Crypto currancies, Big media manipulation, and other forms of control

 I know nothing about crypto currancies except that some countries have banned them, and apparantly a lot of countries worry about fraud and criminals and the ability of ordinary citizens to do money stuff where the gov't can spy on them. So a lot of countries are planning to stop private crypto currancies and have their central banks issue their own

From the UKGuardian:(Nov 2021):

The Indian government is preparing to ban private cryptocurrencies and allow the country’s central bank to launch an official digital currency.

The proposed legislation follows a crackdown on cryptocurrencies in China, where financial regulators and the central bank have made all digital currency transactions illegal.

UKGuardian article from last year (Sept 2021) about China's moves:

so could the yanks be far behind? Biden is looking into doing the same thing.(March 2022) presumably by executive order, since one doubts Congress would survive if people recognized the privacy implications of a digital curracny where your money can be tracked (and maybe in the future be linked to the ability to limit your money use if your social credit number is low).

All of this is about billions of illicit money stuff that goes on all the time despite laws: if caught, the banks shrug and pay the fine (which is a pittance compared to their profit for looking the other way) but of course few bankers go to jail.

CoreyDigs has a long article with links about the background to what is going on and tries to find links and connect the dots.

In the meanwhile, China and Russia are trying to partner with other countries to make an alternative to the US dollar for international trade.

AlJ report on the BRICS summit.

so what does this mean for you? 

I have no idea: as Bones would say: I'm a doctor, not an international financier.

But one does wonder if this will survive, given reports of China staying in covid shutdown, floods in China, over investment in ghost cities, and bank runs.

But it might mean China will be able to put more pressure on the Philippine so they can steal our asseets (petroleum, fish) and the ability to block the sea lanes in the West Philippine sea.

BongBong is being inaugurated today and big crowds of supporters and anti BBM demonstrators will be in Manila...(and we have a rice delivery in the Manila suburbs so security checks might delay our drivers delivering to the suburban Manila markets).

The US is doing their best to undermine him of course: he still has all that lovely money stolen from Yamashita's gold the Philippine people by his father. But a lot of folks just shrug, and like my husband, say: They're all crooks. And before you cast stones at the Philippines, maybe ask how all those folks in the US Congress became millionaires on their small gov't salary...

Another big kerfuffle today in the Philippines is that the courts might finally shut down the CIA  Omidyar funded news site Rappler because the law of the Philippines forbids foreign ownership of media companies.

Rappler can still go to the Court of Appeals (CA), which earlier upheld the original 2018 SEC revocation order, but remanded the case to the SEC to reevaluate the order as the involved foreign investor, Omidyar Network Fund, had donated on Feb. 28, 2018, the Philippine depositary receipts (PDRs) to Rappler to “cure” the defect found by the SEC.

This will be labled a war on the press (duh: big deal. Set up this English language press site on a different server)...this will not stop the news from getting out on private vlogs, but a lot of these are run by pro china bots, but never mind.

Something to remember about Omidyar: it was his funding of the media that helped overethrow the pro Russian president of the Ukraine (elected legally but maybe with massive fraud) and put in an anti Russian president who was very very corrupt, but pro American

Oliver Stone actually made a film about this,

more information on the Omidyar network fromThe Grey Zone: Rappler was not established just to try to destroy Duterte, but an experiment on how to track and manipulate people.

From the Rappler archive (2013):

Using a patented user engagement model and a community mapping data analytics tool, Rappler tracks how stories and emotions move through its community. It starts with a mood meter on every story, an effort to capture non-rational reactions. Developed with psychologists and sociologists, the mood meter is based on research that shows up to 80% of how people make decisions in their lives is not about what they think but how they feel. Every vote on the mood meter is aggregated by the mood navigator in the middle of the home page, a novel way of navigating a news site.

Big sister is watching you.

one problem: Rappler is in English, so doen't monitor the grass roots, only the netcitizens. And it was not the affluent English fluent netcitizens who elected BBM: It was the working class and poor, who remember how they had jobs when his father ran the Philippines.

But I didn't know Rappler was tracking me when I read articles on their website. 

Hmm:

But what if the major net outlets in the first world start doing this on their readers?

facebook already does this and offers this information to your business.

more about this on Wired.

now, if you really want to be paranoid, link this spying on what you read with a social credit system like they have in China, and guess what happens?

Mark of the beast, anyone?

 

How the Pope plans to remake the church into a church of woke

All the shennanigans about the synod on the family  and the plans for various areas to hold synodality meetings with the (prechosen) faithful, supposedly to get grass roots input into the Catholic church, is of course just manipulation:

a call for much greater roles of women at all levels in the future of Church; attention to sexuality, relationships and LGBTQI+ concerns; references to topics such as education and catechesis, youth, family and co-responsible leadership, lay ministry, culture and the impact of Covid-19; as well as to faith formation, clergy and liturgy". 

Yup.Sounds familiar doesn't it?

In other words, in many, if not most areas, the agenda has already been decided by the big shots, and one truly doubts they will allow nay sayers to get their two cents in.

reminds me of the encounter groups of the 1960s, 

where we were encouraged to bare our soul to others in the group in order to promote group solidarity. 

Once this had been done, our defenses would be down so it was easly for the leaders to manipulate us to go along with the newfangled ideas we would usually oppose, such as when those running the groups explained why abortion was okay and ridiculing anyone who didn't join in the sexual revolution.

So when I see the so called Pope pull the same shennanigans, I am a bit suspicious. 

One suspects that he will use the liberal bishops in Germany to push his agenda of reform. 

Will it succeed? Who knows. 

The Filipino bishops are deep into ecology so will probably go along with it, but will the strong lay groups here (CFC, alliance of the two hearts, and the various charismatic groups) manage to influence them here?

and one wonders how their agenda will play with the  African bishops. Will they hold the line on these trendier than thou ideas, as the African bishops are doing in the Anglican church?

