Musical interlude of the day

 

why are the experts imposing green sanctions that will increase hunger?

..

...

,,,,,,and they plan the same thing for Ireland and the farmers are portesting. From the Irish Times:

Emissions deal: Farming and environmental groups criticise 25% agriculture cut Government move a ‘sell-out of our family farm model’ which would make ‘whole classes of farms unviable’, ICMSA says...Considerably larger cuts are being sought from other areas, including a 75 per cent reduction from electricity, 50 per cent from transport, 45 per cent from commercial and public buildings, 40 per cent from residential buildings and 35 per cent from industry.,,,However, the total of all sectors’ emission cuts will not achieve the 51 per cent reduction by 2030 that has been set down in law. Instead, 26 million tonnes of carbon reductions are “unallocated” between 2026 and 2030, meaning further measures will be required to achieve them.....

 so who decided to do these things? The decisions are coming from the elites, not the people.

In the meanwhile, the G7 and Biden claim they are worried about world hunger, and plan to blame Russia when this happens. From USA Today last month:

Biden, G-7 leaders will try to prevent millions from starving to death after war in Ukraine dramatically escalated food shortages Russia, which is blocking grain from leaving Ukraine, may hold "most of the cards."

so blame Russia, while the western elite are cutting back fossil fuels by forbidding drilling, by cutting back pipelines etc. while ignoring that this also means no fertilizer, which is made from methane.,. and that increasing the price of fuel means higher costs in using farm machinery and shipping food to markets.

and for good measure, they are implementing "Green"policies that order farmers not to grow food.

Who do you believe?

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and then you have this discussion.

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Mosher is the one who dared to expose the massive forced abortion policy of China under their 2 child policy in the 1980s: something that few western countries noticed because their reporters were in cities and mainly reported/echoed what was told to them:

at the end they discuss monkey pox. Well, today the Inquirer says one person admitted to the Philippines has it, and had contact with ten people (only 3 in his family... uh, who are the other 7? Neighbors or sexual contacts?)... uh, does this mean there will be a massive epidemic among the gay community and sex tourists in Makati etc.?

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update: An April article from the Asahi.com in Japan states these goals were discussed back then. And points fingers on who or what is behind these massive cuts:

with the Biden administration in the United States also taking a more aggressive stance on climate change, some U.S media reports have said Washington is seeking a new goal of 50 percent reduction in comparison to 2005 levels.

washington? Who in Washington? the activists of course, not the people, because no one noticed what was going on. 

 According to undisclosed government documents, other nations are using bases of comparison that are close to Japan’s fiscal 2013 base year.

uh what documents? 

If 2013 was set as the base year for the other nations, the EU goal would be a 43-percent reduction, while the U.S. goal would be a 45-percent reduction. If Japan wants to set a goal that keeps it in the same ballpark as those figures, it will have to be at least 40 percent.

 

Further consideration will be given to the exact target figure as well as the expressions used to set the new goal, officials said.

uh, want to guess the new goals will be for even more cut backs? 

and finally we have someone who dares name she who must not be named: TADA! 

Under the Paris Accord on climate change agreed to in 2015, the goal is to keep global temperatures to within two degrees of the level before the Industrial Revolution and, if possible, to only have global temperatures rise by 1.5 degrees from pre-industrial levels.

ah wonderful. Let's live in a world of famines and poverty that have almost disappered thanks to the industrial revolution. 

wait a second: The US didn't agree to that treaty, because to institute this into law, according to the constitution, it has to be ratified by the Senate.

Ah, but the MSM echo chamber at Newsweek says hey no, it is legal because the president did it by executive order. 

Dirty little secret: The real bombshell of the Supreme court was not their ruling over abortion but the court case sent by West Virginia that said you couldn't do that. From the daily surge:

in West Virginia, the court corrected another usurpation of the legislative prerogative—this one by the EPA. It is very encouraging for those who believe in the rule of law to see the Supreme Court take a clear stand that each branch of government must stay in its own lane and restrict itself to exercising only the powers and responsibilities assigned to its own branch.

nuaced explanation at Reason blog 

 

the WAGD post of the day

 

an old fashioned funeral

 The family down the street is burying their grandson, a man in his late 30s who died of a heart attack, or maybe alcoholism. So all week the family has held the wake, meaning that the dogs, hearing people coming and going, keep barking to say: hey someone is here. So I haven't had a good nights sleep for a week.

The wake for middle class folk here is held in the home: usually in the parlor, where when you visit and say a prayer and then sit and are given a small snack to eat while you  talk for about an hour before you go home.

But outside, they have tents for the men, who mainly are here at night, drinking and playing cards. (although this gentleman is Iglesia, so maybe no alcohol).

The wake usually lasts until the family arrives: In this case, his family from Japan who arrived a few days ago, and the last onne they were waiting for was the mother to arrive from London where she now lives. 

Last night, they had singing and music (in this case, a professional singer with a small band), which is common. And today, they had the local band playing sad music, which will continue until they move to the church and then the cemetary, with most of the people walking behind the hearse. (about a mile).

the hearse is a large car, but sometimes they use a horse drawn hearse to carry the casket (the horses used to graze in the fields across the street, but now that houses have been build on those plots they only keep one horse in town and the rest on their farm).

Very sad. 

After the person is buried, on the way home, you stop and eat, often at a restaurant (the idea is that the ghost who might follow you will get confused and not follow you home).

Most of the burials here are in concrete boxes above ground; due to the high water level...but some in the newer part of the cemetary are American style, underground with a small gravestone to make the place.

This is the older part of the cemetary, where Lolo's mother is buried;

Lolo's grave is here: sort of a small open house with a roof. He didn't want it to be closed in, but after vandalism and litter, we added a door and bars on the window.

 
Some of these houses are quite elaborate: with running water and a chapel. In Manila, some poor people (squatters) actually live in the cemetaries, often with permission from the family since the alternative is having everything stolen.

