After WWII, the west just wasn't willing to keep their armies mobilized, so Stalin saw an easy win if they took over the entire Korean Peninsula.
the UN did something to stop aggression.
And the overlooked factor: Mac Arthur. He thought outside the box, and when Pusan was surrounded, pulled a "ScipioAfricanus"* manuveur on them by hitting their supply lines: he invaded in the north. (bad news? He suggesting nuking the invading Chinese army so Truman fired him).
Here is a SP podcast about the two Koreas.
,,,,,,,,,,,,
One of their comments is about K Pop and K dramas, which are forbidden in the North but are smuggled in and show the propaganda the people are being fed are all lies.
K dramas have a lot of gritty plots, but their popularity, not to mention the popularity of K pop, is big here in Asia.
And that has geopolitical implications in Asia, as is noted in the StrategyTalk I posted above.
Right now, China is trying to ban the "girly girl" fashion of the boy bands in K pop. They worry about the effeminate role models for boys (in a cultures where men out number women and some women don't want to marry at all).
and the KDrama/KPop fans are not above using their influence in politics even outside of Asia.
I remember the discussion on the KDrama fansites like Dramabeans where fangirls helped keep people from attending a Trump rally in Oklahoma by coordinating a fake ticket buy out.
Unlike the USA, where you make your own band and fight your way to the top, the K Pop is designed so that they train singers etc for years before they become stars. It's a top down business.
,,,,,
* Most people know about Hannibal, who is supposed to be so great because he destroyed a Roman army led by nincompoops. Ah, but he was destroyed because Scipio Africanus did a long term strategy and hit base in Spain, so he couldn't get reinforcements, and then later attacked Carthage so Hannibal had to go home.
by the way: destroying the supply lines was a military tactic also used by Admiral Yi against the Japanese invasion of Korea, using the tides to help him destroy their navy so they couldn't get supplies (in the same way that the Greeks let the Persian fleet collide and sink each other at Salamis).
and of course, Russia used similar tactics against both Napoleon and Hitler, using the weather to help them.
Science lesson for today: What does a double blind study mean and why is it important (because placebo effect is so potent that it makes it hard to decide if something makes a difference).
or you can follow twitter threads or the most recent update on youtube.
The problem: the fog of war.
I know nothing about what is going on in the Ukraine, except that we figure that China is getting the message that they need to attack before Trumpieboy is reelected.
One comment I made in the past was the danger of hacking the internet, and that if Taiwan is attacked, one major internet cable from Asia (including Singapore and India) could be cut and slow things down as it did a couple years ago.
Many years ago, we used satellite TV and later satellite internet services because I tended to live in remote areas of the USA. At the time, the federal gov't was discussing funding of putting in expensive internet cables to remote areas of various Indian Reservations while what was needed was satellite dishes.
It sort of reminds me of back in the early 1990s, when I had a (rare) cellphone because I needed it as a rural doctor, but it was only beginning to be used by the public.
I was on an airplane and talking to a lady returning to her husband in Thailand. His job was constructing cellphone towers in remote ares. When I questioned the expense, she pointed out that wiring was vulnerable and expensive, and that the towers bypassed this difficulty (although in mountainous areas, there remained dead spots).
One of the least covered stories in the world is the cellphone revolution.
30 years ago, a charity was collecting money to send cheap computers into rural Africa. But then came internet cafes, and then came cellphones, internet commerce, and the ability to talk to your family.
When we had a major typhoon a couple years ago, we were offline and had no electricity or water for two weeks, and a lot of the roads were slowly being cleard... we were okay: we could use our own generator and waterpump. But what the neighbors actually asked us was to charge their cellphones so they could get in touch with their relatives. Soon, shops and kiosks were set up with signs: Cellphone charge 25 pesos (fifty cents US). Priorities: You can use candles and bottled water, but hey you need to check on grandmom and check your facebook page.
and with the virus, even we are using E commerce to buy stuff that might not be in a shop here.
update: I just told kuya to fix an old diesel Jeep we have stored in our garage, just in case an EMP type weapon takes out computer chips in our newer cars.
During WWII, they used ethanol to fuel jeeps etc, but an alternative would be to run the jeeps etc on biodiesel.
and of course we still have one aging waterbuffalo so we could plow the fields if needed.
The conspiracy theories are all out there in force.
But as the joke goes: What is the differnce between a conspiracy theory and the news? Answer: About 3 months.
The problem is that so many conspiracy theories came true that no one trusts the news anymore.
So is the plan of the World Economic forum and the global leaders to make everyone get a health card digital passport? Forbes article here.
While the United States government has not issued a federal digital vaccine pass, a national standard has nevertheless emerged. To date, 21 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico offer accessibility to the SMART Health Card, a verifiable digital proof of vaccination developed through the Vaccination Credential Initiative (VCI), a global coalition of public and private stakeholders including Microsoft, Salesforce, Oracle, the Mayo Clinic and other health and tech heavyweights.....
hey it's easy and lets you get into places without a hassle. And it only requires your date of birth...
and hey it gives you power over your own data, so why worry about it. And at the end it notes that this will be in place in case we have another epidemic.
The core hypothesis here is that western democratic governments (which in normal times have personal privacy constraints) can leverage the emergency to mandate a digital identity and proof of vaccination with associated QR codes and cell phone-based contact tracing in the interests of “public health”...
The logic apparently is that the western democracies, ... can both economically and politically benefit by implementing a universal social credit system akin to that which has been pioneered and gradually implemented ...in the People’s Republic of China by the Central Communist Party..
there are rumors on NSFW sites that the reason Justin Trudeau stopped his banking shennanigans because it opened a lot of people's eyes to the power of the government to deny you your money.
update: the covid crisis was used as an excuse to push for digital identification.