 Anyone following this psychodrama knows that Pope Francis a disaster for the church: but hey, don't criticize the pope because that makes you a heretic or worse, a right wing ultra maga type. (I guess St Catherine of Sienna and St Athanasius are now in that category). 

the dirty little secret is that Pope Francis says both A and Anti A, and often while he is saying good stuff he is sneaking around arranging the exact opposite to be done by his minions who are doing the dirty work.

The plans are now out in the open, and Italian journalist Sandro Magister, has the details of the attempt to impose a not-so-secret plan over opposition.

the first step was to let divorced folks who have remarried outside the church receive communion. This would essentially make the sacrament a mere feel good event, ignoring the Catholic belief that the sacrament is the body and blood of Christ and Paul's warning to take the sacrament with reverence (1 Cor 11: 28-34) because it is something very holy.

Ah, but the bishops opposed this when he held a meeting, so no more meetings with his bishops.

then the Vatican held a synod on the family which also had a prewritten document ready to release that was supposed to relate what was agreed upon. 

someone noticed the scam and so the document was rewritten but someone didn't notice the two small footnotes, and voila, the modernist minions were happy to ask Francis if they should allow people living in sin or not members of the church to receive the sacrament, and in a private letter he said sure, why not...

We see the same type of shennanigans in the present meeting on Family in Rome, which is all about holiness in family life (but at the same time sowing confusion by welcoming the gay community  in a way that ignores the physical and spiritual dangers of the gay lifestyl, which is an insult to gays who live a life fighting temptations who are trying to live a life of holiness.)

So now we have Synodality plans not written in theological language but in the language of sociology which implies if you don't make your life into serving the church you don't count.... Nope, no Jesus here, folks, just move along. 

FatherZ has a link to the actual document in pdf form. and fisks one very greeny paragraph: Pray for reptiles.

I promise you I am not making this up. A reader clued me in. On page document page 29 (PDF page 31). Discernment, then, is also an opening of the heart in love and mercy to all things. As St Isaac of Nineveh (St Isaac the Syrian) expresses it: What is a merciful heart? It is a heart on fire for the whole of creation, for humanity, for the birds, for the animals, for demons, and for all that exists. ... And in like manner, such a person prays for the family of reptiles because of the great compassion that burns without measure in a heart that is in the likeness of God.

yup. Pray for everyone. I do, actually, but let me kill the snakes first, please... But notice the quote is about you and your merciful heart, not about Jesus.

Similarly, the trendy tree is missing something:

 the tree of life is a symbol of the church, but it is also the symbol of sin in the garden of eden. So traditionally, the tree of life becomes the tree of the cross, where sin was destroyed.

But notice something about this tree? nothing about Jesus who is the center of being a Christian.

There are oodles of prophecies out there that the Pope and bishops will destroy the church, but in the end the layfolk and a few honest bishops will save it, but maybe only after a major persecution. Similar to how St Athanasius rescued the church against the more popular idea that hey, Jesus was just a superman, not God.

Pope Francis and his minions haven't quite lapsed into that heresy (yet) but the gradual destruction of the idea of the holiness of God is being pushed out of the church in favor of a life of being a SJW, and the helpful MSM is happy about this. Indeed, if you just read the MSM you would think the Vatican had it all in control, that might not be true: 

Vatican expert and reporter Sandro Magister a couple months ago reported that someone was passing a memo around to the bishops that objected to this. 

after pointing out the silence of Pope Francis in stopping heretical bishops, they get to the real problem of his attempt to remake the church into a secular institution:

2. The Christo-centricity of teaching is being weakened; Christ is being moved from the centre. Sometimes Rome even seems to be confused about the importance of a strict monotheism, hinting at some wider concept of divinity; not quite pantheism, but like a Hindu panentheism variant. 

which leads us into the Pachimama debacle: 

 (A) Pachamama is idolatrous; perhaps it was not intended as such initially.

There were multiple claims about what was going on with this idol: none of which were actually clarified. But given the fact that

the irony is that pachimama and Amazon tribes were being used to push another agenda (married priests) at a time when the Amazon tribes are conveting to protestantism en masse. And I'm sure the pious Baptists in Brazil are happy that the Pope has just affirmed their claim the church worships pagan idols.  

Ironically, it wasn't a bishop but an ordinary layman who took the idol off it's altar and threw it into the Tiber. LOL.

The memo also asks why the Vatican is pushing back on groups of praying folks: both the cloistered orders who pray quite a lot, and the lay folks belonging to various charismatic groups who pray loudly and with enthusiasm and who are important here in the third world.

then the memo laments how some are trying to destroy moral rules that date back 3200 years to instruct people on right and wrong: 

the memo points out how Pope Francis essentially destroyed the intellectuals who were defendingthe "gospel of life" which was clarified by John Paul II against what he called the culture of death, where abortion and euthansia of the old and handicapped would be pushed as compassionate but actually was becoming a policy to save money and free people from responsibility of caring for them.

 (C) The Christo-centric legacy of St. John Paul II in faith and morals is under systematic attack. Many of the staff of the Roman Institute for the Family have been dismissed; most students have left. The Academy for Life is gravely damaged, e.g., some members recently supported assisted suicide. The Pontifical Academies have members and visiting speakers who support abortion.

which explains the lack of enthusiasm of the Pope and alas too many bishops when the Supreme court rolled back a decision on RoeVWade that even Ruth Bader Ginsburg criticized for it's power grab, i.e. using the court to pass a law instead of normal folks.