On November 1, when we commemorate our dead, everyone goes to the cemetary and cleans up the grave and lights candles and puts flowers on the grave. Then you stay for awhile and eat a snack. Usually there are vendors with water, soft drinks and snacks, and selling candles, and selling toy for the kids to play with so they don't get bored. It is not sad but like a family reunion picnic. Alcohol is forbidden by law to keep down the rowdiness.

Usually those living in Manila go back to their home towns to do this, although there are huge cemetaries in Manila.

Most people still are buried here, although in Manila they do cremations.

And for overseas deaths, it usually means cremation and bringing the ashes home.

For example, our niece just died in the USA, and they held the services there, with many of her family visiting for the funeral, and some stayed until the day 40 celebration, when you have the goodbye to the spirit. Since she wanted to be buried here, her sister brought her ashes back and they will hold a mass before they bury them in the plot with her brother.

the major mourning period lasts for 40 days.

I remember in the US, pre Vatican II, the family would attend a mass on the 40th day but it is not a big thing there.

But apparently this is a custom not just for Catholics but for other religions too.

Family news

 no we are not near the earthquake: we only felt a small vibration here.

Propaganda vs public health

 Propaganda says: Covid. Obey rules or we're all gonna die.

BBM says no more shut down despite an increase in cases of the newest covid variation. His aim is to get the economy going.

Good, since the dirty little secret is that despite a suspected huge number of cases, (few reported cases, because no one is getting tested for cold symptoms, but communinty surveillence suggests huge numbers) the actual death rate is low.

2,778 new cases and 11 new deaths in the Philippines

ah, but what is going on? Dengue is back: Inquirer headline:

DOH: Over 73,000 dengue cases logged since January

and 280 deaths from Dengue so far this year.

again, from the Inquirer; the government has a plan to restart spraying insecticide to stop mosquitoes and encouraging people to wear clothes etc to stop mosquitoes from biting them. 

-“Search and destroy” mosquito-breeding sites -employ “Self-protection measures” (i.e. wearing long pants and long sleeved shirts, and daily use of mosquito repellent)-“Seek early consultation” -“Support fogging/spraying” only in hotspot areas where an increase in cases is registered for two consecutive weeks to prevent an impending outbreak.

The DOH earlier said that the rising number of dengue infections in the country is “alarming,” and urged the public to be vigilant against the disease and monitor the number of cases. 

this is higher than last year, where there were 73 thousand cases for the entire year. 

A couple of years ago, when there was an outbreak, we had a lot of spraying, including the city sending a guy to spray our business compound and check for poor drainage areas. But with covid, I haven't seen any spraying being done. So apparantly this will be restarted in the near future.

Our area is one of the high risk areas, and our cook says there is a huge outbreak and some deaths in her native province in the Visayas. And now our secretary has a high fever and has avoided getting checked for fear of getting covid from visiting the hospital lab to get tested (I ordered her to go this morning, sending the cook with her to make sure she sees a doctor, so tests are pending).

picture from http://www.nhp.gov.in/

But dengue is an ongoing problem, not a new epidemic, so it has not been weaponized to frighten people into obeying the experts. 

There are basic public health mearsures for diseases, and one problem with insect borne diseases is that the green types banned DDT and oppose spraying for mosquitoes. Nevertheless, we expect spraying to restart soon.

and dengue is not the only public health worry here in the Philippines: Childhood vaccinations are down, meaning that ordinary diseases like tetanus, diphtheria, polio, measles etc will start killing children, not just here, but all over the world.

however, don't expect to read anything about these things: the headlines I am reading are hyperventillating about monkey pox, which is being spread by close skin to skin contact in bodily areas where microabraisions allow the virus to infect you. 

But one difference: unlike covid, which had government shutting down churches, gyms, schools, reataurants etc. for two years, I haven't seen anyone trying to shut down Pride celebrations and high risk party agendas because civil rights for gays is more important than keeping them healthy. (/s). 

There is an experimental vaccine for this, but without isolation and basic quarantine measures the disease might spread faster than the shots can be given..

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Propaganda on global warming is the big thing now that covid panic has gone down.

the sky is falling! the Sky is falling!

cut back cowfarts, pesticides, fertilizer, and crops that produce greenhouse gases so that global warming can be stopped we are told.

and let the price of diesel/gasoline/LPG go up so you wicked SUV drivers will stop driving and use a bicycle. (never mind that farmers need cheap fuel to grow and transport food).

That is propaganda: 

remember when mass starvation was predicted by Ehrlich in the 1980s?

 Noman Bourlaug messed up that prediction, probably saved two million lives, and is almost unknown in today's world.

Never mind... but notice that the same Malthusian loving experts are still there: but now they are pushing the same agenda under the guise of global warming.

That propaganda now says we have to get rid of the green revolution to save the planet, and if poor people starve? they'll blame it on global warming.. and hey, the dirty little secret is that they want depopulation so losing millions of unproductive poor people would not be seen as a problem. Not a new philosophy among the elites, as anyone with Irish ancestors can tell you.

Inflation and hunger could kill millions in the near future, so embracing modern technology should be a partial answer: 

but that hasn't stopped the EU from implementing the agenda of green activists who want to go back to the past. 

This type of thinking was a disaster for Sri Lanka, and bodes poorly for other countries if they obey the experts and start using the same policy.

and now they are pushing it on farmers in Europe and in the USA.There are reports of farmers demonstrating in the Netherlands because the greens are telling them not to plant and to kill their cattle etc. to stop global warming...

The Dutch government plans to drastically reduce emissions of nitrogen oxide and ammonia, which are produced by livestock and fertilizer, by 2030. Cuts could reach 70% and even as high as 95% in some areas, under a plan recently adopted by Netherland lawmakers. For some Dutch farmers they see the writing on the wall and are fighting back because of it..

and the article goes into details of various methods of farming, and notes that environmental groups are using bureaucrats in the US to target US Farmers too.

there are reports of other countries having similar demonstrations, although the extend of these demonstrations has not been put into context so it is hard to judge what is going on there.

