japan and Korea.

Father Braun was a missionary who worked in Mescalero before the war, and had a colorful life: His Wikipedia page is here which mentions him as being present when President Quezon took his oath of office, but also for his work burying the dead and saying mass under dire circumstances.

After the war, he served the Hispanics in the Phoenix area, and is still remembered by them LINK

Quote of the day

 

Archbishop Chaput observes that “the most telling feature of our era is that it weakens bonds.” That weakening begins with the forgetfulness of where we came from and therefore of who we are. By weakening our bonds with the past, the agents of impiety more easily weaken our bonds in the present. ,,,

Archbishop Chaput

China is gaslighting the Philippines on their vaccine.

 They are pushing the Chinese vaccine here in the Philippines...and in other poor countries such as Indonesia. It is a form of vaccine diplomacy, to get allies in a region where Chinese aggression is making them disliked.

So we have a slew of articles telling us how wonderful the vaccine is.

Lots of Gaslighting going on.

The western sources point out:

the rollouts come despite a growing number of questions over the effectiveness of the shot, which last week was revealed to have an efficacy rate of just 50.38% in late-stage trials in Brazil — significantly lower than earlier results showed. That rate only barely crosses the 50% efficacy threshold as set by the World Health Organization, and far lower than the 78% previously announced to much fanfare in China earlier this month.

Ah, but that's now what the obedient press is telling us:

No, it protects 80 percent of folks, not 50 percent.

And those deaths in Brazil that stopped the chinese phase 2 trial?. No, not from the vaccine.

China is claiming they had no deaths at all when they gave out their vaccine to their own people.

But it appears gaslighting is going on. Not just in these articles, but in the social media with all their scare stories of bad side effects of the western vaccine.

here is a pure propaganda piece from Rappler, a site originally that was partly funded by a guy suspected as being a CIA front (foreign money to news sites is illegal here). So I don't know what is going on: They are left wing and anti Duterte but maybe things are changing. Given their history of taking foreign money, one does wonder 

LINK

ah but this article does admit that China's reports are iffy but that fact doesn't stop the writer from quoting China's lies fantasy fictional reports.

But China has struggled to gain international trust for its vaccine candidates, hindered by a lack of transparency on test results.

It has also been slow to complete Phase 3 trials, which had to be conducted abroad due to China's success at curbing the spread of COVID-19 within its own borders.

Chinese officials have repeatedly assured the public of the vaccines' safety, claiming that there have been no serious adverse reactions.

 PHilstar notes that when the vaccine was given locally, 29 had side effects out of 3000  vaccinations, including one serious... 

Manila Bul quotes the  company that made the Sinovax who said there were no problems. And of course, China never lies.

No fatal side effect has been recorded from the use of coronavirus vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech so far, according to a company official.

This early Lancet study with low numbers involved showed 50percent had side effects

From Bloomberg: in Indonesia, we read: 

Chinese vaccine maker Sinovac Biotech Ltd.’s coronavirus shot created antibodies among 97% of those administered with it in a final stage trial in Indonesia but its efficacy has yet to be determined, a company spokesperson said Tuesday.

 

but the Epoch Times notes: 

 The Strange Sinovac Vaccine Phenomenon: Countries Report Increased Cases After Using Vaccine

the Chinese vaccine was used in Brazil, and now it is being reported that it doesn't protect people against the new virulent mutation there.

Sigh.

Excuse the technical problems with the post: Blogger has "eaten" it twice so I had to repost it.

Family news

 we are again in shutdown, so no church services for us and no family get togethers.

Sigh.

Guess I'll have to go back to hibernating.

Movie of the week

 

The Spaghetti Tree