By the way: the MSM is not reporting what the Supreme court actually said (essentially saying the people, through their elected officials, should make the law) nor is the MSM putting it into the context of other recent court rulings that are stopping the abuse of unelected bureaucrats, who essentially are rewriting the laws passed by Congress to the point of distorting the original purpose of these laws, or by courts who make it a point not to obey the law but to make the law, something which is not in their job description.\

But of course the church is not a democracy: yet the Pope is not a dictator who can disoby the rule of law either.

and when he does things that go against the bible and the traditions of the church, more people leave the church, some to just stay home, others to churches that still acknowledge that Jesus is Lord.

Until Pope Francis stops his deceptions and intrigues and lies, the church will continue to hemorrhage members, because we prefer to hear sermons on Jesus and holiness and how to serve God in the duties of our daily life, not a sermon on how we need to protect the environment like I had to listen to last Sunday: 

and this was at the 5:30 am mass, full of tricycle drivers and palenke workers who attend early so they can go to work. Many people here have problems on how to make ends meet after a two year shut down of the economy, and they came to church to worship God and to meet him to get spiritual strength to make it through another week of hard work. They needed a sermon to assure them God loves them, and they got an eco sermon that had nothing to do with the struggles of their daily lives.

and you thought potholes were bad

Ripple effects from the war in the Ukraine

 I haven't commented on the war in the Ukraine because there is just too much propaganda out there.

The slowness of the west in helping them probably caused lives (one month before thye got their act together) In contrast, within a week Starlink was there helping provide much needed communication.

StrategyPage has an essay on what's going on and they say Russia is losing. Since they get things right about countries that I actually know something about, I would trust their opinion.

As to the Philippines: this part is important:

The older NATO members thought Russia would be rational while the East European NATO members, and Ukraine knew better. The United States has more incentive to solve its inadequate war reserve (of ammo) problem because they face a threat from China ...because (the Ukraine war) has already demonstrated that Russian military capabilities were highly overrated and the Chinese are openly concerned that they may have to be realistic in the Pacific.

Or maybe not. At a time when the US/NWO liberal elites are trying to undermine BBMarcos before he even takes office, you would think China would take advantage of this. But instead they are back to their old bullying traits:

From the Inquirer:

Its coast guard recently deployed at least two ships that sail around and guard Ayungin (Second Thomas) Shoal, warning Filipino supply boats against carrying construction materials to repair the Philippine Navy’s BRP Sierra Madre, a decrepit World War II-vintage landing ship tank that serves as a military station here...Ayungin is a low-tide elevation about 194 kilometers off Palawan province, well within the Philippines’ 370-kilometer exclusive economic zone (EEZ).

the problem is that it won't stop there: China is trying to get Pacific islands to let them build bases etc. that would surround the Philippines, and make it easy to stop shipping to other East Asian countries.

Austin Bay has all the details, so read the whole thing. in summary:: 

If communist China’s recent words and deeds reflect a calculated design and totalitarian intent, soon we will hear Beijing declare the entire western Pacific Ocean a sovereign Chinese sea, where Beijing rules — so-called international laws, treaties and U.N. resolutions be damned....

and of course the war in the Ukraine will affect a lot of poor countries:

 

Family news

 One of Lolo's nieces who lived in the USA has died (of cancer), and will be buried this weekend, so some of our relatives have flown out there for the funeral. Sad, because her sister died a few months ago .

Our granddaughter is taking spring break nearby with her aunt, so they will also attend the funeral if she is well. 

Because she goes to a fancy college (on scholarship) and has an interest in international teaching, they will send her for practical teaching session in India. Why India? I mean, the college is in Minnesota, where there are many multicultural areas (Hmong, Somali, Objibwe, Norwegians, and Finns). And since she is from the Philippines, it's not like she never worked in a different country. But never mind. 

The problem is that she had to get a lot of shots: not just booster shots but new ones such as yellow fever, cholera, and typhoid.

Now, every time I had to take typhoid vaccine, I was in bed for several days with fever and malaise, so I warned her of this. And sure enough, she get sick... by the third day, her cousin (a nurse) got worried and make her take a covid test, which was negative. But she is now feeling a bit better and should be well enough to go to the funeral which is being held an hour drive from her aunt's house. And she should be well enough to leave for India in two weeks.

Here at home, Kuya is busy at the farm preparing fields for harvest, and Joy is teaching agri seminars.

in other news, we have had a fish die off. We have a fountain and because of the danger of mosquitoes, we keep golden carp in it. But one of our workers thought: Hey why not add a couple of talapia so we can eat them. Bad idea: The talapia ate all the baby fish of the carp, and with oodles of talapia doing their thing it means a lot of work to try to keep the pond clean. And of course we have had brownouts, meaning no pump to oxygenate the water. As a result, several carp died of heat stress, so now we are down to only two of them. But up to now, the talapia were thriving. 

But earlier this week, I noticed the water level had fallen, the water was very dirty, and we had seven dead talapia.

Now, usually to fill the tank, we use deep well water, but in the dry season our pump isn't working well. City water is cholorinated, so usually we have to put it into our storage tank for a few days to get rid of the chemicals. But the helper that does this is busy at the farm preparing the fields for planting...But with dead and dying fish from the polluted water, I figure I would do it. So I added six inches of (chlorinated) water to the tank. Since then, every day we have had six or more dead talapia floating in the pond. Yuck. 

so now I am to blame for the dead fish, but never mind. 

Ironically, the two remaining carp are doing well so far. I hope one is a female and we will again be able to have nice golden fish instead of greedy talapia. If not, we might buy a few to restock the pond. But I suspect the worker who put the talapia into the fountain last year will simply buy some fingerlings and restock the fountain.

Lolo and our fountain

Philippine rice report: is there a coming food crisis?

 it is the start of the rice planting season, and I found this video of how locals still plant rice by hand...

.

...after flooding and plowing under the last years's chaff and the weeds, you end up with nice clean mud. 