So what happens when herd immunity hits, they find the vaccine doesn't stop the virus, and people just get sick and tired of obeying stupid rules?
Place conspiracy theory here. Lots of hype on conspiracy sites pointing out how Trudeau used the banks to shut down cash to the protester and (what is worse) those who dared to send donations to the protesters.
he has now reportedly pulled back from that decision: One conspiracy said that he caused a run on the banks and they companies. Anther said that the NWO types stopped him because they planned to use Canada to push digital currancy etc. and that this would cause people to oppose the plan since they would realize how easy it would be to punish them for badthought.
So Trudeau's shennanigans might end up increasing opposition to the vaccine, and especially opposition to the vaccine passport idea.
and the omicron is not stopped by the vaccine or masks, but has a lower death rate, and if you survive, you will be immune to all forms of covid: i.e. herd immunity.
As for the latest conspiracy theory by Russian trolls is that they were taking out the US funded "biowarfare" labs in the Ukraine.
Probably, like Sadam's biowarfare labs, these labs are to make vaccines and do research on organisms so that they could make vaccines (which is what the Wuhan lab was doing)... but could easily be converted to make bioweapons (or accidentally release germs that are bioweapons).
LOL. The real reason is that Russia wants it's empire back, and needs a Black sea port and Ukraine's wheat, but never mind.
The dirty little secret is that Putin is doing it because he can. (italics mine).
Trump was seen as crazy enough to start a war if you pushed him, so he was scary. But Biden is seen as weak, and Europe has been slacking in their own defense for years. They did didlysquat to stop the war in Yugoslavia and will probably do nothing now, although Poland and other eastern European states might help, knowing they are next.
The problem is, of course, the world's sluggish push back to Putin sends a green light to China to attack Taiwan... and that would have huge implications to the computer industry world wide (they make the best chips).
And if Taiwan goes, will Luzon be far behind?
Probably not an invasion: the last time their poxies tried that they lost. But they could use their economic power to make the Philippines a puppet for them, i.e. by denying ports to the USA and denying access to the US navy to keep the sealanes in the West Philippine sea open (for shipping to Korea and Japan). Not to mention that the main internet cable from Asia to the Americas goes south of Taiwan (when an earthquake cut it about ten years ago, we were off line for weeks... all internet traffic had to go west through India and the Middle East.)
Which is why the up coming election is important for the USA.
By the way: I am hearing planes going over at low altitude again. One big base is near us, and yup. The Philippine special forces are doing training exercizes there with the Special forces of the Yanks: but not it's not about China, it's just an annual training exercize that goes on all the time. ABSCBN article here.
As for the Ukraine: one way to guage how serious things are is to see if the OFW are coming home. Right now, about 30 out of the 300 Filipinos working there are arranging to come home. So it's serious, but not a major catastrophe yet.
something not being discussed: The MSM seems to be reporting as if this is a conventional war. But of course Russia not only could deny Western Europe their natural gas to stay warm, but use cyber attacks to shut down the infrastructure all over.
Stinger missiles and an armed populace caused problems for the Russian invasion...and they are being helped by Mud Mud Glorious Mud:
The outcome of the invasion will be more obvious within a week. Much depends on the effectiveness of the local resistance to Russian forces and the roads they use. It is currently the “mud” season in Ukraine where most of the snow is gone and replaced by weeks of mud, which limits off-road travel by wheeled vehicles.
Lots more there to put what is going on into perspective.
I usually read the Catholic Thing, which has essays by intellectuals who usually can write about complicated church things in a way that I can understand it.
He notes that the average Catholic, except for the Karens/church ladies who run the parish, have a suspicion or distrust or don't care attitude or think the whole thing is just silly.
Yup. Sounds about right.
Because you know two things about all these meetings: They will be run by church ladies aka "Karens" who run everything in the parish, and they will manipulate the meetings so that the correct agenda will be decided on, with little imput by the rest of us.
I suspect these will be touchy feely meetings, like the "encounter group" fad of the sixties, where people got together and bared their soul to each other in the name of fake fellowship... but don't dare go against their agenda: they'll silence you by manipulating what you are trying to say, or do a faux sweety nicey criticism to shut you up.
Again from the Catholic Thing:
true synodality is far from a silly diversion from the evangelical mission of the Church; it is essential to it.
but what do you mean by synodality? Define please.
Nor is the work of synodality accomplished simply by talking about it. It requires an intentional choice to foster and practice a genuine sense of shared mission.
So what is a "shared mission"? Define please. What is our mission, and who do we share it with?
It requires praying together, listening to Scripture together, listening to one another, discerning together, and, yes, “walking together.”
with whom? so we leave home and go to meetings at church where we discuss abstract concepts with fellow church members who are into this type of thing. Right.
Why do I doubt they mean reviving family prayer, something we did before Vatican II?
In the past, it was the custom in the Philippines for the family to say the rosary together each evening. But somehow I don't think that is what they mean because family is not mentioned in most of the stuff I am reading (nor is Jesus or Mama Mary, because since Vatican II the rosary and popular religious customs are no longer encouraged).
Synodality means meeting with like minded people belonging to our exclusive church group run by the ex nun church ladies who run everything in modern parishes, and we are told that this is supposed to encourage Evangelization.
So what does that mean? Spending our time going door to door to convert our heathen neighbors?
... evangelizing means bringing the Good News of Jesus into every human situation
So bring the good news of Jesus into every situation suggests it means we inject Jesus talk into what we do.
Excuse me, but in the good old days, we were taught that even the smallest thing we do, we can offer it to God as a prayer. But this is not the same thing as "bringing the good news into every situation": there is a subtle difference. In one, you are doing the action as an excuse to push Jesus talk to the captive audience.
and seeking to convert individuals and society by the divine power of the Gospel itself.
more nice stuff written here, but notice it also implies the only real job for a Catholic is doing stuff that falls under the definition of SJW.
