Blood cobalt

This gets into the news now and then, but with Joe Rogan giving an interview, it might pop through the barrier of the Kardashian type news that clutters people's minds.

Family news: films and firecrackers

 We have three young ladies here as guests: Ruby, her Brazilian room mate (in her US College) and a friend of her roommate who lives in a nearby town.

Joy took them all to her family get together yesterday at her brother's farm nearby, so it is quiet here. (I hate parties so stayed home, with Kuya, who has to supervise the farm also stayed home).

The Brazilian roommate had a bad cold (negative for covid) and is better, but now Ruby developed the same symptoms yesterday, so they came home early and we put her to bed last night.

The maid also has the same symptoms and is only doing light cleaning: We had her sister in to do the wash. We have a washing machine and a spin drier, but have to hang up the clothes outside, which is hard work.

and tonite is New Year's eve, which means fireworks and a party at the plaza nearby and lots of firecrackers going off: and the five dogs will be hiding beneath my bed in fear.

I am still recovering from dengue and chronic laziness but otherwise am well.

The US news is discouraging: Now Biden's HHS is proposing a rule to order docs to obey the rules and kill fetuses and do elective surgeries that are considered mutilation and forbidden to Catholics (sterilizations and gender surgery). Of course this rule will be used to destroy the Catholic hospitals that are forbidden to do such things. Full proposal HERE.

Given the expansion of killing the sick/ poor/ handicapped /mentally ill in Canada, we can see where this is going.

for all the "woke" and Black Lives Matter discussions going on in the USA, one is aghast that no one seems to be mentioning why such rules will be rejected by many in the black and other minority communities:  where many refuse to sign living wills, distust the medical establishment and even distrust the covid shot.

These discussions all are done as if everyone in the USA belonged to the affluent elite individualist materialist culture where disability is seen as a reason to die (most assisted suicides are not for terminal illness you know), ignoring the cultures of ethnic Catholics, Hispanics, the Black community, and the culture of many AmerIndian tribal members who believe in God and see illness and caring for the sick as part of life.

Speaking of an affluent elite culture: I tried to watch the movie the Glass Onion but turned it off in the middle. Everyone except one lady trying to find who killed her sister, was a narcissist and obnoxious. The film got great reviews, so I expect, like the movie Don't look up,  that it was a satire where the reviewers loved the satire while happily deciding which characters were represesnting which rich and famous tech/cultural leaders they were depicting..

But I don't know who there people are so didn't get the joke. Even the pseudo Poirot detective was an unsympathetic character whose Southern accent kept slipping since it is played by a Brit.

Hmm... I hear Netflix is going to stop people from borrowing passwords to watch their stuff. Our family's streaming subscriptions are all in Ruby's name and I worry they will notice that she lives in the USA and stop us from watching their stuff.

Oh well: there is always the Piratebay I guess (copyright laws are lax in the Philippines but it's only a matter of time before they clamp down on them).

So anyway, I pulled out an old DVD that I brought with me: the Prince of Tides. which is not just about romance and the renewal of life by learning to love another, but about keeping secrets about the trauma that haunts you, and about learning to love one's dysfunctional family. (although the movie does not make clear the backstory of the extreme poverty and harsh life of the family that is behind his parent's dysfunctional choices ).

R rated, and recommended.

                                                                                                                    

Ube Yum

 Joy just got back from visiting a farmer in northern Luzon who was interested in joining the organic food movement here.

But she was happy because she found and brought a bottle of genuine Ube with her: a sweet purple paste that is smeared on bread or made into ube ice cream,  as an ingredient in halo halo..(which is shredded ice with various sweet ingerdients mixed together, i.e. halo halo means mixed up).

 It is good, but like a lot of genuine foods, eating it not only brings you pleasure of the taste, but brings back memories of one's childhood.

Here is a film about Ube, which is now a gourmet item, and notes there is a lot of fake Ube out there.

...

More about ube here at Real Simple.

and Ube ice cream is so popular it even has it's own Wikipedia page.

Big Brother is watching you... all over the world

 China's social media spying is well known.

In China, however, things work a bit differently. As a Knowlesys document shows, its services offered to governments and other in-power authorities also include monitoring social media platforms for ‘anti government groups’. While the act in itself can qualify as a severe breach of the sanctity of the electoral process, as well as a citizen’s fundamental right to privacy, it is apparently accepted practice in China – something that falls in line with what multiple reports on China’s public surveillance system has revealed.

Recently, a News18 report investigated growing voices of dissent by Chinese nationals on social media platforms – something that the nation’s Communist Party cuts down on severely and activ

more at the link.

Translation: They can cancel you if you don't behave.

Heh. Didn't Canada do this with the Canadian truckers. when they closed the bank accounts of not just the truckers but from those who donated to help them? And Canada did this in the name of the covid epidemic.

The powers granted by the act would allow banks to target the accounts of people who have donated to crowdfunding platforms, like the fundraising campaigns on GoFundMe and GiveSendGo, that have fueled the ongoing protests, but Freeland said she would not give "specifics of whose accounts are being frozen."...'

."We now have the tools to follow the money. We can see what is happening and what is being planned in real time and we are absolutely determined that this must end now and for good," she said.

And can the EU be far behind?....then there is the use of Pegasus software that lets the European union spy on you. '

GlobalVoices LINK is about how it was used in Hungary

The secret services have essentially unlimited data collection powers in Hungary. There are no strict conditions for surveillance, and there is no independent body that would control it. The most recent Pegasus case has shown that this is not a theoretical problem: the cell phones of Hungarian citizens were hacked without any known national security reason.

well, Hungary is not cooperating with the EU/NWO agendas, and is suspected as being friendly with Putin, so of course he is the bad guy here.