For the main harvest, you grow rice seedlings separately in a box (or buy it from the local rice institute) and then plant them by hand. ,.

 We still plant by hand, although we rent a harvester/thresher to harvest the rice.

. In the future, of course, machines will be planting the rice seedlings also.

 this 2016 video explains why: even though we have high unemployment, younger people simply don't want to work that hard so that they can live in poverty when they can get a job in the city or overseas.

  .

...here is an article in the Inquirer that explains the coming crisis in food in the Philippines:

for example, we import quite a lot of our rice:

“More than 20 countries have made restrictions on the exports of their food products, and the lingering war in Ukraine continues. So there is really a major disruption of the food supply chain...

But the increase in diesel and fertilizer prices mean it will be more expensive to grow rice, and sometimes you can't find enough fertilizer, so your yield will be lower:

Compounding this is the fact that rice production in the first semester declined by 6 percent, which Dar attributed to the low usage of fertilizer, the cost of which has risen sharply. Figures from the Fertilizer and Pesticide Authority showed the average price of urea, the most commonly used fertilizer, had nearly tripled to about P3,000 a 50-kilo bag from only P1,200 a year ago.

... So no, I have not been exaggerating in my previous posts about the rice farm crisis.

Marcos has a history of supporting farmers, but even he can't stop the crisis snowballing.

Biden, of course, could reverse his green policies that has stopped the oil companies from drilling/refining/transporting oil products, but hey he has to listen to his green masters...

speaking of the Philippines, we expect the left to mount huge demonstrations for the inaugural (they do this all the times) (in the past being a demonstrator paid you 500 pesos plus a meal, but I suspect now it is higher). 

But this suspicion does not bode well for US/Philippine relations: again from the Inqurer:

“That’s part of their playbook. Whoever sits in Malacañang is their enemy because ultimately, all they want is to overthrow the government through violent means to be followed by a socialist revolution,” he said. Incoming chief presidential legal counsel Juan Ponce Enrile had also warned of a “credible” plot to embarrass the incoming administration, supposedly by groups in the country and the United States.

...

StrategyPage had a long article about this a couple of days ago: it starts with the attempt of getting back all the loot that BBM's father stole 

my favorite part of the article:

 the PCGG has identified over half the stolen billions and recovered about half of that, which comes to $3.5 billion. Less than half of that has actually been returned to the Philippines and some of that was in turn stolen by senior politicians then in power."...

something to remember the next time you hear that the affluent nations need to give money to poor countries, where much of it will be stolen of course but never mind. 

 the rest of the SP article is about China stealing everything in sight in the West Philippine sea. 

 and speaking of china: WTF was this famous restaurant doing in the Paracels?

... 

 I guess they didn't notice that it is monsoon season, where afternoon thunderstorms are common.

Sigh.

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

update: The food crisis in Africa could be terrible.

the reality of farm life.

Well, that conspiracy theory is busted: No, someone isn't killing off cattle in Kansas. 

The modern Jeremiah, Ann Barnhardt, who is usually ahead of the curve in reporting conspiracy theories that later turn out to be true, has some expertise in the cattle business, and she explains why this conspiracy theory is bunk:

The reported “epicenter” of this heat event was Ulysses, KS. That’s my old stomping grounds, and I would take a spitball guess that within a 100 mile radius of Ulysses, KS there are close to a million cattle on feed in confinement feedlots, maybe more. So 10,000 deads, statewide, really isn’t a “massive die-off”....
This has happened before – much worse, in fact- and will happen again. Heat death loss is a calculated and accounted-for risk in cattle feeding. As is death loss from blizzards and ice storms. It’s part of the deal.

Yes, farming is a high risk occupation, be you small farmers or running a huge farm.

As noted in earlier posts, there are major problems for farmers all over the world from the Ukraine war and from the post covid supply chain problems, which have resulted in the shortage and increased price of fertilizers, and the increase in the price of fuel has made things worse.

Agri sites have a lot of information out there, but the MSM reporters often get things wrong: one wonders if their rural knowledge comes from Green Acres.

I have noted here on my blog the problems of our rural area, including African swine flu that led to some of our friends who raised a few pigs for extra income to lose them to disease. 

And the problem of bird flu is big in Asia, but not so much a problem since we are off the bird migration routes, but we do have times when chickens develop disease and are lost (not to mention typhoons which destroyed our chicken farm a couple years ago, luckily at a time between "grows" so we didn't have to bury a couple thousand chickens).

We grow rice, and other farms in our area grow vegetables or have chicken farms. We didn't rebuild our chicken farm because the profit margin was minimal and our nephew who ran it decided to move to the UK and work as a caregiver, where his children, now proud UK citizens, have made a life for themselves.

Sigh.

All that romantic blather about mother gaia and the wonderfulness of traditional life is bunk: trying to make a living on a small rural farm requires hard work and has a lot of times when you lose the crop. Which is why ten perecent of Filipinos migrate to work or live overseas either as migrants or contract workers.

thanks to land reform, many of our family's farm fields were bought by the farmers who cultivated them.  But many of these farmers are now old and since land reform made them more prosperous, they sent their kids to school, and the kids got jobs elsewhere, so many of our farmers are from Joy's family's town in the Visayas.

This report in the Inquirer has a lot of the technical details.

A lot of people moved back to our area when they lost their jobs with covid, but a lot of them don't know how to plant and harvest rice like their parents and grandparents, and they are now hoping to get their jobs back. 

We are slowly mechanizing our farms (our remaining fields and the fields of the farmers who we subcontract to grow rice).