The validity of our having accepted the Gospel does not only come from what we feel or what we know; it comes also from the way we serve others, especially the poorest, the most marginal, the most hurting, the most defenseless, and the least loved.
so work at the homeless shelter, you lazy person. Or join in demonstrations so you can feel self righteous.
again what is missing is the old fashioned idea of family and neighbors.
In traditional Christianity, this meant caring for your family and friends, taking cassaroles to the sick or to help the survivers after a death in the family, baby sitting so they can shop without a toddler, driving them to the clinic to see their doctor so they don't have to drive themself, or helping the single pregnant teenager in the family to bear her child and raise him until she is able to cope on her own.
for old folks like myself, it means praying for those around me and trying not to bitch too much when I feel pain, but to offer my aches and pains to God as a prayer.
the rest of the Bishops' essay is similar nicey nice stuff. Aimed at upper middle class sophisticated types, which leaves me out.
As dioceses gather together in small circles in parishes, schools and basic ecclesial communities in the coming months, he said, the Church will look within and also at how it is together with the entire human family.
, .. like the Pope, they are using sociological jargon, which is the latest fad in teaching church stuff.
(Pope Francis) pointed out that ‘communion’ and ‘mission’ can risk remaining somewhat abstract, unless synodality is concretely expressed at every step of the synodal journey and activity, encouraging real involvement on the part of each and all”. “All the baptized are called to take part in the Church’s life and mission.”
But what does this mean for those who are not church ladies or into such things?
What does this mean to ordinary folks just living an ordinary life?
It is a quiet movie about a boy's normal growing up in a time when chaos and violence is getting worse all around him.
Here is a discussion about the film.
One problem: How many folks under the age of 50 actually remember the troubles in Northern Ireland? I had Irish friends who gave me the background: That if you were Catholic, you would be kept out of available jobs, which would be given to Protestants.
the Catholics were seen as dirty uneducated superstitious drunks. Sound familiar? Just peruse any chat room in the USA, where Republicans say such things about Blacks and immigrants, and Democrats say this about the Trumpite Deplorables...
It is often blamed on religion, but it is actually a tribal thing: the ScotIrish in the North were brought there deliberatly after 1609 to keep those nasty Catholics in the south in line after genocides depopulated the area.
The ruling Brits however made sure they were rabid Protestants and encouraged religious/tribal prejudice against the local Cathlics in a way that reminds one of how rich southern planters in the USA encouraged red neck Southerners to hate the local blacks: keep them fighting each other and they won't see the big shots who are benefitting from keeping them poor.
Wikipedia has a page about "The Troubles" as that time was called.
The conflict began during a campaign by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association to end discrimination against the Catholic/nationalist minority by the Protestant/unionist government and local authorities.
The government attempted to suppress the protests. The police, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), were overwhelmingly Protestant and accused of sectarianism and police brutality. The campaign was also violently opposed by loyalists, who said it was a republican front.
Increasing tensions led to the August 1969 riots and the deployment of British troops, in what became the British Army's longest operation. "Peace walls" were built in some areas to keep the two communities apart.
Some Catholics initially welcomed the British Army as a more neutral force than the RUC, but soon came to see it as hostile and biased, particularly after Bloody Sunday in 1972.[39]
By the way: although this is often pointed to as an example of religion being evil, that ignores the nuances of what was going on, especially the movement of various Christian groups to stop the violence. Betty Williams won a Nobel Peace prize for her efforts to unite believers, which alas failed because of sectarian strife against the group.
The conflict continued on and off for years,
Ironically, the conflict was finally settled officially in the mid 1990s with the help of Bill Clinton... for which he should have won a Nobel Peace prize but didn't.
as to the claim it was about religion:
Jimmy Breslin once quipped that it was not about religion, but it was the "catholic atheists fighting against the protestant atheists".... here he points out the anti Irish prejudice that was behind the troubles:
..
.an older movie that discusses the basis of the "troubles" is Bloody Sunday: about the 1972 Derry Massacre.
So yes, I enjoyed Belfast, but if you are not aware of the backstory, you are missing the point: That it is not just about a boy growing up, or Catholics vs the protestant hatred of Ireland: it is about the ability of a boy doing normal boy things despite the trouble around him, and about the dilemma of families who are faced with the choice to flee the violence or stay where they have ties with family and friends.
Now, take the story and change the location to El Salvador, or Lebanon, or Iraq or central Africa, and you can see why people who do have homes and jobs are desperatly seeking to migrate to safer areas. And this also explains why one family member will often migrate, get a job and then get the rest of their family to join them.
this discussion is about the lack of trust in the black inner city community and it is about a community outreach to get high risk black people to be willing to take the covid vaccine.
A lot of what she discusses is true, and we also faced the same problem in the IHS....which is why we had Indian preference in our employees, so that they would be treated by health care providers who understood their cultural nuances (e.g. no eye contact, too shy to ask questions, and no that isn't a grimace but because like Pinoys they point with their lips, not their hands)... and actually why the IHS was started in the first place: so that docs could understand the culture and stay long enough to get trusted.
Alas, in many areas the IHS is a mess because of red tape and understaffing and the difficulty in keeping within the budget. But that's another discussion for another essay.
in the video, the doctor mentions the Tuskegee experiment, which is still remembered in the American black community.
The back ground is that when treating syphillis required a toxic treatment, should the doctors treat people without symptoms to prevent tertiary syphillis in 20 years.
The problem however was that when penicillin became available in the early 1940s, it was found to be a good and non toxic treatment. However, after this was known, instead of offering the "control" group, i.e. those not treated, a cure, the doctors doing the experiment just let them remain untreated.
back then, open heart surgery was init's infancy, so essentially this could burst at any time and kill him: and he faced premature death because some scientist decided the experiment was more important than the actual life of the patient.