Except that Hungary is not the only one spying on people: again  Global voices reports:

A special committee of the European Parliament is investigating the surveillance spyware Pegasus and Predator after realizing that prominent politicians, journalists and civic activists in most European countries, as well as in repressive African regimes, were illegally targeted after their telephones were infected with this software.

Its power is enormous because this spyware can extract all communications, photographs, files, video materials and documents from the mobile device without the owner's knowledge. If used beyond legal limits it represents unauthorized espionage of innocent citizens that could be used for blackmail, intimidation, manipulating election results and more.

so with all of this in mind, one suspects that the big brother in the USA is doing the same.

 

 

of course, this is nothing new.

Senator Church, call your office. They are at it again.

Film reviews: yes they still make them like they used to

The holiday films are out, and so are all the Christmas horror films/superhero films/films about hit men, or the inane Hallmark romance films about Christmas.

But there are a few films that are about families that are worh watching.

Here is the story about a boy looking for his home: and during his search, befriending a mole, a fox, and a horse.

....

here we have a quiet story with beautiful cinematography and music and a subtle message of friendship.

it reminds me more about films from Studio Ghibli than the CGI films that are flashy loud, and ugly.*(dare I say "Cartoonish") in both design and plot... 

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

 and at a time when movies either show horror in dysfuncitonal families, or fairy tale Hallmark type stories, there are two realistic films about families (that I have mentioned in earlier posts).

The Fablemens is a fictionalized autobiography by Stephen Spielburg about growing up.

,

,,,about love and sacrifice to make a family work, and much of the film is about family dynamics. But also about the struggle between resopnsibility/commitment to the family, and the wish to follow one's heart.

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

in a similar vein:

Sam and Kate is about grown children who take responsibilty of caring for the aging parents.

No big plot here, and the casting is interesting: The children of the actors playing the aging parents are played by their own children.

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

Things that make you go HMMM...

 Elon Musk has positioned 100 Starlinks over Iran, which will let the protesters there go on the internet without the government stopping them.

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

China expects half of their population to catch the latest (mild) strain of Covid, and they have lifted restrictions.

the idea is that since the latest Covid strain is much milder and more infectious than the original covid strain, to allow the virus to do it's thing and the result will be herd immunity.

The anti vaxxers don't recognize this, and gaslight you by saying that no restrcitions or shots should have been given when the more virulent strain was killing the young the old the pregnant etc.

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

China is sending planes into Taiwan's airspace, trying to provoke them into a war.

and their ships have been pushing around the Philippines in the West Philippine sea.

Just in case a war starts here in Asia: You have been warned.

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

A bad snowstorm in the US. This has happened before but this time there are brownouts and failures of the electrical grid.

We have brown outs and lose power with storms and typhoons a couple times a yaer, but we aren't below Zero temperature so it's not as bad. In my prayers.

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

as a physician, I have noted before that the censorship of debate about covid policy in the social media actually made people more suspicious about the shots and policy increased people believing in what they said on fringe sites.

Now it turns out that the Biden administration was behind it. (and the Trump administration started it).

LINK

since when is it okay for the government to stifle experts with different opinions and claim disinformation instead of allowing an honest discussion of this?

The latest news (to anyone who doesn't read conspiracy theories) is that yes, it is true that reports of FBI/CIA etc snooping in on twitter is probably just the tip of the iceburg. Hmm... isn't there something about privacy in the bill of rights?

But of course, they are monitoring the social media for threats to the republic, 

Looking for dangerous Methodists I guess.

...........

Rejecting the Christmas Child

We like to watch older movies at Christmas, because alas, too often today's Chrismas movies  rarely have a  nativity scene in them, let alone have their people actually go into a church to celebrate the birth of God who came to earth as a baby.

William Morris: adoration of the Magi

I'm not sure if ignoring the religious idea behind Christmas is done so as to not upset nonbelievers who might not watch their film, or if it is because the writers/directors etc really don't believe that there is a God and see the religious aspect as a naive myth, or, alas in a world where half the USA backs a political party that sees killing an unborn child up to and shortly after birth is a good thing, that too many media elites just don't want to celebrate the idea that when the God of the universe decided to live as a human being, he chose to do so in a working class family who was temporarily homeless due to the political mechanations of the Roman emperor.

Or maybe the religionless Christmas movie is because they prefer to push the religion of consumerism that stresses buying gifts, and they dislike being reminded that maybe a baby is God's gift to it's parents, even if the child is born in a poor family, or to remind one that even an imperfect child is a gift of God.

I suspect this is the reason that CNN chose Christmas to assure late term abortion is okay because a Christian couple changed their mind about abortion after they aborted a viable fetus (because it was imperfect).

And presumably the MSM also will publish oodles of articles assuring people that Christianity is false or that Christians will be a minority soon (ignoring that many of those illegally migrating to the USA are Christian), or insisting that Christians really don't believe in Christ anymore. Nyah Nyah Nyah to you deplorables.

True, many of these people behind this anti religion onslaught are good folk and give money to helpful causes, but they do have a blind spot: in their hearts they don't recognize how most of us see the story of Christmas through the eyes of ordinary life.

From NR via instapundit:

Its most famous line opens the song, and lodges in my cranium without asking permission: “And so this is Christmas/And what have you done?” Those ten words have enough hubris to inflate the Hindenburg.

It’s as if ordinary folk somehow should justify themselves to a 1960s–1970s rock star....the easy response from normal people...  can be imagined as follows, perhaps from a single mom: “Oh, I don’t know, John — I’ve been raising three kids, caring for my aged Mom, and working double-shifts at the coffee shop to pay the bills. You?”