In contrast, BBM is vowing to help the small farmers to modernize, get fertilizer and help with planting rice (it is rice planting season right now).

there is an impending food crisis in the world, and we import rice, so helping small farmers to mechanize and grow high yield rice hybrids would lower the imports.

and to complicate the problem? Our stupid Catholic bishops are pushing the green agenda against cheap diesel, and are anti GMO crops. Because save the planet. 

In the meanwhile, what is going on elsewhere? Lots of confused reports about Russia and Ukraine's wheat crop (which goes to the Middle East). One report worried that the Ukraine isn't planting: which assumes they plant in the Spring...but isn't wheat a winter wheat product in the Ukraine?, or do they grow it in summer? Don't ask me: it isn't clear. Reuters reported the harvest in the spring of the Ukraine's winter wheat was good.

and part of the problem is that the war could block shipping of grain.

so one would expect the US and Europe to try to fill in the gap to give their customers an alternative source of food.

But nooo.... 

and then there is drought in East Africa. 

Actually, droughts in East Africa are common and happen every couple of years.

However,  irrigation and eliminating the tsetse fly would enable East Africa to become another breadbasket similar to Kansas...if the greens don't stop them.

Dirty little secret: when Zimbabwe had a famine, the government would not let the donated US grain be imported for fear it was GMO. No word on how many died from that type of craziness.

the good news: China is now investing in Africa's infrastruture, partly because they see it as a way to feed their population in the future. And unlike western green friendly NGO's, I suspect China would push modern methods to do this (read pesticides, GMOs fertilizer etc).

Musical interlude of the day

 

......

Rhapsody, by James Parker.

The entire album can be downloaded from Internet archives.

We ran across this lovely song from the British TV series Midsomer Murders  (s08E08) (the plot was about people maipulating the original manuscript of the music to claim part of the royalties, so the script includes a few grisley murders, of course. )

But the music was so wonderful we googled and found it was written by James Parker, who does the themesong and background music for the series. He is one of these little noticed musicians who write background music for TV/Film dramas.

The theme music of the show is eerie, to say the least:

the musical instrument playing that eerie sound is a Theremin: an instrument that you play without touching it. Here is a film about this instrument:

,,,,,,,

Music, Space, Covid and Fertilizer

There is a new film out about the song American Pie.

Lyrics here.

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and then there is the movie about Elvis. Ruby saw it and said it was good, but I haven't discovered where to watch it...Supposedly it will be on HBOMax in August, but we only have ordinary HBO on our cable network so it might be awhile until we see it..

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for those of us who are old, it might be good to remember when mankind first stepped upon the moon 53 years ago.

in other Space news, the photos of NASA's Webb telescope are amazing.

but the biggests space news is not NASA, but private enterprise, (especially Space X, but also other private companies), China, and smaller countries are also doing this.

Behind the Black follows the various space news.

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but are things starting to turn around after a 50 year descent into depravity and destruction?

Well, on the medical front, the latest Ebola epidemic in central Africa is over. Bet you didn't even know it happened.

A total 11,139 (alive) and 161 (deaths) alerts were investigated; 1,076 contacts were identified and followed; 909 laboratory samples (805 blood and 104 swab) were tested and 2,037 persons vaccinated (301 contacts vaccines, 1301 contacts of contacts and 435 Health care workers).

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here, covid is still around (about 2000 cases a day but few deaths) but the real number is  probably much higher because the community surveillence numbers of random population is higher. 

The government is pushing vaccine booster, but they are not popular, so the gov't might have to throw out a huge number of out of date shots.

 I got my basic AZ vaccine, but no booster. Why? Because the original vaccine was for the original Covid virus, and it doesn't work well against mutations like Omicorn varient. 

But the good news is that this is mild and a lot fewer deaths from it. For example, no recent covid deaths: just the normal ones (and only one of the neighbors, who was dying from heart problems, tested positive). But the cases mean that some beds are set aside for covid isolation. 

We have elders from the area die every couple of days,  But the neighborhood is upset because a neighbor's 40 year old grandson just died of a heart attack. No he didn't just get the vaccine and he didn't have covid. He had cirrhosis from alcoholism.

our main problem now is Dengue fever, the fact that a lot of kids didn't get their routine shots, and the worry about the high price of food that could cause hunger in the next few months.

The high price of diesel and fertilizer. BBM is trying to find cheap fertilizer for the small farmers, but if they can't improve things, a lot of small farmers will go broke and the crop will be smaller than usual.

On top of this, there is a bird flu epidemic in local poultry, meaning fewer chickens and higher prices for KFC /Jolibee fried chicken and balut.

Covid is still a major problem: a huge increase in cases in Asia.

Much of Asia is in the midest of an outbreak of these varients: Japan reports 150 thousand cases, which is overwhelming their hospitals, partly because the staff is sick and/or in quarantine and unable to work. But deaths? Not so much. Indeed, it's hard to find the number of deaths. For example, this article reports everything in detail but at the end says:

The number of seriously ill patients in the capital was 18 on July 20, a decrease of one from the previous day.

this website reports 135,239 new cases and 54 new deaths in Japan

So why is China locking everyone down? And what is it about their bank problems?

if one has to take the MSM of the US with a bit of scepticism, one really has to wonder what news stories are being censored in China.

THen you have a worldwide farmers revolt against the green tyrants. From the ManilaTimes

The farmers' actions in the Netherlands mimicked previous protests around the world and could foreshadow similar uprisings against government overreach. For example, the so-called yellow vest movement in France began as a protest against increased nationwide fuel taxes. Similar protests could soon happen in the UK and parts of the European Union where natural gas and energy costs are near historic levels, according to Benny Peiser, the director of the London-based Global Warming Policy Foundation. In the UK, increased prices are expected to send 24 percent of households, or about 6.5 million households, into fuel poverty.