This of course was not the only ethical experiment on minorities.
When I worked in northen Minnesota, we had a patient on dialysis because of non treatment of a strep infection caused acute GN. some details here.
an earlier epidemic was stopped by visiting and aggresively treating every single person with impetigo. But this time they only treated the cases where the impetigo was bad enough to go to the clinic (which in some cases was 40 miles away by dirty road)... so some of the mild cases of impetigo were not treated and caused episodes of acute GN...
In 1970, the Department of Defense awarded the University of Minnesota Medical School $88,7251 to continue research begun in 1954 on the biology and epidemiology2 of staphylocci and streptococci, the bacterial agents of the diseases impetigo and nephritis. This investigation involving hundreds of thousands of dollars has been carried on at Red Lake Indian Reservation. The Reservation residents were not treated as patients to be cured of bacterial infection but as a source of experimental data.
italics mine.
And the article also seems to blame the victim for being dirty, whereas the problem was not just lack of running water to wash but because there was a genetic photo toxic ecsema in the tribe that got infected easily.
But minorities are not the only ones who faced such medical bias: The handicapped and those with mental disabilities also were seen as ideal patients for experiments. Forbes article on the Hepatitis B experiment at Willowbrook hospital for the retarded. The doctors justified the experiment because it was done to find about immunity to make a vaccine, but I also should note that in such institutions, that hygiene was a problem and most of the patients would have been infected with Hepatitis B anyway: But that doesn't justify giving the virus to these people.
another less publicized cases involved non treatment decisions for children with meningomyelocoel a severe form of spina bifida, a condition where the lower spine and spinal cord doesn't close, and the child is born with a sac on the spine, and often the child developed paralysis below the level of the lesion and hydrocephalus was another complication of the child if he lived.
At the time (1980s) some docs, knowing that these kids would be paralyzed and mildly retarded, started suggesting doctors not treat the lesion. BabyJaneDoe was one case, and the press and alas the court system painted those trying to get proper treatment for the child as cruel and interfering in something that was none of their business. (i.e. the articles implied that the evil Reagan (/s) and Dr. Koop who took the parents to court, should have stayed out of the decision, and to the shame of the court sytem, the court agreed with the parents).
and I remember how the NYTimes had lots of articles and letters to the editor saying the government had no right to interfere with the parent's decision.
Ironically, the baby lived and the sac made nursing difficult so it was removed. This 1990 WaPost article notes that the child was well and attending kindergarten, and that a lot of the press reports about her condition were exaggerated:
(the parents were told that) In grim sum, her quality of life would be so low -- the press implied -- that her departure would be a blessing to her parents and, of course, to herself.
The only problem with this prognosis was that a number of leading pediatric neurologists -- based on what they knew of Baby Jane Doe's condition -- told me it wasn't true. I talked with, among others, Dr. David McLone, chief of neurosurgery at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago. He said that his extensive experience with spina bifida children gave him confidence that if she were treated at his hospital, she would grow up to have normal intelligence and would be walking, probably with some bracing.
Sigh. Essentially it was the parents "decision" but what is not noted is that they were essentially deciding what to do for their child based on the doctor's information and those pushing the pro death agenda never let anyone hint that information might be biased.
Those parents were educated so could get several opinions, but this might not be true for lower middle class folk and especially with minorities whose basic medical knowledge is lacking (due to poor public schools, another problem that should be addressed but it out of my line of expertise).
How this works in reality is shown when a double blind study was done in Oklahoma City Childrens' hospital on which babies born with Meningocoels should be treated.
It was decided which kids should be treated based on certain criteria including the size and location of the lesion and also the educational and economic status of the patient's parents.
Most of the non treated patients died within six months... and of course the treated ones lived but were paraplegic and mildly retarded. The study didn't make a big controversy at the time because a lot of doctors figured the death of a crippled child was a good thing? (nowadays, of course, we are more sensitive to such children; most are aborted in late term abortions where there is no legal problem).
So anyway, the OKC study was published and did not cause any controversy.... until....Years later, a black doc ran across the study and found that most of the patients in the non treatment category was minorities, mainly from the black community there. This article discusses the experiment.
Racism? The docs who made the criteria for "non treatment" would say no: they wouldn't say it of course but it seems they felt that poor minorit folk were too poor and too dumb to give proper care to a crippled child. And years later, when this was publicized, some of the parents when later interviewed said they were not aware that their baby would have lived if given a chance to get life saving surgery.
Sigh.
and similar "non treatment"decisions are pushed on minority patients all the time, which is why so many in the minority communities refuse to sign a "living will".
When I was in the IHS, we had one patient with behavior problems from frontal lobe damage and sent her to be evaluated by a neurologist. Because the family was traditional, they brought a cousin who was a nurse to help in communication.
Ah, but the neurologist didn't spend any time actually evaluating the patient or asking about her problems: He spent the entire consultation trying to pressure the family to remove her feeding tube which of course would kill her. He used lots of "quality of life"arguments that presumably his affluent white patients would find logical.
The Objibwe family however said nothing, but on the way out, the nurse/cousin turned to the physician and said: That's the difference between us and you white folks. We don't kill our old folks.
Here in the Philippines we have a lot of revolutions, coups, etc.
But we learned after we saw Marcos impose martial law, he then started to arrest (and the illegal hit squads killed) the opposition. And then he let the military kill Ninoy Aquino, and thought he'd get away with it... until Cory came back and won the election unexpectedly, and when he tried to quash the news that he lost, General Ramos took the side of Cory, and when Marcos sent his goons to arrest him, a million Filipinos marched on the EDSA (Main street) and blocked Marcos' soldiers, who refused to shoot unarmed civilians who included women, children and clergy who were singing hymns (Marcos' soldiers explained their unwillingness to follow orders by saying they saw a "beautiful lady who said don't shoot my children"... which was probably one of the nuns in the demonstrations but they believed it was Mama Mary, and when asked why they didn't shoot they essentially said: hey you don't disobey your mama).