Other responses to imagine: From a Second World War veteran: “I fought my way on to Omaha Beach and survived D-Day — and the rest of the war, but many of my friends did not. We beat the Nazis, which is what mattered even more despite the sacrifices.”

Or imagine the response from a steelworker, miner, or farmer: “Endured another grinding day at the foundry/shaft/farm, this to afford the mortgage and Christmas presents.”

Ordinary folk serve God in the duties of their daily life, and the good emphasis on going good deeds is fine, as long as, as Jordan Peterson reminds young men: First clean your room before you remake the world.

So caring for family and friends is more important than flashy altruism, especially at a time when many folks all over the world face financial problems in making ends meet. And this idea is why many ordinary folk accept that child who unexpectedly arrives or who is imperfect: because they trust in God's plan and accept that child as a blessing,

One can of course sympathize and in one's secret heart agree with a couple who chooses to end their child's life before birth rather than to watch their baby die slowly of heart disease.

But as anecdotal stories out of Canada show: Once death is seen as a quick (and cheap) answer to suffering, it is hard to draw the line at when to stop.

As a doc, I have no answer to the problem of pain and suffering, but as one of our wiser teachers in medical school noted: Few physicians are deeply into formal religion, but most believe in God, and believe there is a reason behind all that we see:  because we see people who logically should live a good long life who nevertheless suffer and die. But we also see people who logically should die recover and live. And unless we believe there is an ultimate plan behind each and every life, then our profession has no meaning.

It is our duty to help those in need, but it starts with caring for those in our own family: something that the 48 million caregivers in the US are doing all the time, with little fanfare.

The same thing goes for accepting with love every child who is born. 

A mother has the most important job in the world: To birth a human being who will live in this world and in eternity.

Joey Velasco

That is why a child born in a stable or (as above) in a  garage  at SmokeyMountain, or a thatched hut in rural areas of the world, is just as important to God as is the child of a billionaire with perfect genes and the money to develop their talent.

And maybe it is in caring for these imperfect chilren that we learn the lesson to turn our tears into wisdom:

Author Pearl S Buck said, in a book, of her child who was born mentally handicapped as a result of the metabolic condition called PKU:

“[by] this most sorrowful way I was compelled to tread, I learned respect and reverence for every human mind. It was my child who taught me to understand so clearly that all people are equal in their humanity and that all have the same human rights. None is to be considered less, as a human being, than any other, and each must be given his place and a safety in the world. I might never have learned this in any other way. I might’ve gone on in the arrogance of my own intolerance for those less able than myself. My child taught me humanity.”

 

MRNA vaccine: Vaccine of the future or over hyped?

 I am pro vaccine, because I am old enough to have seen people, mainly children, die of tetanus, whooping cough and measles, cared for people left brain damaged by congenital rubella, and had class mates crippled by polio.

I have also seen side effects of giving vaccinations, especially in the days when we were still giving out smallpox vaccine, and I had a patient who had brain damage from the older pertussis vaccine, but as a whole, the side effects were rare (meaning I read about them, but really didn't have any patients who had problems). And the cost benefit ratio was good: Very few hurt and many many saved.

And as a doc, I know that influenza vaccine sometimes doesn't work (actually what this means is that they guessed wrong when they decided in the spring which strain of influenza would hit in the next winter). And of course, there are actually two influenzas: this article is long but gives the background.

There are retroviral medicines that, if given early, can shorten the course of the disease and can prevent you from getting infected from some strains of influenza.

We get epidemics periodically in medicine: RSV in kids, which we see all the time but some years is worse than other years. Same problem with influenza in adults.  Hospital beds fill up when this happens: but my point is that these things happen all the time, and a lot of time lack of beds is caused by the bean counters deciding we had too many empty beds so closed them and didn't staff these areas.

So right now, the world is facing an outbreak of a new covid strain, plus the usually cyclic influenza and RSV epidemics, and although this is bad, it is nothing unusual.

Covid is the wild card: The newest omicron strain is a mild disease but spreads easier and faster than all the previous strains of covid. And alas the olders shots you got don't protect you so we are being told get a booster.

there are a lot of questions about what is going on in China. The massive shut downs are no longer working . And people are rebelling against the shutdowns. So what is expected is a massive epidemic, and headlines are getting hysterical about all those people dying. Uh, this is China, who has a billion citizens, so there are reports of huge numbers infected (37 million in one day alone)But what about deaths? Again, China is not releasing those numbers 

Update: See end of article for estimates on the estimated deaths rate, which is very low.

The Inquirer quotes one source:

Earlier this week, British-based health data firm Airfinity estimated that infections in China were likely to be more than a million a day with deaths at more than 5,000 a day, a “stark contrast” from official data.

headlines saying 5000 a day.. out of over 30 million cases?

So it's not a high number percentage wise, but because of the huge numbers infected all at once of a very infectious disease it sounds terrible.

but as a comment on the Yahoo news site notes few at his factory are very sick.

and it is scaring China so much that they are buying the MRNA vaccine from Germany to innoculate the high risk people because the dirty little secret is that the Chinese vaccines don't give good protection against this strain, and the latest version of the mRNA vaccine does.

And if the newest, more infectious Omnicron strain is in China, can the Philippines be far behind? 

Two factors in estimating the statistics here: One, everyone is traveling home for the holidays, so will spread colds/flu/covid to their families. Two: Unless they are very sick they will be too busy partying to get tested, so the numbers of cases may underestimate what is going on.

Marcos is asking folks to get a booster that prevents the Omnicron XBB and XCC strain. But whether or not I get it depends if I hear that people are getting sick and dying of it. And I suspect this will be true for a lot of people.