Outtakes from the (unreported) news

.feelgood story of the week: Hello Darkness, my old friend...The story behind the song.

Racism in medicine? Yup. we haz that

Many years ago, before Ireland became a land of immigrants, I was  visiting Ireland with a friend, and in rural Ireland, the kids would follow up, point and giggle and say "Sesame Street" then run away.

I asked her is it bothered her, and she answered: no. Here they point and say What is it. In the US they point and say oh no not one of them.

Racism is not just about race, but about economic structures, about cultural differences, and about differences in priorities for people.

And in medicine, the affluent mainly white idea that health is everything and that the disabled have a lousy quality of life so should be able to be helped to die, is just the tip of the iceburg of eugenics, that some folks are inferior.

This is more open in right wing discussion threads, but is often subtle in the left wing threads (where white upper class women show their superiority by tweeting and posting stuff that is anti religion, anti traditoinal values, and anti lower class people, and they don't notice that this includes folks of all sorts of races).

This interview is about racism in medicine, and how it is worse for those who are diabled, and how assisted suicide will become just one more means to oppress the poor and people of minority status.

it's not just about racism against blacks, since the mentally challenged, AmerIndians, Hispanics, and poor white community also have to fight the profit driven medical establishment (and the medical ethicists who see everything through a QALY prism, i.e. that how much should be spent on your care should be based on your quality of life and how many years you should be expected to live, i.e. as Dr Emmanuel and Dr Callahan have written: Don't waste money on grandmom's care if she is over 75.

when I was first in practice, I was in private practice and we docs wrote off a lot of free care. But as HMO's took over, it meant not being able to do this. And a lot of private stuff that we left out of the medical records now often were supposed to be recorded on the chart, where such secrets could be leaked (or snooped on by nosy relative or friends/enemies).

Medicine is now about filling in the blanks to get paid, not about chewing the fat with your patients to establish a bond of trust so when health disasters arrive, they trust you. But you know, a lot of the real issues people come to the doctor to discuss won't be mentioned unless they trust you: tThe Columbo syndrome: that you spend an hour trying to figure out what is wrong with the patient, and then, on the way out, they say: oh just one thing more...

When you work in a community, you have to be there long enough to get people to trust you. This is not easy if you work for an HMO or "doc in a box" where there is no continuity of care.

If you work in cross cultural medicine, you need to be sensitive to such things...And much of the black community is more sensitive to gaffes and prejudice Because they see it more often than others.

I should note that although I grew up in a mixed race neighborhood, that for most of my career I worked with other at risk minorities.

that which cannot be named

How did this videos get on youtube? Are the woke censors falling down?

 .

he actually predicted this four years ago LINK

the dirty little secret is that much of this is manipulation and has a larger agenda, that is so radical that even Pope Francis is worried about it.

 and that propaganda about affirming their choice (or merely saying you think you are the wrong sex after your teacher has groomed you to think so) means that the choice will get positive feedback, without any adult in the room saying: Wait a minute let's talk about this.

In the Philippines, we have baclas and tomboys and third gender, who are accepted as part of the family: But of course, mere acceptance is not the goal...the alphabet sexual agenda pushers are condemning the Phlippines because we don't have same sex marriage. 

We don't have abortion or divorce either, but as the experience in the US shows, by pushing same sex marriage you can then legally destroy the patriarchal family and the church.

I am old enough to remember visiting Ireland 40 years ago and finding that the news there was very anti Catholic. My Irish friend shrugged and said that the politicians thought that the only way they could make Ireland a modern country was to destroy the power of the Catholic church. And guess what? They did that: through propaganda and through bad bishops.

Coming to a country near you soon.

Sheesh.

this is not the only subject that cannot be discussed in MSM.

Mr Oliver takes off his historian cap and notes that the heads of government are not discussing the economic and social damage due to the lockdown.

Covid slightly up, but now we have a lot of dengue cases in the Philippines

 Covid cases are up a bit: only 

2,371 new cases and 1 new death in the Philippines with 16000 active case being treated. But testing the population shows a high positive rate of ten, suggesting there is a lot of covid circulating around. 

 but the real story is an increase in Dengue cases: and this is all over the country.Dengue cases hit nearly 65,000 from January to June 25; 90% up from last year (staying indoors might have lessened the cases last year, but now everyone is going outside).

we don't know anyone who got covid or dengue, in the last few weeks, but we were asked for money help to transfer a patient to the next town's hospital because the local public hospital is full ... from covid? (which means isolation beds, so fewer beds for non covid patients).

Dr Angie would know what's going on, but she is still in the USA attending the funeral of her sister I'm not sure what is going on in the hospitals.

Masks are still required indoors, but only about half of people on the street wear masks, although most at the palenke are waring a mask.(open air market).

there is a bird flu epidemic in the next province,The BAI disclosed that the confirmed cases of AI subtype H5N1 were recorded in the provinces of Bulacan, Pampanga, Nueva Ecija, Tarlac, Bataan, Laguna, Camarines Sur, Sultan Kudarat, Benguet, North Cotabato, South Cotabato, Davao del Sur, Maguindanao and Isabela. meaning that there might be a shortage of fried chicken at KFC and Jolibee.

we are close to Manila, so a lot of farmers put up chicken farms for either broilers or eggs, to supply the city dwellers. We had one set up on our high fields (hard to irrigate) until a typhoon blew them down a couple years ago.

A lot of farmers last year had to destroy their pigs due to African Swine flu, so the price of pork remains high.

We usually eat fish but often eat meat for supper, and in the last year for the first time since moving here, we have been frequently been eating beef in our ulam (the soup that you put over your rice). Of course, the beef tends to be tough (and sometimes is from waterbuffalo, not cattle).

the planting season has just started, so it's too early to tell if the rice will be a good harvest. Our late winter harvest was low due to rain, and due to the irrigation water being stopped to repair the canals before the rice was ready to harvest.