But now the price of fertilizer (both ordinary fertilzer and the organic chicken manure for our organic fields) has skyrocketed. And the price of diesel to run the machines and irrigation pumps has also gone up.

the small farmers who no longer want to farm their land sometimes have sold portions of land to outsiders (returning OWF for example, who subcontract someone to farm the land). Others, especially near the roads, have sold plots to people who want to own a rural house.

This has been noticed by our mayor who is trying to make our city diversify from rice and sandle making into a tourist area since with the new expressways we are only two hours from Manila, and there are many urban attractions and nearby nature areas. 

And we also have a lot of motocycle rallies that go through here on weekends.

I am hoping all of this will improve the economy and supply local jobs.

Kuya had renovated some of our upstairs guest rooms for BNB tourism shortly before covid hit, so hopefully we will be able to take advantage of tourism if things continue to improve.

Public health matters (truth matters too)

here is a lecture about vaccines that goes on to explain the difficulty in making a covid vaccine, including discussing several ways they tried to make various vaccines. A bit technical but easier to understand than most of the scientific lectures about the problem.

  ....

Dr Andrew Wefwafwa has a series of talks about how one does public health in Uganda. This is part one of a four part series. Discusses the problems of cross cultural teaching and in later segments the problem of limited resources.

......

when working in cross cultural settings, you have to understand the culture, and the best teacher is usually a local person, not an outsider, which is why our nurses did much of the outreach when I worked in Africa and also with the IHS.

There are always complaints that this is not done in the USA, but we did it in the IHS, and other public health clinics work with migrant workers and do outreaches to the black churches on health matters that have few symptoms but can be treated to prevent death and disability, such as disbetes and high blood pressure.

 For middle class folk, local hospitals do similar outreaches to their community.... 

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

 speaking of public health: Monkey pox is being hyped, but there is a lot of distortion in the reporting. The dirty little secret is that a lot of these cases are from promiscuous sex and one dares not suggest Just Say no for fear of being called homophobic

.. and the second problem is the conspiracy theory that points out it might be a lab leak origin (which by the way I don't believe). I discuss both these problems here on my medical blog...

............Finally, Dr. Peterson, using his experience as a clinical psychologists, blasts the rush to give strong hormones and do surgery on children when they think they are trans. 

It's not just surgery that can affect these kids: hormones and anti hormones have side effects on the psyche and I discuss that on my medical blog too.

Science lessons for today

the biology lesson for today: How evolution works:

 

 One of your ancestors shagged a Neanderthal lady, and that is why you got Covid.

... and here is a lecture about incest and folk dancing:

.

...and if you thought mother nature was a kind and gentle lady, well, think again:

  ....

Musical interlude of the day

 

Brucellosis, Florence Nightingale and public health statistics

 

remember all those Russian claims that the US had labs investigating diseases for biowarfare in the Ukraine, one of the (fake news) reasons they gave that they needed to invade?

well, the claim was (partly) true:they did have labs working with nasty diseases in the Ukraine, and both Europe and the US was cooperating with the Ukrainian scientists.

 But the dirty little secret is that these labs are all over the place, monitoring diseases that are smouldering and could cause epidemics. 

Their job is to investigate local diseases, monitor them, and stop their spread... including making vaccines to stop the spread of disease in animals and men...

Here is an article from 2017 about monitoring Brucellosis in the Ukraine.

Monitoring of Brucellosis in Agricultural Animals in Ukraine During 2013-2015

Brucellosis is one of the most widespread zoonosis in the world. Only 17 countries informed WHO that their territory is free from brucellosis. About 500 thousand cases of brucellosis in humans are registered in the world each year. The problem of brucellosis has remained actual to agriculture and health care for many years. Almost all agricultural animals are highly susceptible to brucellosis. ... Brucellosis is a chronic infectious disease. The disease in animals has the following signs: abortions and retention of secundines, orchitis, unviable litter and sterility. Brucellosis is included to the list of quarantine diseases due to its social threat.

in other words, brucellosis is a threat to farm animals and can spread to humans. 

Here is another article about Brucellosis, where the authors worry that the Ukraine war will result in spreading the disease:

In Ukraine, the war has caused disruption to the normal animal health surveillance and control, resulting in delayed recognition of and response to important animal diseases.

Large numbers of abandoned livestock and pet animals might contribute to transmission and spread of the disease. Porous borders, uncontrolled movement of animals, or undisposed carcasses of animals left after bombardments or diseases, encroachment and destruction of wildlife habitats, displacement of wild and domestic animals and increased interface between human, wildlife and domestic animals can lead to increase in the likelihood of spillover of pathogens especially those associated with transboundary animal diseases, zoonoses and wildlife related diseases

Russian military invasion of Ukraine has massively disrupted the livestock sector of the country including animal health services and animal production in commercial, smallholder and backyard sectors

much of the worry is about the spread of African Swine flu, something that has decimated the pig population here in Asia (see this 2017 article about that worry)... but other diseases that are affected and could spread include Rabies, leptospirosis, tularemia and some very nasty viruses.

an article easier to read can be found on Web MD: which notes that the refugees could spread ordinary colds, but also TB, Covid, tuberculosis, diarrhea, and measles to western Europe, not to mention HIV (which in Eastern Europe is spread via IV drug use).

Which brings us back to Brucellosis. Before the war it was under control in the Ukraine because cattle etc were monitored.

but now, of course, the war has disrupted that monitoring. So a lot of diseases could get lose from the war...not just to humans but to animals (including African swine flu, brucellosis, rabies, etc).

Sick animals that need to be culled to stop the spread of various diseases is a big problem for farmers, but even more to the urban poor because this makes the price of meat, milk and eggs go up, so one sees malnutrition, especially in children.

The Ukraine war is threatening the food supply to places like the Middle East which relies on Russian and Ukraine wheat to feed their people.

Sigh.

but the Russians are correct in one thing: that suboptimal laboratory facilities in the Ukraine were a danger,  not because they were developing bioweapons, but from accidental lab leaks.