We are having a lot of folks coming here asking for money for their sick kids. Is this RSV, Covid, influenza, or maybe a scam to get money to party?

latest Philippine statistics for covid:

• 850 new cases and 21 new deaths in the Philippines [source]

The hysteria and insistance of the powers that be (i.e. the WHO) to push covid shots to the low risk folks is the real question: This pushing of a vaccine that gives limited immunity to a disease that is not very fatal is causing a lot of people to question why.

For example, 100 thousand people died of fentanyl in the USA last year, but no one is trying to stop that epidemic by threatening the Chinese gangsters that manufacture and sell it to the Mexican cartels.

And here, we had half a million cases of Dengue fever this year (been there, done that) but there hasn't been any major campaigns to encourage people to keep the environment clean of puddles/standing water, and we haven't had the neighborhood sprayed for mosquitoes recently.

There are other diseases out there that can kill you if you live in Africa or Asia;

and one wonders if the emphasis on covid means neglecting other diseases that kill people:

Infectious diseases need a multifactorial approach, but vaccines are the ultimate way to stop an epidemic.

So what is the future of vaccines? 

I have noted that Ebola and other vaccines use newer combinations with benign viruses to enhance the immune response, but now the big thing is the mRNA vaccines, an experimental approach devised by DARPA to allow a very quick response to any new and virulent germ that gets lose.

from a 2017 article at the DARPA website

DARPA aims to develop an integrated end-to-end platform that uses nucleic acid sequences to halt the spread of viral infections in sixty days or less

A benefit of the nucleic-acid-based approach to limiting the spread of infection is that the genetic constructs introduced to the body would be processed quickly and would not integrate into an individual’s genome. Similarly, the antibodies produced in response to the treatment would only be present in the body for weeks to months. This is consistent with DARPA's intent with P3, which is to safely deliver transient immunity to a virus, halting the spread of disease by creating a firewall.

Wikipedia article:has more:

The vaccine delivers molecules of antigen-encoding mRNA into immune cells, which use the designed mRNA as a blueprint to build foreign protein that would normally be produced by a pathogen (such as a virus) or by a cancer cell. These protein molecules stimulate an adaptive immune response that teaches the body to identify and destroy the corresponding pathogen or cancer cells

The plan is that if a new disease pops up, or a new variant of covid, they will be able to develop an.mRNA vaccine quickly (aka "warp speed")

and the technology might also be available for all sorts of influenza, and maybe HIV?

And in the future, the mRNA technique might be used for cancer too? press release

Which brings us to Dr C doing a heads up about Moderna partnering up with the UK government to build an mRNA vaccine manufacturing center for the next epidemic. 

This means oodles of money to fund those wanting to study disease ... but only the PC disease of the year alas. (when I investigated into getting a PhD in public health in the 1980s, I found there was no money for my interest, which was infectious disease, but only grants for cholesterol/obesity research).

which brings up the cynical in me: Follow the money?

The potential for mRNA technology is great, and they are hyping it all over the financial webpages. 

The problem? Is the financial interest the reason behind the censorship of problems with the mRNA vaccines, the censorship of possible cheap cures?

And what about the hysteria pushing an authoritarian power grab by the same government officials who kept your kid out of school but put infected patients into nursing homes  during the covid epidemic has made a lot of people not trust the medical/ public health establishment.

Dr. C, who I expect will be canceled in the near future for being honest, has some questions about all of this: the main item being: will they use people in the UK as guinea pigs to test their vaccines?

,,,,

I guess after the Dengue vaccine kerfuffle here in the Philippines, they won't be able to pressure Marcos into letting our children be used for Big Pharma's experiments....

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

update  of data about China: 

,,,,,, https://covid19.healthdata.org/china?.

..

Infections, Tuesday, 37 million

205 million so far (18% of the population)

Beijing, Shanghai, Sichuan, 50% infected so far

Thursday, cases, + 4,000

Saturday, cases + 4,103

Deaths, + 8

prediction of deaths by experts: Deaths by April 1st = 293,127

Population 1,412,600,000

Infection fatality rate = 0.000207

TV show of the week

Before the days of PC, Peter Falk won an Emmy for this TV show:

Peace on Earth

 

,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Peace on earth, good will to those who are coming home

 I was going to paste cranky complaints about the lousy state of the world, including weapons and logistics of war, and the return of the blimp, but hey, it's Christmas.

this means that literally millions of people will be traveling home for Christmas, by air or by roads (buses, jeepneys or private cars)

We are expecting Ruby's roommate here for Christmas. Like Ruby she was doing student teaching (in Korea) and has to be back at college the first week of January, but it was too far and too expensive for her to return to her home in Brazil, so Ruby invited her here.

On Chirstmas eve, usually folks go to the late evening "midnight mass" and come home to a huge meal, called Noche Buena.

I finally got around to putting up Christmas lights. The ones we put up last year are dead so we had to buy new ones: Not many, and they are LED types. 

I shouldn't say I did it: The maid was in charge of buying and putting them up, since the discount store next to our home was out of lights so she had to search to buy them from the Palenke.

The new lights have electronic music, which is nice but after about ten minutes they drive you nuts so I turn them off, except for the lights on our street window, where the switch is inside the window to protect it from rain (only the extension cord is outside, since the plug is in the packing room six feet away).

The traffic here around the palenke (a block down) is terrible, and our cook complained about all the young people in the plaza (next to our place) very early in the monring. They are the kids who attended Simbang Gabi, and instead of going home (schools's out) or to work will stay there are socialize: something that is welcome after a two years of restrictions.