Sigh.

yes they still make movies like they used to

Want an offbeat story of a sports hero?

Try the Phantom of the Open.

...

and remember the Crowleys? They're back...

....

Because sometimes you just don't want to watch another superhero film full of special effects.

Blessed are the peacemakers

........

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Houses improve, society changes

 The British History Podcast page has a fascinating essay on the transformation of houses:

Somewhere in the 16th and 17th centuries, ordinary people started building differently – private buildings, public buildings. They used brick, glass, decoration and portraiture; and it wasn’t just the aristocracy; Yeomen, merchants, towns, husbandmen. The historian W G Hoskins gave it a name – the Great Rebuilding 

From the hall to the small house, from mud and wattle and timber to brick, to chimneys, to multiple rooms, to removing the pigs from the parlor to barns, etc. From smoke holes to chimneys. 

And it includes asides such as how "reformers" distrusted art, which deteriorated, but that when the monasteries were destroyed by Henry VIII (and given to the nobles and made them rich), it meant that the poor now no longer had help in times of troubles, but that eventually the small towns had to establish secular institutions to do the work of hospitals and schools.

Gresham college has a lecture on the rebuilding of London after the great fire.

and of coures, James Burke's Tv series Connections is about the evolution of technology.

here in the Philippines, over the last 25 years, the small bamboo thatched houses have gradually been replaced by termite proof but ugly concrete blocks.

wanderingbakya has illustrations of traditional houses of the Philippines

Our town, in an attempt to make us a tourist area, is trying to rehabilitate the traditional houses, which are sort of like split level design with capiz windows).

because of frequent flooding, in most traditional houses, the main room is raised to stay dry, and in Lolo's ancestral house, the floor boards have slits in them so that dirt will simply fall to below the house, which is used for animals and storing things.

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Reality check on Catholic renewal

Lots of news reports on how the Catholic church is organizing synods to push reform.

They have everything under control... or do they?

As Paul Harvey used to say: And here is the rest of the story.

The big shots forgot about a quiet African Cardinal who is out there  reminding them that the church is not about politics, but about holiness. 

You see, Cardinal Sarah released a new book late last year about the priesthood; Instead of parroting the PC line, he pointed out the real need was to renew the priests in holiness.

In a new book, Cardinal Robert Sarah calls priests to spiritual renewal, saying that it will not come through structural changes, but through rediscovering the priest’s mission and identity as the presence of Christ in the world.

“Christ never created structures. Of course, I’m not saying they aren’t necessary. Organization is useful in society, but it is not first,” Sarah said...

“What is first is the very first word of Christ in the Gospel of Mark: ‘Convert and believe in the Gospel.’”

The Vatican’s former liturgy chief published “Pour l’éternité: Méditations sur la figure du prêtre” (“For Eternity: Meditations on the Figure of the Priest”) in Europe on Nov. 17. 

The book, currently available only in French, includes passages from saints and the Church Fathers to encourage meditation on the renewal of the priesthood, which, according to the cardinal, is a necessary step on the way to resolving the crisis in the Catholic Church.

 

Cardinal Robert Sarah celebrates Mass in St. Peter's Basilica Sept. 28, 2019. (photo: Evandro Inetti/CNA / EWTN

I did read his last book on the priesthood, written with Benedict,(summary here) which is still only available in Italian but I pasted it page by page into google translate and managed to read it. 

It has a similar argument, and stresses the reasons behind church's traditions for celibacy and the need for prayer and holiness.

 and by releasing it at a time when the PC were ready to change the longstanding traditions of the church by using the "Amazon" synod as an excuse to change the rules that allow married priests (and eventually women priests).

Cardinal Sarah's book, coauthored by Pope Benedict, threw a monkey wrench into their plans. Duh.

Similarly, his new book is being released at a time when "synods" are again pushing the agenda of the woke in the church (i.e. married priests, allowing contraception, women priests, the agenda of gay activists, etc).

Synods are of course nonsense: They claim to want to talk to everyone, but are actually Astroturfing. 

as Wikipedia explains:

Astroturfing is the practice of masking the sponsors of a message or organization (e.g., political, advertising, religious or public relations) to make it appear as though it originates from and is supported by grassroots participants. It is a practice intended to give the statements or organizations credibility by withholding information about the source's financial connection...

it's easy to do. Activists are pushy, and have the time and energy to take over the leadership of many organizations, because ordinary folk have a life to lead. And if you oppose them, they quietly harass you often in a passive aggressive way, until you leave.

This is how activists destroyed a lot of orders of Catholic nuns, and now the same type is working with the pope to remake the catholic church in  his image, or in the image of the NWO...

This is the reason Catholics in diocese that are run by activist bishops, and why Christians of other liberal churches, have been fleeing these PC political churches for the past 50 years (not just in the USA but also here in the Phlippines and in South America, where Evangelicals have had a massive influx of believers).

So the synods are supposed to show grass roots support of the agenda, so how dare you oppose them?. Will these meetings get pushback? 

Maybe, if the Bishops start getting a backbone.

An example of this is the Australian bishops, who blocked the PC agenda in a meeting to the laments of the women and gay activists.

The article is biased of course; most of the quotes was by the activists. 

well, duh.

But why do all those attending this synod meeting seem to be of the left/woke church? Gay activists and women activists seem to be there en masse.

But what about the rest of us?

So do these synods ask the opinion of Catholics who joined Evangelical churches because of lack of holiness in their churches (something we see here in the Philippines and in South America where I also have family members)? 

Did they ask representatives of the Trad Catholics who are making an issue of the Latin mass for their opinions?

Heck, are they even inviting the quiet little old ladies in the pew like myself.? 

I'd love a nice vacation at a ritzy hotel to attend such a meeting...and unlike most little old ladies, I have credentials, if you count working with the "marginalized" and risking getting my ass shot off as a credential. But probably not: I am a secular doc. I didn't work for the church, nor work in the  bureaucracy, nor am I a member of any activist church groups. 

but you know, the real Christians who matter are not members of these groups, because they serve God in the lowly tasks of their daily lives, and are too busy to to to such meetings.