The real problem is quality control: corruption and carelessness has resulted in lab leaks of disease.

Which is why President Obama banned "gain of function" research from US labs because of quality control issues (and as a result the money was sent to Chinese labs to do this). 

Voila, the reason for the COVID coverup, and shame to the scientists who helped cover it up, because the result is a massive distrust of the medical and pharmacological establishment.

But of course that was not the only leak from a Chinese lab:

There was a leak of the deadly SARS1 virus, .in 2004..."The lab might have all the right rules, but the people may not comply! For example, notebooks are not supposed to be taken out, a lot of things like that. A virus doesn't jump on people!" Danchin (a Hong Kong epidemiologist) said.

nor was that the only time a lab leak caused disease:

This 2020 article from the Times of India reports that a lab leak from a Chinese lab making vaccines infected over 6000 people in NW China with Brucellosis.

the cause? They used out of date disinfectants. (i.e. corruption: selling and/or buying out of date stuff that should have been discarded, to make a profit)...The factory had used expired disinfectants in July to August and the germs entered the waste water to infect those nearby.

 
No, that lab was not making a bioweapon, but was there to stop the spread of Brucellosis: China has about 40 000 cases of Brucellosis a year, mainly in their NW where it is pastureland.

sigh

Summary: Labs do vital work to monitor and prevent the spread of infectious disease. But these labs can be a danger if people get careless, (Wikipedia even has a list of these).

The military is often involved in this reaseach, not to weaponize germs but because armies are vulnerable to disease, a problem first noticed after the friendly ladies of Naples decimated the troops of the French king by giving them syphillis in the 1490s.

(one reason that the infectious disease specialists in the military are worried about monkey pox, which is spread by similar friendly contact, although no one wants to admit it).

Well, anyway, the discussion of Brucellosis would not be complete without discussing one of it's most famous victims: Florence Nightingale.

In the latest Downton Abbey film, the acid tongued Dowenger Countess (Maggie Smith) makes a remark that she could stay in bed, remarking that Florence Nightingale took to her bed for 30 years.

Yes, when I was in medical school, Freudian theory was in vogue and this was pointed out to us as a neurosis, never mind that from her bed she managed to modernize modern nursing by publishing books and supervising nurses training.

But since then, articles noted that she was infected with "Crimea fever" aka Brucellosis and that this might have been the reason for her chronic ill health.

Florence Nightingale's Crimean fever and chronic illness have intrigued historians for more than a century and a half. The purpose of this article is threefold: (a) to discuss the facts that point to the cause of Nightingale's Crimean fever as brucellosis, (b) to show that her debilitating illness for 32 years (1855-1887) was compatible with the specific form of chronic brucellosis, and (c) to present new evidence that she was still having severe symptoms in December 1887, when it was previously felt that she had no severe symptoms after 1870.

One of the results of the Crimean war was that it was a milestone in public health and military medicine. 

And the person who was given credit for this was Florence Nightingale (albeit the docs who were also involved are usually overlooked, as are the ladies and nuns who worked with her). 

Most of the casulaties in that war were from ordinary diseases from unclean water (cholera, diarrhea) and lice borne disease...so the first thing that needed to be done was clean up the place....

but Ms Nightingale didn't stop there.

A less known fact about her is her collection of statistics that was a pioneer study in public health.

 

....

which again brings us to laboratories and public health authorities who are quietly fighting disease and given little credit.

Alas, because a few big shots helped China coverup Covid, and because Big Pharm covered up the rare side effects of the vaccine, the conspiracy types are going all out to destroy these institutions.

as the saying goes: A pox on both their houses.

what is the calling of an artist

 I am not an artist, but quite old fashioned about art. But I am surrounded by Lolo's family, who are artists and designers of avant garde art.

So right now I am reading Ai Weiwei's memoir 1000 years of Joys and Sorrows...

....

....

.. Smithsonian article here.

...

he has been in the news laterly because three of his sculptures were stolen from a German museum a few weeks ago:

One of the sculptures by Ai Wei Wei stolen from a gallery in Hamburg.COURTESY HAMBURG POLICE

this sculpture is about the environmental degradation.

Khan academy discusses his works protesting mass culture, and protesting corruption leading to shoddy school construction that resulted in the deaths of several thousand children when their schools collapsed:

Perhaps the work that contributed most to Weiwei’s current imprisonment and the destruction of his studio was his investigation of corruption in the construction of the schools that collapsed during the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan, China. 

of course here in the west he might soon be canceled for hinting he might be anti vax...

Hunger is coming. Does anyone care?

 Hunger is coming. and it will make the covid crisis look like child's play.

Dr. C actually has a video about it: Like myself, he has worked public health in poor countries and knows the relationship between hunger/ malnutrition and health. 

What happens in the Ukraine will affect the world's ability to feed itself (that wheat goes to much of the Middle East, and has done so for over two milleneum). And then there is the potash/ fertilizer problem. And of course, Russia supplies LPG for much of Europe, who, thanks to green policies, shut down their own nuclear and coal plants, and stopped fracking or pumping to use their own petroleum resources.

The reporting about the war in the Ukraine is full of propaganda and rah rah rah by folks who up to two years ago were anti war. 

But even (ex banker/writer) Spengler notes it was an un necessary war. link

voting would have allowed a peaceful separation from the Ukraine, and Russia could have gotten back the areas that were never part of the Ukraine.

and now that the adverse effects are finally being seen by the world, we see Kissinger and now Biden  saying huh maybe we should make peace.

Yup that sounds about right.

but will they settle it before Turkey and Egypt have a food crisis?

for us here in Asia, the problem is that another pull back/war failure by Biden will be seen as weakness by China, who will probably move on Taiwan (although the perception of a Russian victory might stop them from claiming Siberia for a couple of years).