The hysterical warnings are now that the flu is here and lots of cases around.

But flu, like Dengue, is something that is normal, so life goes on normally. It is not like Covid, which did scare people and killed not just the old and infirm (which is normal) but young people. Many of us knew young folks who died, or were very very ill with it.

Back to the sixties

 The Twitterfiles revealed that the Feds were spying on the innocent and manipulating the news.

a lot of this is similar to what was discovered by Senator Church and other Democrats who investigated such abuses back in 1975, but now I guess it's okay because.... TRUMP... or maybe RACISM.../s

But unlike the sixties, now the censors are actually silencing opposition voices, not just in the press but with arrests and threats of losing their job a la the Black list of the McCarthy era. How bad is it in the US and the UK? It's hard to tell from 12000 miles away, but it does give one nostalgia for the days when leftists protested for freedom of speech...

Nor is this limited to universities and businesses: Heck, even Father Pavone was fired for his mean tweets aka blasphemy. 

why is this important? Because the Catholic press has kept liberty and opposition to tyranny alive in many countries, and now by canceling a pro life priest for actually pointing out that Trump protects life, and the Democratic candidates were pushing abortion up to and even after birth, were not.

But naming names and getting into politics is a no no for catholic priests.

And punishing Father Pavone is a shot across the bow warning the US bishops not to openly oppose pro death politicians except in the most obscure way that gently hints that dismembering a partly delivered baby might not be something that Jesus might do.

Harsh language and criticizing those above you is a no-no in the church: Even Mother Angelica got into trouble when she named a certain Cardinal for pushing heresy. He was powerful and a hero to the US press corps (so his coverup of pedophiles was ignored), but she apoligized and the pope stopped her removal. 

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

Much of the news reads like psyops/fake news.

Yes,and not just in the USA, although this hasn't gotten a lot of publicity in the US Msm,...that a the Omidyar network CIA front subsidized Rappler, in order to stop Duterte and his drug war. Killing drug pushers is a no no, but you know, several of our neighbors were killed in home invasion robberies by druggies looking for money. Now it is so safe that Ruby even feels safe coming home from Manila on a bus.

So what does this have to do with the Ukraine?

The Omidyar network was the money that helped destroy the pro Russian president of the Ukraine in the Orange revolution. and replaced him with a very very corrupt president whose bribes to US politicians via family members were only noticed if you listen to Alex Jones or leftie places like the UKGuardian.

The war in the Ukraine is a disaster, on many levels, not just for locals, but for the poor in the Middle East who rely on their grain and the world who need fertilizer to grow high yield crops.

So why not try to get peace? 

Place leftist right wing criticism of the military industrial complex that is making lots of money.

Sheesh. It's back to the sixties again.

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

and by the way: I was not anti war back then, and I recognize that Russian aggression must be stopped, or else it will send a green light to China to invade Taiwan as they did Hong Kong.

And such a takeover, along with their artificial islands (gifted to them by Obama when he pressured PNoy not to stop them when they started building them) means China can block a major maritime route to Korea/Japan/ Eastern Siberia etc.

Japan knows this, and there is a big debate about spending money to enhance their military.

In the meanwhile, China is more aggressively attacking Philippine fishermen and Coast guard off the coast, while destroying the ecosystem and overfishing/decimating the valuable fishing resources.

Phil Inquirer.

INQUIRER.net mga 2 (na) linggo na ang nakalipas LOOK: Dozens of Chinese vessels believed to be operated by militia have been monitored in Sabina Shoal and Iroquois Reef in the West Philippine Sea in recent months, according to a ranking military official. Both features are much closer to Palawan than Julian Felipe (Whitsun) Reef, where the Philippine government has repeatedly protested the presence of massive Chinese militia fleet since 2021.

CONCERNS ON SECURITY’ File photo from 2021 shows Chinese vessels anchored around 320 kilometers west of Palawan. Manila continues to protest Beijing’s presence in the country’s exclusive economic zone. —AFP

Read more: https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1707120/palace-mum-on-chinese-vessels-swarming-ph-waters#ixzz7o3pXrA8x

A couple days ago I posted a link to the StrategyPage about how China is sending huge fleets of fishing boats to suck up the fish to the point that could destroy the ability to fish in these area. They swarms "civilian" ships in an area and if locals try to stop them, then their military intervene to save Chinese lives from those terrible aggressors.

And this has happened, not just to the Philippines and Indonesia, but to places as far off as South America.

A suspicious pattern was discovered involving over 800 Chinese trawlers that were scouring the waters within 36 kilometers of the Argentinian EEZ and fishing grounds that contained one of the largest concentrations of shortfin squid in the world. ...This was a minor bonanza for Chinese trawlers but for Argentinian fishing boats these rare squid were worth over half a billion dollars a year. Offshore fishing is big business in Argentina and represents 3.5 percent of GDP.

the last time I looked, Argentina is not within any area that was claimed by China, and no, it was never an area fished by traditional Chinese fishermen.

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

Update (DEC 24_) 

Strategy page has an essay relating the Chinese aggression against the Philippines which agrees with much of what I wrote above.

usually I would post this as a separate post, but I must have upset the powers that be, because my log shows only two views of the blog each day (down from 20 a month ago, and down from 30 plus earlier. Some of thie might be because I didn't post when I was sick, but isn't it strange the drop came two days after I posted non PC stuff about covid on the blog?

Christmas is coming: Simbang Gabi

Some Philippine Christmas songs from youtube to anticipate the Christmas season and celebrating the birth of Christ

Christmas is a week away, and here in the Philippines, the practice is to attend mass for nine days before Christmas. This is called "Simbang Gabi" 

.....so what is Simbang Gabi?

