depressing times are coming

steal an election. Protest it: it's a coup baby

 

Hundreds of thousands just took to the streets to protest against the socialist regime in Brazil and if not for X, you wouldn't know about it pic.twitter.com/nl5VtubZdy

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) February 25, 2024

Instapundit says:BIAS BY OMISSION: 

 not true The BBC did have a story if you carefully searched their website: 

Thousands rally in support of Brazil's ex-leader Jair Bolsonaro

that's the headline: But if you read the article and check the details, they do admit it is more than thousands: 

Tens of thousands of people gathered on Sao Paulo's iconic Paulista Avenue to show support to Brazil's ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, as the investigation continues into claims he plotted a coup with allies to remain in power after his failed 2022 re-election bid.

The NYT and the PC MSM of course say the election wasn't stolen

Yup Just like Trumpieboy: no stolen election here, folks, just look away.

Trust the science machines... To claim fraud in an election is fake news/treason/a coup/ bad.

BBC report from last year:

Brazil election: Do voting machines lead to fraud? Published 3 October 2022

one argument is that judges said there was no fraud, as did experts. But then outside experts show how easy it is to mess up the machines, but hey don't pay attention to them.

stealing elections is not new.

Anyway, after Hello Garci, where the alleged phone call was asking if there were enough paper votes in the back room, the Philippines spent a lot of money for voting machines. Which they now have stopped using because of problems: there is enough suspicion of the results that it is easier to discard the machines than risk a revolution.

The problem with machines is that the experts might not be aware of sophisticated ways to change the vote. Given the CIA and/or Chinese attempts to get in a favorable government, one can see the problem. Of course, if the vote is not close, it's harder to steal the election: So a popular Duterte won because people knew he cleaned up Davao and would clean up the country.

As I note: When I voted Republican in New Mexico, it took four tries for the touch screen screen to correctly record my vote correctly: If I had not been in a hurry I might not have noticed the vote had been switched.

One other note: as far back as the 1950s there were stories of mechanical voting machine problems that wouldn't click over to count your vote. And of course, (Hello Garci) the boxes of ballots in the back room is an old scam.

so who do you trust?

Japanese wild oranges

 In the tale of Genji, one of his ladies is called the lady of the orange blossoms because she uses this perfume. One commentary on the novel pointed out that baths were rare, and a lot of perfume was used back then. 

But it was only toward the end of the novel that I noticed that the oranges and orange blossom perfumes were local: not imported from the warmer areas of Japan.

In the novel, a girl is loved by Genji's son who respects her and won't do the marriage consummation until her home is prepared, but in the meantime, she is also courted by his cousin who is like Genji, quite aggressive sexually, and who seduces her. It is the middle of winter, but to get away from her ladies in waiting, he takes her to a nearby island of the Orange:

What a very strange place to be, thought the girl. “The colors remain, here on the Islet of Oranges. But where go I, a boat upon the waters?”

oranges surviving in snow?

Atlas obscura has an article on this citrus fruit, the Tachibana orange. It is mainly used for perfume since the fruit is too bitter to eat.

IT’S EARLY DECEMBER, AND SOMEWHERE on a mountain on the Japanese island of Shikoku, there’s a citrus tree laden with golden-yellow fruit, each one no larger than a kumquat. There aren’t many of them in the wild...  

Scratch the peel of one of those tiny fruits, and you’ll release a remarkably powerful fragrance, full of zesty, spicy, bitter notes, a dozen citruses distilled into a single whiff. Its flesh is an electric burst of tart and bitter flavors, far more intense than a lemon or grapefruit, followed by a barely detectable undertone of sweetness.This delicate little citrus is the tachibana.

and yes, Japanese women in the Hainen period did use them for perfume

During the Heian period (794–1185), women within the Japanese aristocracy perfumed themselves with tachibana, tucking sachets of its blossoms into their kimono sleeves or threading the fruits on cords and wearing them like bangles. The Man’yōshū, the oldest extant collection of Japanese poetry, contains 70 poems about or referencing tachibana, celebrating its beguiling perfume.

 

Basho

 

fragrant orange- 

when?In what field?

cuckoo.

Emperor Genshō

O, orange tree:

Fruit and flowers both,

And leaves, too,

Even should frost fall on your branches 

Evegreen will you be! 

(translated by David Landis Barnhill) \

 

A tachibana tree growing in front of the Kōfuku-ji Temple in Nara. DEGUEULASSE/CC BY-SA 3.0

the fruit is now being made into a gourmet marmalade, so hopefully it will soon make a come back.

Sin and forgiveness: It's complicated

the big kerfuffle in the trad Catholic blogosphere is a funeral for a trans atheist that was celebrated with what we old fashioned types used to call blasphemy and obscenity.