There have been other similar demonstrations here (e.g. forcing the resignation of Erap), and the left is always demonstrating in Manila, and there have been several military and civilan coup attempts, but it remains taboo to call for a general imposition of martial law here, because the country is aware of how quickly that can devolve into murders and dictatorship.
We have an election coming up, and there is a lot of arguments out there in the press. I saw one sign for Robredo in a shop window but it disappeared. Thre was a report that the cops are removing illegal election posters, but I can't confirm that...Are they taking it down?
The cook says BongBong Marcos (BBM) is popular. She knows half the town including the local NPA who are now not very active but still could be if they get mad.
there is a PhilStar article on why BBM is popular: he doesn't do negative campaigning and has his popular positions publicized (he is a big social media presence in a country where internet cafes and smart phones are used by many: heck, even my maid has one).
ah but should you trust the tech giants, who also are censoring the news to influence your vote, not only in the USA but here in the Philippines?
At a Senate committee hearing on Feb. 2, fact-checking initiative Tsek.PH reported that based on over 200 fact-checks since January 2022, trends showed that a "substantial volume" of disinformation are largely positive of Marcos Jr. At the same time, Robredo is the biggest victim of disinformation or negative messaging.
Twitter has also recently suspended over 300 accounts that are supportive of Marcos Jr., after violating the company's platform manipulation and spam policy.
the author also claims BBMarcos has avoided mainstream media programs claiming bias/censorship by the elite press:
Inlong also noted the programs Marcos skipped are primarily consumed by the educated class, and much of the voting population would come from Class D or the masa.
so now we have to ask: Can you see the fingers of the CIA in all of this?
This old article notes the obvious interference in the last presidential election, where the American girl got oodles of money from someone but lost because the hoipolloi knew Duterte would kick butt against the criminals who preyed on them, while trying to make nice with China, the Moros and the NPA, offering them a carrot vs a stick.
as a Yank, I can see why the US interests want to stop Chinese aggression in the area, but since it was Obama who essentially gave China a green light to steal the Philippine areas of the West Philippine Sea (by telling PNoy to go to court instead of sending out our tiny coast guard to stop them physically), one cannot be sure what is going on.
Duterte tried to make nice with China, but China screwed him so he is starting to buy ships and make friends with other Asian countries (who rely on shipping that goes through the area that China is trying to steal) to push back.
Guess who funded a news site that opposed Duterte and maybe funded the press to overthrow the pro Russian president of the Ukraine awhile back, something that is also noted in this article.
To understand Filipino politics require one to recognize who is married to/related to or friends with whom... and where is their power base?
Since everyone is assumed to be corrupt, the common people will vote for the one that will at least try to help them economically, i.e. to get jobs and investments and send aid when disasters hit.
GMA is from Pampanga, so there has been a lot of development money to that poor area when she was president.
And Marcos base is in the far north, not Manila.
In the next election, it is again US vs China but popular opinon will stop any president from going too far to give away our sovereignty.
so will this election be another fight between the Chinese candidate and the American one? Who knows.
Marcos, of course, is related to the ex dictator Marcos, who went too far with marshal law fighting the various insurgencies and killing/jailing mere activists while he was at it. And of course, he got rich plundering the country of billions. Ah, but Marcos claimed his wealth was Yamashita's gold: Which if true was money plundered from Malaysia and Singapore when the Japanese stole everything in sight.
Ironically, people figure BBM, like his father, is probably a thief, but hey, so is everyone else, so vote for the one who will actually be able to run the country.
As my husband Lolo used to say: They're all crooks
Finally, to confuse matters, there is the problem about outright voting fraud.
After the "hello Garci" scandal, where it was suspected that Garci had lots of ballots hidden in the back room to push the election of GMA, the government spent millions to buy electronic voting machines which were seen as guaranteeing an honest election
The source of the machines is Smartmatic, who has sold their technology to a lot of small countries. They use blockchain technology to secure the vote.
Smartmatic's global controversies: Follow the money..
BBM claims the company allowed him to lose the election for VP, which is now held by Leni.
Notice the author reveals links between the usual suspects named in conspiracy theory websites (Including Soros' money).
All of this makes my head spin.
Smartmatic based their sales on the idea that they used blockchain to keep things safe. (I'm to old to learn about bit coin and block chain, sorry).
But the article discussion Smartmatic does mention something that the nuttier Trumpite conspiracy theoriests tried to bring up after the last Election in the USA: the Venezuela link, which was ridiculed by the MSM as crazy.
But the MTimes article includes the history of Smartmatic and... wtf? Venezuela, the Panama papers, a pro PNoy election official who got rich while trying to prove BBM was a criminal, Soros and the Open Society, and lots of other things that one usually only reads in conspiracy websites.
And so, the software contractor quickly moved its headquarters to London in 2012. ...
place stuff about London and the SGO corp here: their chief asset was the Smartmatic machine.
Malloch Brown's Philippine ties stem from the mid-1980s when the former Economist journalist became the lead international partner at the Sawyer-Miller Group, presidential hopeful Corazon Aquino's PR agency. After a poll controversy, Cory Aquino won, but tightly, and Malloch Brown formed a close relationship with the thankful family dynasty. Cooperation was re-ignited ahead of the 2010 elections, when Benigno S. Aquino 3rd became the first Philippine president whose votes were counted by Smartmatic despite persistent allegations about systemic vulnerabilities.....
in July 2015, Malloch Brown returned to the Philippines. Subsequently, Comelec's Bautista awarded Smartmatic contracts at a total of P2.6 billion in the 2016 election.
more info at the link of how they got Soros and his money machines into the plot.