 Unlike the showy SJW activists with their self righteous posturing ordinary folks get their hands dirty. They teach in an inner city schools. The work at hospitals. They care for their family and accept their children even if the child is imperfect. Some actually adopt hard to place children, act as foster parents, or support a pregnant teenager in their family so she can have her baby instead of discarding it.

But  ordinary Catholic, who serves God in the duties of their daily lives, is not there: only activists. 

Sigh.

Will the Catholic bishops in the US oppose this synod farce? Given how Pope Francis just gave them the middle finger with letting Nancy Pelosi receive communion after he bishop warned her not to do this, one suspects there might be fights in the USA.

What about the Philippines? I have no idea: the bishops here are big into the green agenda and the bishops conference press releases tend to echo the twittersphere elite opinion, which echoes the agenda of the US left and sees social activism and working with the church as the way to serve God. Which is why the evangelical churches are growing, because they stress how to serve God in our daily lives.

On the other hand, here in the Philippines, we do have a lot of lay catholic groups, including many who are not run by the elite but are composed of ordianary Filipinos, including those who were OFW in areas with few priests, or working class charismatics. Both might oppose the PC agenda if they are allowed to be part of the synod.

If you want a summary by a lay reporter in a secular newspaper on what is going on,  read SandroMagister, an Italian reporter, who has two articles on this: one about the so called synods and the agenda behind them, and his most recent one on Cardinal Sarah and the catholics trying to stop the secular activists from taking over the church.

The good Cardinal doesn't just critique the PC arguments of reform, he quotes church fathers and points out previous times when the church was facing major attacks from secular authorities to obey Caesar, not God.

For example, Sarah's book discusses the reform of the church in the 11th and 12th century (when secular authorities tried to take over the church, appointing bishops and essentially telling the bishops what they should do... in contrast, Gregory and later reformers insisted church and state were separate and God's law outranks the law of mere men.)

hmm. that part sounds like how Henry VIII took over the church to change the law on divorce, but also is a big warning about a modern policy of Francis, who following the advice of McCarrick, has essentially let communist China take over the church there.

Sigh. But that is another topic for another time.

-------------------update:

Blame Mother Angelica who stopped the PC bishops from taking over her network, and the layfolk who run the network

restoring democracy in the USA?

 Newsweek has a long editorial by Jonathan Tobin discussing the implications of the Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency.

He puts it into the context of stopping the power grab by the unelected administrative state that has been overstepping the law. Read the whole thing:

If the USA is not to sink into a civil war, the first step might be to actually allow input by it's citizens instead of special interest groups who have an agenda. 

This means stopping courts (as in RvW) and the bureaucrats (in the latest EPA expansion by unelected bureaucrats) from making laws without the messy input of democratic discussion and input. 

Yes, there is a need for expertise (which is why the US is a republic, like ancient Rome (which lasted 500 years) and not a democracy like Athens, where demagogues took it over by manipulating public opinion within a century).

What is interesting in the Newsweek editorial is why it was opposed by some justices in the SC and of course most of the MSM: the idea that climate change is too important to be left to the voter.

...With respect to the EPA, the Left is fully convinced that the urgency of climate change means that the Constitution and democracy can be thrown out the window.

As even Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent after a lengthy dissertation on the horrors of global warming and the theories about it leading to planetary doom, "Whatever else this court may know about, it does not have a clue about how to address climate change." She's right about that, but the Supreme Court's purpose isn't to make or approve environmental policy.

italics mine. 

Hmm... this argument sounds more like Alex Jones, Glenn Beck, or other right wing conspiracy nuts who see both covid and Climate change as either hoaxes or as real problems that are being exaggerated so the New World Order can take over....

As in the Great Reset... link2.

... 

Ironically, although most of the whistleblowers on the WEF tend to be right wing nuts, I am so old that I remember when such theories were believed by the Left. 

Maters of Mankind indeed...

Professor Chomsky, call your office. They are still at it, but under a different name...

Toxic masculinity is back

 

 The sword scene, like many of the scenes in the later ST4, is a reference to a film: LOTR, where Aragorn picks up a sword and wacks the enemy in many scenes...

LOTR is full of toxic masculinity...

except when it isn't . ... 

 ST4 is good, and fighting monster is done by both the girls and the boys...and if you watch it for a second time, you might note a lot of other film references:

 

The child is God's child

 I just watched Outlander, and it included this scene:

---

backstory: The baby was born a dwarf, and Jamie notes that sometimes superstitious folk would say the child was accursed and would abandon it in the woods for the fairies to care for.

 
Here, the local children put the baby in the water to see if he would float, an ancient way to diagnose witchcraft. But the baby's uncle Roger rescues the child and stresses he is a child of God, and then baptizes him to emphasize the point.

Why do I bring this up? Because a few days ago I read a news story where a mother justified aborting her near term infant because it had musculo skeletal problems not seen early in pregnancy but found on a later ultrasound, and she aborted her much wanted child because the doctors said the defects might be fatal... from the description it sounds like either dwarfism or a meningocoel: both of which are not fatal.

Like the children in the story, the doctors see a life not worth living: and one does doubt that the mother was given a chance to talk to people who had coped with handicapped children who might not agree with the doctors.

...every baby is a miracle

Musical interlude of the week

 

A cure for Sickle cell disease?

 I remember having a strong man cry when I was taking his family history: as he related how his son had died as a young adult of sickle cell disease.

Sigh. He didn't recognize me (all white lady doctors look alike) but I recognized him as the uncle of our next door neighbor, who had related the story to me asking about the chance he might pass the gene to his own children..

Racism does exist in medicine, and one example is how sickle cell disease has been ignored by much of medicine and the press. We have fund raisers for Muscular dystrophy but not for sickle cell disease.

And some of the health disparties between black and white population in the US is from this disease.