Sorry, I'm a great grandmom and still remember those times.

But more thoughtful people are also disturbed about the episode:

First Things:

As a number of individuals associated with the funeral commented to the press, Jesus did not turn people away and even welcomed prostitutes. That is true. But the key thing to remember is that he did not offer them affirmation. He offered them the possibility of forgiveness and grace and liberation from the self-destruction to which they were in bondage.

as a doc who has seen too many sick and dying, I am happy that this writer recognized what was really going on: to deny the of the reality of death:  

 Billy Porter might use the word “grace,” but upon his lips it is an empty cypher that connotes nothing but feckless sentimentalism and impotence in the face of an overwhelming reality—death—to which he has no response.

italics mine. 

And, most tragically of all, he and his friends seem to think that (death) is something to celebrate. Desecrating the cathedral is not the only thing they should be ashamed of.

Sigh.

the poor lady wasn't even given the dignity of knowing her friends mourned her passing.

it says a lot that the cause of death was not reported. 

So I wonder: How much of their shouting was not to silence the opposition of "normals" by ridiculing what they hold sacred, but to silence the small quiet voice of conscience, and to silence the suspicion that the person died in a state of despair?

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

in a semi related matter: Kuya said he was tired of Hallmark movies and shoot-em-ups, so how about a story that teaches you about history, different cultures, and how people lived in different times and places.

So I showed him this film:

 

one of the themes in the film is: how do you forgive yourself when you've committed the worst sin? (In the film, the Robert DeNiro character kills his beloved brother). 

You can chose to shout that you are proud of the deed and shake your fist at heaven. But at the end of the day, often what happens is trying to lose the guilt by using alcohol, drugs, partying, risk taking, etc. and often the person dies of suicide either directly or from self harm/overdose/DUI.

The DeNiro character was essentially starving himself to death and refused to see those who sought to help him. Until the Jesuit came to him and offered him a third way: repentance, penance and ultimately forgiveness, including forgiving himself for what he did.

but the film is also about different cultures.

It says a lot about today's world that missionaries who would place a mission with indigenous people are now condemned for destroying their culture and for converting them. 

But of course, what is the alternative? Missions are not about simply preaching to the heathen, and the PC books that push this idea are either naive or stupid.

 Missionaries come first, teach people that there are alternative beliefs. The good of the culture is praised, and the negative and harmful things are slowly discouraged. And then one tries to reshape the culture so that they can cope with the changes that will certainly come.

So you build society and a community: you teach literacy, cleanliness, supply medical help, and then you encourage skills in trades and agriculture, such as introducing advanced methods to grow crops. In such a way, the people can continue with the good parts of their culture, but adapt in ways  to survive in the more modern world.

The film also tackles a subject that I know about but few Yanks have had to confront: When given the choice between slavery/tyranny and fighting back, which do you chose?

This film was made at a time when the Jesuits were pushing liberation theology in South America and in parts of Africa, but alas the Jesuits went too far and made socialist revolution their god, and forgot about the God part of life, and the result was a lot of dead people killed in their clueless revolutions, and a lot of Catholics leaving the church of socialism for the local Protestant Church that taught about Christ.

Revolutions can indeed be considered a just war.

The problem? Most of them replace a bad government with a worse one.

 I witnessed this in Zimbabwe: when the just war was won by the rebels, the result was not peace but plundering the land by those who won, and since there had been a desensitization of killing, you had the idea that murder of the political opposition for good reasons was okay.

the movie asks: What would Jesus do, and the answer is: refuse to kill and probably die with your people.

 But others would say: Lay down your life fighting to save your friends.

not an easy thing to answer.

But I must also point out that there is a third way: Peaceful resistance.

In the film, the Jeremy Irons character greets the conquering army with the Blessed sacrament and prayer. Any practicing Catholic would pause at this point and maybe change their mind.

But it doesn't stop them: Mainly because the DeNiro character chose violent resistance, and helped other Indians to ambush the soldiers coming to enslave them..., and so the soldiers saw every Indian as the enemy and the procession as a trap.

Sometimes, the peaceful opposition works: Martin Luther King, the fall of the Iron curtain, and the People power revolution here in the Philippines all showed how people of faith could peacefully overthrow tyranny.

a lesson for Gaza, and a lesson for the Ukraine, and maybe a lesson for right wing Yanks who seem eager to go to war with their enemies instead of trying to make them friends.

When families change cultures

 During World War II, Japan was short of people to work in some industries, so deported some Korean families to Sakhalin Island (the southern half was part of Japan then). Wikipedia has a page about them: a complicated history.