This will of course affect the Philippines.

But right now the problem is our economy: unemployment, inflation, the lack of fertilizer (and what is available is much more expensive... even organic fertilizer prices have skyrocketed) and of course there has been a huge increase in the price of petroleum products.

Let me fill you in on what is happening in our rural area, which is one of the major rice growing areas here.

We are preparing the fields to plant the rice crop, and money is short.

We grow organic rice and sell it under our our product name, but with the problem of shipping it to Manila during the epidemic, we also planted some regular rice and sold it to a rice dealer to insure we had some income.

In the past, she was reliable, but for the last (winter crop) harvest, her check bounced, so we are left without about one third of our income from last year. 

The rice business is complicated because the Philippines is not self sufficient in rice and imports a lot: and alas a lot of what is imported is cheaper than what the local farmers grow, so local farmers can't make ends meet. 

The same problem occurs with onions, which are a big crop in our area, 

and we also ran into problems when we raised broiler chieckens: imported chicken was cheaper, so we barely made ends meet, so when a typhoon destroyed our chicken houses a few years ago, we simply didn't rebuild them.

in other words, globalization hurts us, and it doesn't help that some businessmen/politicians can make a lot of profit importing cheap stuff that destroys local industry and farms.

Sigh.

We are preparing the fields for the next rice crop: and since much of our product (i.e. the organic rice) is subcontracted to local farmers, that means we lend them our handplows and/or fix what they have, and also lend them money to buy diesel to run the farm equipment.

The problem: Diesel, gasoline, and LPG prices have gone up, meaning the farm machinery will be more expensive to run, and although usually the rain is sufficient for the summer crop, if irrigation is needed, they will have to buy diesel to run the pumps.

https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/Philippines/diesel_prices/

then there is basic problems of transportation. No, not gas guzzling SUVs but farm trucks and tricycles.

Sir Mervs from Metro Sta. Rosa, Philippines - daily overload..

Locals in our area usually go around with motorcycles with side cars: aka Tricycles. For longer trips, they use buses and jeepneys. And so when the price of petroleum products go up, so does the cost of commuting to work, school. shopping, etc.

and for cooking, most people use LPG (aka propane) gas, and that price has gone up from 580 to almost 900 pesos for about a month supply. Electric rates have also gone up. 

So you can see that inflation is hurting folks, and unless the economy starts up (including jobs for overseas workers) there will be problems. 

Which is one reason that BongBong Marcos won: because his opponant was echoing the green agenda and the sexual policies pushed by the Yankees. And the stupid Catholic bishops here backed her: they are so busy worshipping Pope Francis'and his green agenda they don't see how this policy will push millions of working class folk back into poverty.

Shit, the bishops even told people not to invest in fossil fuels because global warming. Never mind that this merely means the prices of (imported) petroleum products will go up, and the poor will suffer. And of course, China will happily take over our petroleum resources in the West Philippine sea (although I suspect Bong Bong will make them allow us to keep a pittance of the profit).

Sigh.

in the meanwhile, while the press was full of the latest criminal mass murder and the kerfuffle of two narcissistic movie stars suing each other, Davos man is planning to take us over.

ZeroHedge, which many call a conspiracy site, has a summary of what is being said there.

and they are not then only ones who notice that these unelected elites plan to tell us how to live.

 

 hmm... is it fake news to actually quote what these bozos say?

j,,// os ot....

cat item of the week: wildcats

the cat is domesticated, but there are small cats in the wild who still hunt and are considered wild cats from Natureblog:

there are 40 species of wild cats on the planet, and you probably haven’t heard of most of them. Many of them are small, nocturnal and elusive. They often also face similar conservation issues to the big cats.

 

more here: ........

Cultural imperialism: obey or lose foreign aid

 Basic anthropology: The family is the basis for society. 

In most countries, before modernity, it was the family who cared for the sick, the old, the young, and the pregnant.

When war, famine, or poverty leads to migration, it is the family ties that suffer: which is why the Philippines, where ten percent of folks move overseas ( permanently or temporarily) for jobs, it is the children who are at risk. When people work overseas to support their family, usually the children are cared for by grandparents or extended family in the home town. This is a problem in many poorer countries where opportunities for decent wages are limited.

This is the result of a philosophy of capitalism, where efficiency and low wages encourage migration, either to cities or to other countries  so factories etc. will have cheap labor, and rich women with careers will have cheap caregivers to take care of their kids. Never mind that the caregivers have to leave their kids at home to be cared for by grandmom.

In Africa and in parts of Asia, colonial powers implemented policies to exploit local labor... villagers saw how men had to work in the mines or plantations to support their family: a deliberate policy by the colonial government. But few liberals in the west saw this as a problem. 

when fathers (and sometimes mothers) were forced to work for wages, often far from their traditional villages, the extended family was affected: without the extended family nearby, there was literally no one they could trust in times of trouble, since often co workers were from other communities.

 all of this weakened the lines of trust and community standards that supported the social fabric of village life.

But if traditional mores were still alive albeit weakened in villages, in cities is was almost non existant. This was especially true in places where men were hired but lives in dormatories and could not bring family with them, (e.g. South African mines, or todays' OFW in the Middle East). So the workers ended up isolated. 

Women, often hired as caregivers, were a bit better if the family they worked for gave them support, but often they too were overworked and left without emotional support, leading to run away workers living in the grey economy (illegally) or even suicide to escape the abuse.

We missionaries tried to keep the damage to a minimum by educating and providing medical care in rural areas, but in cities, the family destruction by economic policies and the loss of extended family ties was horrific: millions of children became street kids, vulnerable to sexual abuse and crime.

Sigh.