MANILA -- Attending "Simbang Gabi" or Misa de Gallo (dawn mass) for nine consecutive days is one of the most distinctive traditions of Christmas in the Philippines. From December 16 to 24, Filipinos from all walks of life make an effort to wake up every dawn to attend the novena masses which start as early as 4 a.m. to pray to God for a healthy life, successful career, stronger family ties, among others....

The mass is before dawn, so the farmers could attend mass before they go to work.

After the mass, here in our town, usualy people gather at the plaza and eat a small meal (and the boys flirt with the girls) before returning home.

no, we don't have a McD near our plaza (just Jolibee and the local food vendors). But in the Philippines, God is part of the family, and eating with family is part of the way we celebrate God as father, Jesus as kuya (older brother) and Mama Mary.

...

watch your head (China's space debris incoming).

 Hmm... 

China has had a few more space launches, and since they can't control reentry and presumably don't want to shoot over areas where no one lives, their junk has again endangered the Philippines.

Phil Star:

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine Coast Guard said their officers and local fishermen retrieved on Saturday suspected debris from a Chinese rocket near Subic, Zambales. In a statement on Sunday, the Coast Guard said that its Zambales station believed that the debris consisting of metal and plastic that measured two meters long and four meters wide was from a Long March 5B Rocket launched last October 31 from Hainan, China.

and the story notes other debris found by locals floating in waters near the Philippines.

the good news? At least this time the Chinese military didn't fight the Philippine authorities to grab the debris away from them

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the terrorism against Filipino fishermen by their unofficial fleets is nothing new, but in recent years China has been doing this all over the world.

the result could be the collapse of the ocean ecosystem and a lack of sea fish.

StrategyPage has a full report.

The Chinese poachers operate in up to a dozen poaching flotillas, each with as large as several hundred trawlers. China uses its global space-based ocean monitoring network to guide the poachers to vulnerable areas, and then warn them when the local coast guard has been alerted and is approaching the poachers.

This state-sponsored poaching operation does not exist officially, but it is real and worldwide. At the beginning of 2022 China had about 3,000 ocean-going fishing trawlers operational. China does not officially reveal much about its growing fishing fleet but more and more foreign countries, as far away as South America, report hundreds of Chinese trawlers showing up just outside, or are caught inside, their maritime EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone).

quick: Listen to the protests of the ecowarrior types...NOT.

I was going to make this a new post, but again I am being shadow banned by someone (search engines?) 

From 40 to 3.

I suspect it was an article on covid, since the last time this happened it was shortly after a critical article on the way the experts are pushing covid stuff...

 

 

Christmas film recommendations

 

The first film about the Walton's was called Spencer's mountain and can be watched on Internet Archives.LINK.

another TV film that you might want to watch is the Price of Tomatoes, for which Peter Falk won an emmy.

One modern Christmas film (not on line but probably streaming) is the film Love Actually, which covers love in several aspects.

Ah, homecomings for the holidays is big here, since so many work overseas to support their children and families at home:

The Family stories of Christmas

 No, I am not watching the Harry and Meghan soap opera on TV.

Poor them. 

I am reminded of my oldest son who started reading a book about a rich Hong Kong family written by the middle girl, the youngest of the first wife, who felt she was neglected by the family and who related a lot of small things that hurt her feelings, such as the family wouldn't pay for expensive meals at her fancy school so she was stuck with ordinary food.

My oldest son was adopted from Colombia as a young teenager, and his comment: why is she complaining so much? She had enough to eat...

One feels the same way about these two poster children of narcissitic parents. They abandoned their job, fled to a nice area of Canada, and when they decided to move back to Hollywood, complained they were essentially homeless and no one would pay for body guards so Tyler Perry had to come to their rescue. Hmmm... I thought Harry had a net worth of 60 million, so don't ask me to feel sorry for him.

Don't they realize that a lot of people are hurting, all over the world, and the covid epidemic made things worse?

Here in the Philippines, we worry because the price of diesel and ferilizer is making cost of growing rice go up, and of course later this means that people who eat rice will have to pay more. (meaning that poor people might not be able to afford rice next year).

The government does help the poor with subsidized rice, But if an emergency such as an accident or illness hits, it can cause severe financial problems.

True,  the city has a free hospital for major illnesses, and a free medical clinic for kids. That helps. But they still have to buy the medicine.

we have a couple people a day coming here for help with medical expenses. I mean, 7 dollars for a rabies shot for a kid bitten by a street dog, or five dollars for antibiotic for your kid with bronchitis, etc. This is not a lot of money, but it is in a country where the minimum wage is under ten dollars a day. And the farmers are usually short of funds because they are between grows (after selling the last harvest, which was poor due to a typhoon, money is tight because they need that money to replant, so cash is short for luxuries like medicines and school supplies).

Sigh.

The way people support themselves here is extended family and friends. 

So when many lost their jobs in Saudi or other middle eastern countries due to covid, a lot of families hurt. 

Things are improving now: yes, I know. Lots of anti Qatar articles about the mistreatment of their foreign workes, but you have to realize that the alternative is starving and no way to improve your life in beautiful eco friendly traditional lifestyle beloved by elite wealthy green types, but seen by the rest of us as a life of poverty and back breaking work.

How do people survive?

The families here in the Philippines care for their own. 

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This is not just in the Philippines you know: I worked in poorer rural areas in the US for 30 years, and we saw people caring for their families nearly every day.

from the CDC:

22.3% of adults reported providing care or assistance to a friend or family member in the past 30 days. 24.4% of adults aged 45 to 64 years are caregivers ...