So one video posted today on KBS World is about the cultural and language problems of those who have more recently moved back to Korea.

a lot of the difficulties are the same for immigrants in many nations, and I posted this mainly as an example of how history has complicated the idea of nationality.

when the fat guy at the desk deserves an Oscar

Lots of shoot em up war movies out there, which I usually don't watch. 

But hey, after the narcissistic Netflix heroines and elderly ladies trying to look like they are 20 in the most recent Hallmark movie, we decided to watch a shoot-em-up movie for a change. And chose this one, Land of Bad, about a hostage rescue, because it was supposed to be in the Philippines.

Uh, fellahs: The heroes should be Philippine Special forces since Americans aren't allowed in direct combat here (although they are helped by US drones and communications stuff) but never mind. It's actually an Australian film, so the Hemsworth brothers are the stars, busy fighting bad guys. 

It was filmed in Queensland, not the Philippines, which is probably a good idea given the logistics would be easier and hey, jungles are jungle.

the bad guys spoke Tagalog, which is not spoken in Mindanao, (but hey, at least they tried to make it authentic). And just for fun, they made the bad guy a Russian arms dealer, not an ISIS type.

it shows how the US drones can help in jungle warfare: spotting where the bad guys are hiding and then shooting them. Authentic? Don't know: I predate drone warfare.

In summary, a good violent war rescue film for all the guys who like to see the good guys win.

But what was surprising? 

Russell Crowe is a guy sitting at a desk in Las Vegas who controls the drones, and he steals every scene he is in. 

 I doubt he will win any award nominations, but hey, he deserves one for this film.

I give it a four out of five stars. A bit violent for we gals, but never mind. We gals will let you watch this if you let us watch Barbie again.

 

the pristine Amazon: Not

the Amazon was once full of people and was depopulated, probably because of disease epidemics. So all those promoting a pristine Amazon are wrong. The Amazon was once farmed and traded with the tribes in the mountains. So when the greenies see them as the equivalent of Rousseau's noble savage are wrong: They were people who worked to support their families and had a complex (neolithic( culture...

and now we see even PBS has noticed this:

University of PENN museum lecture from about ten years ago noticed this too

Censorship vs Musk

how do the unelected bureaucrats run the world? Via their minions put into the bureaucracy of minor countries.

the Aussies are on it

,,,,censoring you on social media. 

and now fake news will become worse because of AI.

StrategyPage discusses.

Russia has long used a large propaganda organization to attack and weaken enemies. AI is now another tool for the Russians to use.

As I noted: in the past, the USSR pushed anti vax stuff in the news to third world countries. Why? Because they didn't want locals to see that the western vaccinations were saving the lives of their children.

Some useful idiots picked up these stories without bothering to examining the reality.

But when covid hit, and a lot of folks died (here even young people died of covid), what happened was that governments greatly overused both their ability to shut things down (causing deaths from untreated ordinary diseases and here, harming education and poor people's ability to work and survive) and push vaccines on low risk folk, the anti vax types who shouted danger were shut down for fake news: meaning that real questions were not allowed to be asked. 

Planning for the next epidemic

Here we go again ...... 🤡🌎 pic.twitter.com/p4Zf0Bwf7Z

— Wall Street Silver (@WallStreetSilv) February 21, 2024

.....

didnt they try this back in 2019: from Vox:

The bird flu is a deadly virus with the potential to spark a global pandemic. Now, thanks to the US government, two lab experiments trying to find ways to make it more dangerous will resume their work after years on hold. It’s a troubling development, and one that highlights the risks of something called “gain-of-function” research. That’s research in which pathogens are manipulated to change their capabilities — usually to make them deadlier. Science Magazine last week broke the news that the US had quietly approved the two dangerous and controversial experiments. One of them will begin within the next few weeks. The other is expected to begin later this spring. The two had been on hold since 2012 amid a fierce debate in the virology community about gain-of-function research. In 2014, the U.S. government declared a moratorium on such research.

Cannibalism update: destroying the latest taboo

 Hannibal Lector was painted as evil, but some saw him as the protagonist in the film that won lots of awards a few years back. 

And latest movie about cannibalism 

In “Society of the Snow,” consumption is a sacrament in which the dead and the living become one..In Netflix's “Society of the Snow” cannibalism is both desensationalized and overwhelmingly humanized...

italics mine.

so, another detoxification of evil? 

we understand what you did, so it's okay. No need to seek forgiveness for you sin. Instead flaunt it and make the deed heroic, so we can admire you.

Sort of like those shouting their abortion, or bragging they killed someone instead of lovingly caring for them.

justifying the worst sin is of course trendy: The more shocking it is, the more hits your tweet or webpost gets. And hey, it might even win you an oscar. 

so the latest expert now claims cannibalism is okay:
Who Had 'Scientists Suggest We Rethink Cannibalism' on Their 2024 Bingo Card?