The Protestant churches (especially those who preached the prosperity gospel) did help in cities: because the lines of trust now could be extended to fellow church members and individuals were encouraged to outreach to their neighbors and preach a gospel that included strict moral standards and taught that if you lived a moral life you could become prosperous.

of course, it is not just the Christian churches doing this: one reason for the upsurge of Islamic fundamentalism is because people need structure and rules in times of chaos. Buddhist, Hindu, and Confucian outreaches do the same thing in Asian countries.

Societies change, and modernity and adjustment from village life to city life causes harm, but when the alternative is rural poverty and starvation, you can see that in the long run the evolution from rural to city life helps people.

But what about the family? 

If you notice, it is the churches (and mosques, and temples etc.) who are encouraging the family: either the natural family or for the isolated workers in the cities, the ties of trust to fellow church members.

Something that is rarely discussed by western intellectuals, who see the family as a tyranical patriarchy that must be destroyed.

yet without family, you get literal chaos and anarchy and drugs and crime and unrest and young men who see no hope so turn to terrorism.

One would expect that western countries would implement policies that encourage countries to implement policies that support family and community ties.

But instead, the Biden administration and the rich western countries are promoting family destruction under the guise of gay rights, something that Pope Francis has called cultural imperialism.

Old fashioned imperialism merely exploited people to work, destroyed the environment, and confisticated land that was farmed by local families to make plantations to enrich western owners.

But modern cultural imperialism seeks to impose a western individualism that isn't even accepted among Americans but it is the religion of the woke: That sexual hedonism and lifestyles that see material goodies is the aim of life, so that self control and taking responsibility is ridiculed.

So now, it is in the name of "human rights" that rich western countries are promoting so called gay friendly policies that will destroy the family in poor countries: 

But without a family, in the rich west you end up with people on welfare. In poor countries, you end up with anarchy, drugs, and crime.

And poorer countries ignore their policies at their own peril because if they don't implement these policies, the west will withhold funding for development.

From CFAM:

Only 61 out of 194 countries voted in favor of a new strategy of the World Health Organization to combat HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases that was backed by the Biden administration and other Western delegations.

This came in a frantic late night session on the final day of the World Health Assembly last Saturday.

why are these controversial things always pushed late at night on weekends? maybe so no one will notice what is going on? 

Thirty countries abstained and ninety chose not to cast a vote at all because of “non-consensual” language about homosexuality, transgenderism, comprehensive sexuality education, and sexual autonomy for children.

translation: encouraging underage teenagers that it's okay to have sex, which makes them vulnerable to teachers and sexual predators. 

Among these were most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa where HIV/AIDS has the highest prevalence. The strategy was nonetheless adopted because many countries that object to the sexual policies of the West are also reliant on global assistance and therefore understand they cannot block the agenda overtly.

The new global strategy shuns abstinence, fidelity, and other risk-avoidance strategies, which aren’t mentioned even once.

other avoidance strategies include polygamy, which Zimbabwe encouraged to slow down the epidemic there.

In Malaysia, they instituted outreach to sex workers and high risk folks but also promoted the idea that such behavior was not to be accepted by the general publid.

It promotes a harm-reduction approach instead. This involves providing expensive drugs and prophylactics to enable sexually promiscuous individuals, men who have sex with men, and others who engage in high-risk behaviors to continue to do so.

We see this in the USA, where if you even hint that a gay man who has promiscuous sex with a dozen people a week is doing something harmful and maybe wrong, so shut up...

And in countries where sex tourism is seducing young people into unhealthy lifestyles, a lot of countries see this as a western way to exploit their children, in the same way that colonialism (western powers) and neo colonialism (multinationa corporations and China) exploited their children and led to the families being destroyed.

........

Soon: Starlink

Back in 2006, an earthquake near Taiwan cut our internet for weeks after a 7.0 earthquake cut 9 internet cables.

this disrupted our internet, but also a lot of business and bank internet traffic, and not only affected the Philippines but disrupted business in other Asian countries that used these cables to send information to the US.

Other problems that could threaten our local internet (especially for those of us living in the rural Philippines) are local typhoons/floods/earthquakes and even volcanic eruptions. Luckily, however, usually the cellphone towers enable folks to keep in touch with relatives, so we could connect via cellphone for email and vital information: And indeed, when we were hit with a big typhoon a couple years back and had no water or electric service for two weeks, our neighbors would come and charge up their cellphones from our generator so they could stay in touch with their relatives.

So the Philippines is at risk for internet problems if China decides to continue pushing us around, but the main problem will come if they invade Taiwan and start blocking internet cables near there or in the West Philippine sea.

So I was happy to read in the Inquirer that the Philippines is okaying Starlink.... something that should benefit us if we decide to move to the farm to live, and of course would benefit those in even more isolated areas of the Philippines.

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Information and Communications Technology’s (DICT) speedy approval of SpaceX-Starlink’s requirements will allow the country to enjoy breakthrough internet services through Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite network constellation consisting of over 1,600 satellites. Starlink promises to deliver up to 200 Mbps broadband speeds particularly on “geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas (GIDA)” that is hard to reach with a fiber connection. 

So good news all around.

When Russia disrupted the internet for the Ukraine, Starlink satellites were repositioned quickly so they could communicate with each other and with the outside world, at a time when the west was still dithering and contemplating their navels to figure out if they should help or not.

So Starlink might take another weapon away from Chinese bullying other Asian nations from helping Taiwan if they decide to invade that country... which is why China is trying to figure out how to destroy these satellites,

..... 

and of course all that lovely money gifted to a certain US politician's cocaine using son, not to mention gifts of oodles of money to environmental groups, isn't why the US government  is so aggressive at delaying Musk from using Cape Canavral, claiming they need to do an environmental review (of an area that has been used to launch rockets since the early 1960s.)