If you are tired of superhero/heroine movies, or (worse) the cookie cutter plots of Hallmark films where good looking rich people find romance over age 30, try watching Sam and Kate about two over 30s caring for their aging parents.

No cliches here. And probably too realistic to be a hit.

And unlike Hallmark movies where romantic happy ending with Mr/Ms Right is the aim of the plot, the people here have ordinary problems, and the family members take responsibility for their elders.

And unlike the religionless Hallmark films, they actually quietly attend church as just part of their routine life...(which is where the two families meet, when Hoffman and son offer Spacek and daughter a ride home).

The children are played by the actual Children of the leads (Dustin Hoffman and Sissy Spacek).

So not a happy film per se, but does show the reality of American life, and unlike too many modern films, shows the goodness of ordinary people who are caregivers  

Been there, done that.

And now, after that bout with Dengue fever, I find that I was the one who neded to be cared for by family here in the Philippines.

Bye Bye Birdie, I mean Jin

 The big news here in Asia is that Jin is going to do his military service.

YEONCHEON, South Korea--Jin, the oldest member of K-pop supergroup BTS, was set to enter a frontline South Korean boot camp Tuesday to start his 18 months of mandatory military service, as fans gathered near the base to say goodbye to their star.

Six other younger BTS members are to join the military in coming years one after another, meaning that South Korea’s most successful music band must take a hiatus, likely for a few years.

.

..Here is one of their hits:

.

quite a few K drama/Kpop celebrities have served in the militay there LINK 

...Americans used to have to serve a mandatory military service, but the fraud in the rich getting deferments and controversy over Vietnam made the government change to a voluntary army. So outside of IceT and Gal Gadot, it's hard to find any modern pop star under the age of 70 who has done military service.

But in the past, that was not how it was; the most famous draftee way back when was... Elvis.

They even made a film about it (a loosely disguised retelling of Elvis' stint in the USArmy):

Lies, damn lies, and statistics: did twitter banning make it worse?

 According to Musk's tweets, maybe the coverups of covid, (banning tweets on subjects which were not allowed to be discussed) might be next.

so how is this reported in the news?

From Physorg:

Twitter lifted its ban on COVID misinformation—research shows this is a grave risk to public health

My take? 

That by not allowing discussion, the only place you can find this information is on distorted conspiracy sites, and when people actually see or read of sudden adult death syndrome in the young, they take the problem out of context and exaggerate the risk: and since the experts deny any problem, the end result is that they stop believing in experts.

For at least thirty years I have wished that there were medical discussion on the internet so docs could bring up these questions: But alas we were stuck with slow "letters to the editor" to bring up the questions and of course often these letters never got published.

I don't know if things improved: After Lolo died, I have stopped reading the journals etc. and of course our medical organizations have pretty well be taken over by the woke. I have written about racism in medicine in the past, but the woke i.e. Marxist ideas will probably only make things worse: because they are training you to see a straw man who fits into the marxist ideological box instead of a real person in front of you, a person with flaws and strong points who needs your help.

In the past, docs often were trouble makers because we were a reality based profession. But now we are supposed to fill in the boxes to get paid, and there is a lot less patient continunity, so the patient might not have the same doc for every visit. Indeed, those visits for minor things (which are now often pushed off to nurse practitioners) were the time we got to know our patients with small talk: and so when a major medical problem happened, they knew us and we knew them.

No more, of course.

An GPs who notice strange patterns are told that Medicine based on anecdotal observation is often false, where what actually happens is that we know the multifactorial reasons behind our observation.

Now it seems we have to fill in the blanks and follow the experts or else.

but when there is a filter to stop inconvenient questions in published papers, and the advice by experts is based on a flawed method of analyzing what has already been published, you see there might be a problem.

The experts gather all the studies (both good and poorly done) and then pretend they are all accurate studies, and then make guidelines based on the average of all of these studies, it makes one wonder if the experts know the phrase "GIGO" garbage in garbage out.

Statistics are complicated.

The statin studies of the 1990s were an example. 

So a study reporting, say, a 25 percent reduction in heart attacks if you use X medicine leads to people thinking everyone sould take an anti cholesterol pill... this ignores that these numbers come down to an actual tiny number of cases stopped in the general population... and those studies shows no difference in death rates from all causes (since the treated group had higher incidence of deaths from (one study) cancer or (another study) violence/suicide.)

Docs just scoffed at the news that we should put eveyone on these medicines, but hey we were under pressure to use the medicine for the good of our patients. And the advice kept lowering the cholesterol where we should start treatment. We see a similar exaggeration in lowering blood pressure so far, to the point that our elderly patients are falling down and breaking their hips.

When it comes to covid, there is even more confusion.

Dr. C again risks youtube banning by interviewing an expert in statistics.

I post this partly to listen to it a second time because it is a bit dense, but it does bring up some points one dare not raise.

Main point: what do we mean by absolute risk and relative risk?

To avoid covid hysteria, I am posting this video which predates covid

. 

It would have been so nice if real experts had been able to point these things out without the danger of being banned.

Elon Musk is hinting that he might open the twitter files to see how people got banned etc because they went against the so called experts. 

And I would welcome a twitter where people could actually discuss and put their two cents in.

True, anecdotal medicine often gets things wrong, but you know, a lot of medical breakthroughs come from docs who notice something and report it.

Dr. Malone call your office. You might be allowed to give your opinion soon.

Family news

 I am slowly getting my strength back: Even managed to go to church Sunday, 

Not much in the news, unless one is following the Twitter revelations.

I sort of agree with Ann Althouse here:

...(Musk) doesn't feel mysterious to me at all. It sounds almost exactly the way I feel. So my hypothesis is that he's liberal, he's spent a lot of time around liberals and lefties, and he's got endless problems with the way they've betrayed what, it seems, should be their true values.