Malloch Brown also joined the Soros advisors, ahead of the devastating conflict when the billionaire financed agencies cooperating with US authorities, such as Philip Goldberg — later US ambassador to the Philippines until his departure and alleged regime change plan in fall 2016, as The Manila Times reported at the time.,...When Malloch Brown stepped down as chairman of SGO in December 2020, he was made the president of Soros' Open Society Foundation. As Smartmatic's chairman, he was succeeded by Peter Vance Neffenger, a US Coast Guard admiral and President Barack Obama's head of transportation security and a member of Biden's transition team.
Trained in Harvard and the US Naval War College, Neffenger was seen as the right man to protect elections worldwide (and to sell Smartmatic to skeptical Americans).
Smartmatic's origins are overshadowed by the election software contractor's odd associations and long trail of controversies, moral hazards, conflicts of interest and unexplainable fortunes in the name of "good governance."
as the MT article reminds us:
Perhaps sometimes those who speak loudest for "public interest, freedom and democracy" are but façades for private interests and oligarchies derailing the very democracy they purport to serve.
media matters is dismissing the story as a mere conspiracy theory.
Update (2/4/21): Smartmatic has reportedly filed a $2.7 billion lawsuit against Fox News, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and others. CNN's Oliver Darcy reports that the lawsuit accuses “Fox, Giuliani, Powell and hosts Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, and Jeanine Pirro of intentionally lying about Smartmatic in an effort to mislead the public into the false belief that the 2020 presidential election was stolen
all the US news assume the charges are baseless and ridicule them,so when you read stories that Sydney Powel and Mayor Guilliani are nutcase and that's why they are being sued by Smartmatic, just remember that Guilliani became mayor for going against the Mafia in NYC, and Trumpieboy knows where all the corrupt types hide their money.
but in contrast, the Filipino press looks at folks involved and wonders where they got all that lovely money while working for the government.
update: in case you think I am criticizing the Philippines for corruption, I suggest you look on how the politicians in the USA got to be millionaires. Trumpieboy might have done some slick deals in business, but his business deals were an open book, not like Pelosi, Clinton, Biden and others who became millionaires on the small salary they collected in government jobs.
because I have been feeling lousy I am getting tests from the local doctor. So far so good.
I wonder if the last cold I had was covid, since I now am tired and fuzzy minded (slow covid post infection?). But I wasn't sick with my last cold six weeks ago, whereas I was very sick last year with one: but both times I did not have the headache or body ache of covid, nor much of a fever, so I did not get tested.
In the meanwhile I am reading and watching films.
I have'n't seen most of the films up for academy awards, because they haven't been shown here yet on TV (I don't go to the theatre). I have already reviewed Dune (beautiful but confusing) and Don't look up (dumb) in past blogposts.
King Richard was a good sports movie: family friendly and about striving to win. So it probably won't win any awards, although Will Smith is very good as the father (i.e. King Richard)
I did see MacBeth: Interesing take. Good black and white cinematrography that emphasizes the dark tale.
And I did see the Power of the Dog about a man working on a ranch, and probably trying to adjust to his latent homosexuality. The reviews all said it was about his verbal mistreatment of a woman, but she was a hysterical wimp and had little to do with the plot, so I don't know if I was watching the same movie. And at the end, he tries to help the woman's son adjust to his gay impulses and to adjust to the macho society of the ranch. Given that he, not his brother (the wimpy lady's husband) was doing all the work, one does understand why he goes out of the way to ridicule these hoity toity parasites, but hey, that's just me.
Cumberbatch deserves and Oscar, as usual, but probably won't get it.
Speaking of Cumberbatch: Did anyone notice that the Last Enemy, a BBC series which he stars in, hints at the conpiracies of government surveillence and also has a plot about the coverup of a bad vaccine that is killing people (so that people won't be suspicious of life saving vaccines in the future).
It's getting so that conspiracy theories are coming true, which proves that keeping an eye on Alex Jones and other nutcases might hint at what is going on.
Usually conspiracy theories are exaggerations of a small part of the truth, and of course a lot of them start because a paranoid or sociopath needs a reason to feel important. But censoring them just makes things worse.
An example of a conspiracy theory that has recently been revealed as true? Hunter Biden and the Ukraine policy of the US> Austin Bay, a military analyst, discusses LINK
Another conspiracy theory is something the right wing nuts knew since it started: That Trump did not conspire with Russia, that the Democrats concocted a story which justified the federal law enforcement to spy on his campaign and then undermine his presidency, including trying to impeach him twice, etc. and that the major newspapers in the USA got pulitzer prizes for reporting these things, which they echoed talking points instead of trying to find out the truth.
So will anyone go to jail over this? Nope.
Hmm... was Q right (not Qanon, which is not the same). Next thing you know you will find about politicians, VIPs, and celebrities who are having sexual orgies with underage teenagers.
and I won't even go into the covid conspiracies.
I support vaccine, masking (which helps if done correctly) and limited quarantine should be done, but then it brings up the question of who put infectious people back into nursing homes so that other old folks could catch it and die?
Too bad Dr Levine was rewarded with a job in the Biden administratio, even though she took her mom out of a nursing home when the rule to place post hospitalization but still infectious covid patients back into their nursing homes: She knew this put her mom in danger, but implemented it anyway because hey, someone made this a rule and rules must be obeyed...even though he/she knew it would kill people, (but hey being trans means never having your malpractice revealed) (I have written an essay in the past about how our nursing home had to fight this Medicare bureaucrats to keep out a Vancomycin resistant strep aureus patient out of our nursing home)
So remove the civil rights from low risk folk, but allow the infection be spread in high risk patients, because an old rule says it's okay? WTF?
the overblown way this has been done-- shutting down entire industries and putting people out of work and bankrupting small businesses-- is making people think that maybe it was all a conspiracy to try to impose a NWO on the world: and that vaccine cards will soon morph into a universal ID card so that you can be tracked, and maybe even have your savings confiscated and your licenses to work or drive be taken from you if you object.