Sickle cell disease is one of the inherited hemoglobinopathies that are more common in certain ethnic groups (mainly but not only black, and Mediterranean ethnics)

The term sickle cell disease includes different genotypes of homozygous HbS sickle cell anemia (SS) and the double heterozygote states of sickle hemoglobin C disease (SC), sickle beta plus thalassemia (Sβ+Thal), sickle beta zero thalassemia (Sβ0thal), sickle cell anemia with alpha thalassemia (SS αthal), and sickle cell anemia with high fetal hemoglobin (SS+F).2

The treatment was hydration to prevent sickle cell crisis: where low oxygen levels cause the blood cells to change shape to a sickle, and clog the small blood vessels.

Since many end up with a destroyed spleen, we gave them penicillin (and now pneumonia vaccine) and kept an eye out for other bacterial infections like salmonella that can be fatal.

later, it was discovered the hydroxyurea helped prevent sickle cell crisis by raising the percentage of cells with fetal hemoglobin. 

Background: A baby has fetal hemoglobin, which carries oxygen at a lower level than ordinary hemoglobin because the oxygen in utero is lower than you get from breathing on your own, but this gradually disappears after birth. This does not sickle, and if you have enough of this, your blood oxygen stays higher and you are less likely to have a sickle crisis from stress/dehydration etc.

Why does this gene survive when it is fatal? well, because those with one gene for Sickle anemia and one gene for ordinary blood aka "sickle cell trait", are less likely to die of malaria. Thalessemia is another blood disease that has some malaria immunity, but if you get a double gene it can kill you.

In the past sometimes we would transfuse people to give them better percentage of less vulnerable blood cells, but this could lead to iron overload and liver damage.

more recently, stem cell and bone marrow transplant offer a cure, but this is expensive and dangerous and not everyone is able to get this treatment.

and in the past, if you had a woman with sickle cell disease or other similar blood problems, it was considered a medical reason for abortion (although now with modern medicine the risk is smaller).

The possible good news is that using CRISPR, it might be able to actually use one's own cells to replace the abnormal hemoglobin with the fetal hemoglobin gene. CRISPR is a way to cut and paste things into genes.

This more easily readable article on FreeThink explains what is being done, and that the experimental treatment was found to still be working after three years.

the main problem is that it is very expensive, so may not be able to be used in poorer countries even if it is approved as a treatment.

(headsup from Instapundit)

CureSickle website has more information on the disease.

Individual vs the family

 All the shouting on the latest SC kerfuffle on abortion ignores the real issues that have implications on law, government, and society.

both the abortion ruling and the EPA ruling that notes the bureaucracy overstopped it's mandate by expanding it's rules and power beyond what the law actually said, is about stopping rule by fiat, mainly by courts and bureaucrats which make it almost impossible to have popular input on the issue, let alone a public discussion of nuances.

Ann Althouse has a discussion of the EPA rollback from a legal point of view, discussing the problem of law by experts who know what is good for you and despise the hoi polloi:  quoting the Federalist papers and discovering that Woodrow Wilson was a bigot. Duh. 

and the rollback of the court's fiat in RoeVWade did overstop the court's authority,as even Judge Ginsburg noted. 

the dirty little secret is that, in view of an expected population crisis, many elites saw not just birth control, but abortion as a much needed policy to prevent a Malthusian crisis... and like Malthus they saw the problem not as too many babies but too many babies of poor people.

Indeed, the eugenics idea is strong in the planned parenthood movement from it's beginning: it is pushed with the idea that they would save women from dying from childbirth or illegal abortion and stop child abuse of unwanted kids. But Margaret Sanger and others also lived at a time when the Eugenics movement was strong, and there was a push to stop the unwashed ignorant folks from having babies (and in those days, this meant not just Blacks, but Jews, Italians, and Irish immigrants living in the slums).

we still see this today, at a time when the US and European governments and powerful NGOs push poor nations to legalize the sexual ethics of the west: sex education that encourages birth control for single high school girls, forcing hospitals to push birth control on women, and even do legal abortion over the religious objections of their employees (big issue here in the Philippines).

There is a subtle line between encouraging family planning (even Catholic law allows this) and pushing it on people (Indira Gandhi lost one election because of forced sterilization, and thousand in Peru were sterilized against their will).

So is limiting the number of children you have a way to help the poor get out of poverty, or about stopping the poor from overbreeding useless eaters?

Alas, both.

 The overpopulation myth of the west inspired China to implement their one child policy, and even the Iranian mullahs decided to push family planning to slow the growth of their population as a way to improve the economy.  China did this through monitoring women and forcing abortion, and the mullahs did this by pointing out that the prophet would approve of something that encouraged closeness of the spouses and the health of the wife and children who are harmed by excessive childbearing.

Reality check: What stops women from bearing eight kids is the knowledge that she will end up with eight kids to raise. (in the past, the childhood mortality was high, so you needed a lot of kids to insure a few would live to support you in your old age). 

With modern medicine, you can have two or three kids and stop, knowing they will probably all live. And with modern education and the modern economy, it's more expensive to raise kids (school fees etc.). Voila, even without coercion the number of children being born has dropped dramatically, so much that many countries are facing a population drop in the near future.

that is what Gates meant by saying that vaccines would lower the population: the paranoid say vaccines kill, but actually the vaccines, a clean water supply, basic medicine, etc. result in more children living, so parents decide they don't need to have eight kids to make sure two or three of them will live to adulthood.

But when I worked in Africa, every village had a "pill lady" to push birth control pills, but until we got grants to dig well, these same villages had to carry water from polluted streams, and until we got money for village health workers who could give out WHO rehydration fluid and simple medicines, the children often died of dehydration from simple diarrhea...