Public health does work.

I get annoyed when the anti vax hysteria seems to condemn all public health officials and all vaccines. 

Sheesh. Maybe they need to live in the third world, where epidemics kill folk, but public health and vaccines saves lives.

StrategyPage has a long essay about the various tribal wars in Central Africa/DRC area, and how a Russian mercenary group is looting gold and diamonds to sell via the UAE. 

 But they do have this good news in their report:

November 30, 2022: In western Uganda, the Ebola outbreak that began in September has seen a decline in cases because of rapid medical response. Reported cases have declined but despite that decline, Uganda has closed schools nation-wide in an attempt to curb the spread of the Ebola virus. In November eight children died from Ebola in Uganda. The spread of Ebola to neighboring Congo seems to have been halted.....

Andrew Wefwafa had a series of videos about this

 

.....this was caused by the Sudan variation of the Ebola virus, and the problem is that the vaccines that helped stop the previous epidemics in central Africa were for a different strain. 

Just recently, a new experimental vaccine for this Ebola strain has been sent there. LINK

 

The doses are from the Sabin Vaccine Institute (SVI), according to Reuters. The SVI vaccine is a modified chimpanzee adenovirus (ChAd3) vector vaccine.

note: The adenovirus vector is the technique that was used to develop the british AZ vaccine for covid, and it was also used to develop previous Ebola vaccines .

Health officials had earlier cleared plans to study three candidate Ebola Sudan vaccines. The others are from Merck and Oxford University. 

In the middle of November, a WHO working group recommended that ring vaccine trials prioritize the Merck candidate first, owing to the safety and efficacy of the VSV-EBOV platform used for the Zaire Ebola vaccine, followed by the SVI vaccine, then the Oxford vaccine. A sharp decline in Uganda's Ebola cases presents an obstacle to ring vaccination trials. '

 essentially the disease was stopped by isolation etc. so they will not be able to prove the vaccine works.

 

/sarcasm.

Actually from a scientific point of view, this means that they can't prove it works, but in serioius diseases, when the choice means saving lives, usually the saving lives is more important than purity in scientific experimentation.

I wrote about this awhile back, when I noted that diphtheria anti toxin was so impressive in saving lives that doctors didn't have the heart not to treat children in the "control"group.

There are also ways to stop the spread of disease, such as masks (which keep you from spreading infected saliva when you talk or sneeze), isolation, hand washing etc.

And if you don't want to vaccinate everyone, or if there is not enough vaccine for everyone, you use the "ring vaccination"procedure.

WHO Report.

The ring procedure is to isolate the cases, and vaccinate the ones in contact, then vaccinate the ones who were in contact with the contacts, etc.

.......

cross posted from my Makaipa blog.

December 8, a day that will live in History

Yes, I know: the Pearl Harbor attack was December 7 but here in the Philippines it was December 8. 

 Lolo was a young teen, and when they heard that war had arrived, he helped his mom and cousin walk to the farm (which is four miles from town) and they stayed there for a few weeks. 

 Since the Japanese decided schools should teach Japanese, essentially all the schools were shut down, so Lolo didn't return to school until after the war. 

He was a kid, and the only stories he related to me about those times was that one of the local Japanese soldiers would give the street kids candy. ..but he also related how a "spy" was executed on the street in front of their house. 

Many elites in Manila hoped that the Japanese would give them independence, but that didn't happen... but I wonder if this is why there isn't a lot of rememberance of WWII heroes in the culture. Our town plaza has memorials to both those who fought for independence against the Americans and also one in honor of those who fought in WWII...

 ironically, our family, who had a history of supporting Philippine independence against the Americans, (both Lolo and Kuya were named after Rizal's btother) joined the anti Japanese resistance: Lolo was too young but his older brother and cousin were part of the resistance, hiding in the nearby mountains. 

His Cousin was killed, and his aunts still had a shrine in their house to his memory, with his photo and the letter from Harry Truman thanking him for his service. 

 Sigh. 

The surviving Philippine veterans didn't get a pension until recent years (mainly because of fraud: too many lied about it). Lolo's brother, who fought as a guerilla for several years, was long dead so his family didn't get any of the pension, and Lolo, who only joined at the end of the war and never actually fought, (he mainly did patrols of the local area with his brother) was given a Pension from the Philippine government and help with his tuition for school, but was not eligible for the US funding. 

 One trivia fact: Probably more civilians were killed by the Japanese who were fleeing Manila than were killed in Hiroshima. wikipedia estimates 100 thousand were killed, some were killed by errant shelling during the battle, but most killed in revenge when found by the fleeing Japanese. 

MacArthur promised the Filipino people he would return (and liberate them from the Japanese). So when the higher ups wanted to bypass the Philippines and just hurry to invade Japan, MacArthur refused, because of that promise.

 

Most of the history books stress the US military in all these stories, and ignore the Philippine soldiers and civilians were doing a lot of the fighting.

And of course, the western (and anti western culture Marxist) history taught in schools never teach such things. 

Heck, when Ruby and her American cousins visited Bataan during their stay last month, she had to fill them in on the details.

MacArthur was hated by many Americans, even those who fought under him, because essentially he was a snob. But growing up in Asia he understood Asian culture, which included obeying superiors and "utan na loob", keeping one's promises. Manchester's biography called him an "American Ceaser" but one would like to see a biography putting his personality and actions (both here in the Philippines and in Japan) into the context of East Asia culture rather than western culture or the Marxist interpretation of history (read US BAD) that often contaminates recent history.

An old TV series on the US Navy in WWII:

....