And Canada's overblown reaction to the trucker's strike shows what can happen to you too if you complain too loudly.
They could have settled it in a day by suspending the new (not old) regulations, but never mind
I have some sympathy with the truckers: Because I know we had to pay a lot of money for our folks to get tested every time we delivered rice into Manila, and now of course we only need a vaccine card. But the conspiracy theories on vaccine side effects for young men, not to mention the use of fetal tissue, has made some people refuse vaccination. So fine; put them in a mask and no problem? No. And the refusal is framed as killing people, even though the vaccines don't completely stop transmission or getting the disease. Ah, but the real reason is that they are disobeying the government so how dare you. WTF?
Here, it's not so much a problem yet: In Asia we frequently use masks to stop people from spreading TB or colds. And with only half the population being vaccinated, a complete police state is not going to happen for awhile.
Today Dr. C is discussing natural immunity (from mild or subclinical infection). He mainly notes this in children and the cost benefit ratio in giving them covid vaccine.
several notes: She was bought by an Italian, who later took her to Italy. But when he planned to return her to the Sudan, she said no and went to court to demand her freedom.
later she became a nun in a local Italian order, and the local people knew and loved her, so when she died, they called her a saint. (the original way to make a saint was that locals thought you were one).
The problem of human trafficking is not just as "slavery" per se: but often people working in overseas contracts find they cannot leave their job (often their passport is confiscated) and alas some of the women who thought they would be maids or nannies for families find they are expected to be sexual slaves for the men in the family. Worse, some who sign up for a job find they are actually forced into prostitution.
This is known in the Philippines, but also is a major problem with the unregulated "immigrants" which are now being trafficked across the US border by drug linked cartels.
there is a lot of criticism on right wing sites in the US about the Catholic church being involved in the resettlement of these migrants, but one reason is to stop their exploitation and to get them in touch with family or friends who are already in the USA.
Ironically, in searching Youtube for human trafficking, most of the stories seem to be from the UK. Hmm... the right wants to publicize it as a way to stop the migrations and close the border, and the left pretends there is no problem at all, nothing to see here folks just look away.
But this goes beyond the US border: in Europe, the refugees come from Africa and from the Middle East.
Some refugees are fleeing war, but most are economic refugees. So one solution is to get brokers to connect them with companies or others who would hire them.
this is how most OFW (overseas foreign workers) in the Philippines find jobs. But the exploitation of these job seekers is an ongoing problem: sometimes the recruiters take the money and run, but other times they are sent to jobs where they are exploited.
Most Filipinas working in the middle east or Asia as nannies or caregivers are cherished by their families, but not all: some have passports confiscated and are overworked or, worse, exploited by male family members for sex.
and with the covid epidemic shutting down the economy, there are many stories of out of work laborers being stranded in the Middle East with no job and no pay and no way to get home.
In Afghanistan they hate everyone: Christians, Shiite Muslims, Sikhs, Ahmadis Muslims, Hindus.
And will kill you in the name of Allah for being an apostate.
But religious persecution is not limited to Muslim countries:
The problem is that religious freedom concerns are often drowned out during debates about politics, economics, climate change and other issues in violent flashpoints around the world.
Consider northern Nigeria, where ISIS and Boko Haram continue to slaughter Christian farmers, or Hong Kong, where Communist Party threats are increasing against pro-democracy leaders, such as jailed Catholic media magnate Jimmy Lai and the retired Cardinal Joseph Zen.
but at least the Olympics are publicizing China's reeducation/persecution of their Uighar Muslim minorities.
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StrategyPage has a pithy summary of the Covid epidemic... lies, propaganda, and misinformation are noted in the essay.
such as why Vaccines don't seem to be working:
Another bit of misinformation was the development of covid19 vaccines. Covid19 is a rapidly mutating disease similar to influenza. While more stable viruses like smallpox and polio can protect potential victims with a vaccine, the flu and covid19 “vaccines” are actually temporary treatments called “antivirals.” These slow down the spread of the disease but cannot stop it like polio or smallpox vaccination.
and they note that the epidemiology of the disease was first recognized from the data from the cruise ship infections was analyzed:
The fat, asthmatic and elderly are at most risk.
And did China cover up the fact that they had 2 millon deaths?
The Olympics was supposed to be a propaganda triumph for China, showing how it could control the virus through their efficient state control. But then Omicron hit.
and Dr. C comments on Facebook correcting an esteemed medical journal. WTF?
My pension has been increased, but there are more and more folks coming here asking for help with buying medicines and/or food, and I don't have a lot of savings left for various reasons, so can't give them all they need.
Sigh.
The lockdowns are easing, so that is the good news.
The bad news? The ManilaBul reports that the mortality last year was higher than it has been for over sixty years:
POPCOM said a total of 768,504 deaths have been registered across the country in the first 11 months of 2021—translating to a mortality rate of 6.98 per thousand.
This number was higher by 154,562 than the deaths listed in the entire 2020 when around 5.8 per 1,000 Filipinos died, it added....
now, Covid was listed as the cause of death in 75 000 people, but the highest cause of death was ischemic heart disease.
this might be because a lot of deaths from old age are listed here, or maybe not: Because there also were increases in deaths from diabetes, stroke, hypertension and cancer.
Fact check: One big change in medicine from treating people to preventing disease came in the 1960s and 1970s when medicine to lower blood pressure and diuretics to treat congestive heart failure were developed.
But these medicines cost money: and with the pandemic, I suspect a lot of folks are not buying their medicine, or are missing days when they run out of pills because they can't afford any more.