I'm not criticizing the pill ladies per se (they allowed us as a Catholic hospital to stay true to natural law). But it wasn't enough for the eugenics/population control types: which is why the same NGOs and western government pressuring poor countries to mandate abortion and also to allow gay rights in an area where male rape was used to terrorize the losing side in tribal wars and  where pedophilia of boys and girls by the powerful (both locals and colonial settlers) has a long history.

you can't just isolate women and say it's about control of her body: because the sexual revolution was more about normalizing promiscuity, something that mainly benefitted the alpha male ( ugly women and women over 40 are not the winners of the sexual revolution).

But the negative social effect of RvW and the Casey decision was the philosophy behind it: the idea of radical freedom that was blind to the reality that people do not live in isolation, but in families. 

Thousands of years of human experience on what makes a society livable is why every culture had rules about sex and marriage. True, they have different ideas, but essentially they protect women who are vulnerable and can get pregnant, and try to protect the child who is ever more vulnerable than the woman...

this often limited women in many ways, but what was the alternative? 

But modern medicine gave us an alternative, because it eliminated STDs and unwanted children and social welfare allowed women to get rid of putting up with those annoying men.

But no one outside of Catholic philosophers asked the vital questions: Cui Bono? Who benefits? And what happens when these rules are destroyed?

Roe and Casey decision essentially ignore this social ecology: they posit a reality that that it isolates the pregnant woman as a lone individual, ignroring the reality of relationships with lover and family. 

And only Catholic blogs seem to notice that this was being pushed at the same time that introduced no fault divorce, the sexual revolution that pushed women to be promiscuous, and a third wave feminism (that saw women as the same as men as someone who finds meaning only in her job, unlike earlier feminism that proposed women might want a job and want to be married.).

and only now are we seeing secular pushback as we see how the destruction of the idea of marriage and family has poisoned our children.

There is no way that abortion will be completely stopped: One hundred years ago illicit abortions did happen... my mother relates how, when a woman miscarried, my waspish grandmother would remark: I see she got rid of another one. And taking herbs to bring on a late period is not considered the same as taking a life in most societies. Psychologically there is a difference between a heavy period when you might or might not be pregnant, and dismembering a child that is part way out of the womb and who would live with proper care.

Sadly, society is not stronger if the baby is seen as the enemy and the woman seen as an isolated individual whose only goal in life is to mimic men and become workaholics and make money. 

So who cares for them when they are old? hint: The Canne Film festival just oohed and ahhed over a Japanese film where the elderly are killed off at age 75, justifying this because too many die alone and isolated in that country: here, ethicists like Callahan and Emmanuel posit doing this passively, by withholding care from the elderly.

and a dirty little secret about China and the covid epidemic is that, unlike here in the Philippines where we elders got the vaccine first, China did not make it a priority to vaccinate their elderly. (one reason they are having a big surge in covid right now)

Sigh.

how China uses a debt trap to spread it's influence

 One of the undercovered stories in the US MSM is how China uses loans (and possibly bribes to politicians) to screw poor countries.

A lot of folks noticed how Sri Lanka has imploded, partly because of corruption, poor economic decisions to take on debt while lowering taxes, 

and it's decision to become a green economy didn't help: From Bloomburg:

Last April, Sri Lanka suffered another shock: the government abruptly banned chemical fertilizer imports. In public, officials framed the move as delivering on a campaign promise to embrace organic farming and fight the “fertilizer mafia.” ...    The ban backfired. Sri Lanka’s entire agricultural chain — around a third of the labor force and 8% of gross domestic product — faced disruptions. The paddy harvest failed, forcing the government to import rice and start an expensive food aid program to support devastated farmers. Export earnings from tea, a key revenue source, also dried up. In November, as protests flared, the government partially reversed the ban.

the other bad economic decisions including borrowing oodles of money and letting China make a port that wasn't needed and wasn't making a proft.

That is how China got a port in that country. Here is the story from the Asahi Shunbun,  a Japanese newspaper:

Sri Lanka, a country of 22 million, sits off the southern coast of India on the Indian Ocean shipping lanes through which China receives the vast majority of its imported oil from the Middle East.

not just China, of course, but also Korea, Japan, SEAsia and of course nearby India. Sort of how the Chinese grab of shoals in the west Philippine sea would allow them to block oil to Korea and Japan too. Think "the game of go" and you can see what the ultimate plan is. 

As part of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative to pump money into infrastructure projects across Asia and Africa, former Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa took on many loans, including $1.1 billion to build a port in his home region of Hambantota despite the plan having been rejected by an expert panel.

Corruption of course. 

When the deep-water port failed to generate the foreign revenue needed to pay China back, Sri Lanka in 2017 was forced to hand the facility and thousands of acres of land around it to Beijing for 99 years--giving China a key foothold directly opposite regional rival India’s coastline

And no one saw it coming. (/s).

Actually India did, and the Asahi artucke notes that India might step into the breech and rescue Sri Lanka.

SP article on the geopolitics of China's influence in countries near India for deep background

So what has this to do with a little old lady retired in the rural Philippines?

Well, we just got a new president who is hated by the US, and he knows it. So this could be a way for China to offer help to the Philippines, where the economy is  reeling from the covid epidemic (not just shutdown but loss of jobs for OFW and maritime workers). 

So what does China do instead? They are busy bullying the Philippines in the West Phlippine sea, blocking fishermen and continuing to explore for natural gas deposits that belong to the Philippine,  as a test to see what BMM will do.

Yes, Marcos family is notorious for their corruption, but they are also patriots and most Filipinos, and the government is elected and has to answer to the locals. Even those who object to the US pushing the country around tend to like America and hate China, who lies and cheats and sells shoddy goods that are cheap so end up undermining local industries.

my advice to the US? instead of forcing folks in the military to attend classes on using the correct pronoun, maybe encourage them to learn the game of Go. As this article points out, the US sees war as a game of chess, but China uses the ideas of Go in their war strategy.

here is a video on the game:

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update: USNI Blog has a podcast and article about the Chinese takeover of the West Philippine sea: link or Apple Podcasts here. Or on Spreaker. Or on Spotify.