Another cause of heart disease is that people eat better, so they develop higher cholesterol.
Traditional diet is low in fat so not a lot of ASCVD: on the other hand, traditional diet is very high in salt, so deaths and strokes and heart attacks from high blood pressure are common.
one also wonders about drug and alcohol related deaths: Duterte's war on drugs here was mainly a war against Shabu, i.e. meth, which increases blood pressure and can cause heart attacks. We had a neighbor's daughter die of this.
But we also have sudden cardiac deaths in young men that is probably a congenital conduction defect of the heart. aka Bangugut.
And we are now seeing a lot of diabetes here, in people who are thin and not on an American diet. Is this new? I have no idea. But again diabetes can increase cardiovascular disease and cause renal failure and high blood pressure.
We also see deaths from pre eclampsia and other maternal deaths. Have these deaths increased because pregnancy is a risk for covid? And how many died because of no prenatal care due to the price of seeing a midwife early in pregnancy? I have no idea.
and what about children? We had a respiratory disease going around recently: covid or RSV? One tested positive for RSV, a common viral disease of young children. But then another tested positive for Dengue.
And remember: even though most moms do breast feed up to a year, still buying milk for toddlers or buying high protein food is expensive, so one wonders if the rate of malnutrition has gone up. And of course, malnourished kids (and adults for that matter) can die of illnesses that a well nourished person would survive: not just things like measles but chest colds, infected wounds, urinary infections etc.
Sigh.
This is where I worry: Because with the higher price of fertilizer and diesel, the price of food will soon increase. True, the government does help with subsidized rice for the poor, but what about protein?
Sigh.
The statistics for 2021 are not out yet, so it will be awhile until the whole picture of the damage done by the epidemic and the economic problems will be seen.
Luckily people have extended families to help them, including money from their overseas family members. But alas, this too has gone down and jobs in the Middle East, cruise ships, etc. are also being affected.
things like this might help:
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update: From Yahoonews: Lockdowns only decreased covid deaths a small amount:
...Lockdowns during the first COVID-19 wave in the spring of 2020 only reduced COVID-19 mortality by .2% in the U.S. and Europe, according to a Johns Hopkins University meta-analysis of several studies.
"While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted," the researchers wrote. "In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument."
The researchers – Johns Hopkins University economics professor Steve Hanke, Lund University economics professor Lars Jonung, and special advisor at Copenhagen's Center for Political Studies Jonas Herby – analyzed the effects of lockdown measures such as school shutdowns, business closures, and mask mandates on COVID-19 deaths.
"We find little to no evidence that mandated lockdowns in Europe and the United States had a noticeable effect on COVID-19 mortality rates," the researchers wrote.
The researchers also examined shelter-in-place orders, finding that they reduced COVID-19 mortality by 2.9%.
usually the usual lists of women who changed the world are about political women or socialist women.
But the most honored lady, revered by 3 billion people in the world, is Mama Mary, beloved by Christians and Muslims but who rarely gets on their list because she was just a housewife.
The bad news? He did, but this caused a schism in the church and ultimately led to the Protestant revolution in two ways: By pointing out the corruption in the church, and by reminding people the importance of a personal relationship with God is the important thing.
I like how her mom tried to correct her girl when she hit puberty and became "religious": she made her do housework. It didn't work, but it did prove that saints know how to cook and clean. She not only had visions but dictated a lot of stuff about her relationship with God, while also nursing plague victims etc.
No, I haven't read her writings: Too complicated for my small head. But she is now considered a doctor of the church.
But her life points out one thing: that the only one who outranks the Pope is a saint, and that saint could be an insignificant person who comes out of nowhere. Pope Francis be warned...
.Anthony Bale discusses the sensational life of medieval mystic Margery Kempe, charting a story of unusual visions, spiritual revelations, turbulent emotions and religious controversies.
Like Teresa of Avila, she wrote her autobiography to defend herself against charges of heresy but the similarity ends there.
Teresa of Avila was a neurotic teenager who entered a convent because she was afraid of going to hell, and then gradually evolved to a mature woman with common sense and humor, and ended up reforming the Spanish Catholic church. And yes, I have read her autobiography.
In contrast, Margery Kemp was a married woman and mother of eleven who at menopause got the religious bug and a couple of visions and then left her husband to go on pilgrimages. And her autobiography seems to be that of a neurotic woman rather than a hard headed practical mystic or saint.
Now, neurotic women who have unhappy marriages and get religious mania are not unusual (Prince Philip's mother and Catherine Doherty come to mind). But unlike these two ladies, she didn't work with the poor as a result, but became a gadabout. Probably a more interesting life than caring for grandkids and putting up with a husband, but her writings and actions don't inspire one nor do they suggest holiness.
Both these podcasts give insight into the lives of women in times when women were marginalized.
But religion gave them a third way to escape the heavy bonds of marriage so they could do their thing.
I was just reading the tale of Genji, and his final wife also escaped an unhappy marriage by being a Buddhist nun, which says a lot about karma (Genji messes up a lot of women's lives, and she got pregnant by a relative so his last child was not his).
So modern times allow women to a career outside the house, but the huge amount of neuroses which before the 1960s was blamed on women being stuck in a narrow role as housewives hasn't change: they now are single women and cat ladies who go around unhappily tweeting against their enemies.
Personally I think it is the hormones.
Which is why we see this in young girls and in menopausal women, when the hormones are going crazy.
This is what the ancient Greeks thought, and as a woman I have first hand experience of this.
but I am sad that the neurotic ladies of today project their unhappiness on others. And of course, the trans fads in schools are just another way for neurotic teenage girls who in the past would have visions or religious mania and/or enter a nunnery now decide to mutilate themselves to decide this is one way to escape the burdens of life.