It's a tricky decision, whether or not to eat other people, and one that should be considered carefully, even though, "ethically, cannibalism poses fewer issues than you might imagine," according to an unsigned, subscriber-only piece in New Scientist.

yes, it's racist according to the writer in the New Scientist

Perhaps it is down to the fact that, in Western religious traditions, bodies are seen as the seat of the soul and have a whiff of the sacred. Or maybe it is culturally ingrained, with roots in early modern colonialism, when racist stereotypes of the cannibal were concocted to justify subjugation. These came to represent the “other” to Western societies – and revulsion towards cannibalism became a tenet of their moral conscience.

 a similar claim is found here.

nonsense of course.

the taboo about cannibalism is pretty universal. One might argue that it happens in a lot of societies, and every severe famine has rumors that this was going on. but non starvation eating of human flesh is much rarer:  a very few isolated and primitive tribes have been describes as doing this as part of a funeral ritual  (research on the brain disease Kuru did verify that such things happened)

but this argument ignores that it is considered shameful in most societies.

and as being racist: A recent email to me from an African activist points to the story of a shaman who fed people human flesh as medicine in a 2017 story.

In Africa, there are rogue healers who use witchcraft to heal, especially HIV, and often sell human parts to cure people. 

There are also cases of burying human body parts under new stores etc. to ensure success. When I worked in Liberia, one child escaped and the murderer was caught. 

Before you condemn Africans, remember that unlike rich Yanks who shout their abortion, Africans are ashamed of such things (and consider abortion murder, and are shocked at the US/EU pushing legalizing it on their governments).

and remember, your Covid vaccine was probably made with cells from aborted fetuses. 

Indeed, there is a lot of money in body parts including selling parts of aborted fetuses, (something illegal before Biden legalized it) 

and unlike Africans, those selling body parts had the case dismissed and when whistleblower O'Keefe who was sued after he released a film of a lady admitting to making money using body parts from aborted babies, even though this was illegal at the time. (lawfare in action of course: he was later sued over other actions. Hey, at least he didn't have to flee to Russia like Snowden).

well, anyway, there is now a push to normalize cannibalism as okay.

and of course, it won't be from starvation but as the latest kinky sex fetish.

you read it here first folks.

sigh in my prayers.

freedom of speech

Tucker continues to cause problems.

Everyone pointing to his interview with Putin as if it was treason, not a routine interview similar to what used to be done on the BBC, but his interview here is also causing problems.

 

real clear politics discusses here.

"From their perspective, if the military did not begin to censor the internet, all of the democratic institutions and infrastructure that gave rise to the modern world after World War Two would collapse."

reality check: There are other ways to inform people (the use of cassettes with religious sermons was how the Ayatolla got rid of the Shah, who had jailed all the leftists and censored their complaints in the news). 

But allowing freedom of speech and freedom of religious opinions is the basis of the US Bill of Rights, and is needed for a free society.

This is not a one sided attempt of censorship (see previous post about boogiewoogiegate). 

So this is a normal geopolitic tactic.

What is new is how this censorship program was extended to not allow ordinary medical discussions about covid policies and treatments.

when I worked in Africa, we knew the Soviet Union spread anti vax propaganda and lies (including anti vax stuff that got doctor giving out vaccines killed). So there is a reason for the CIA etc. to push the US point of view and help grass roots medical institutions in their public health work.

But when the national security state pushes the idea that the Covid virus didn't come out of a Chinese lab leak, gets a major medical journal to post an article signed by "experts" saying this, and later censors experimental cheap medicines (e.g. Ivermectin) while pushing other experimental cheap medicines and vaccines, I suggest that such things are outside their area of expertise.

Headsup Dr. Malone. who posts the transcript.

a lot of this is geopolitical censorship. Heck, what else is new.

but what is new is the covid censorship media project

There's over 60 universities now who get federal government grants to do the censorship work ...They did this, for example, with COVID. They created these COVID lexicons of what dissident groups were saying about mandates, about masks, about vaccines, about high profile individuals like Tony Fauci or Peter Daszak or any of these protected VIPs and individuals whose reputations had to be protected online.

And they created these code books, they broke things down into narratives. The Atlanta Council, for example, was a part of this government funded consortium, something called the Virality Project, which mapped 66 different narratives that dissidents we're talking about around covid, everything from COVID origins to vaccine efficacy.

And then they broke down these 66 claims into all the different factual sub claims. And then they plugged these into these essentially machine learning models to be able to have a constant world heat map of what everybody was saying about covid. And whenever something started trend that was bad for what the Pentagon wanted or was bad for what Tony Fauci wanted, they were able to take down tens of millions of posts. 

it is bad enough to use such things (dirty politics is not new: Caesar was killed because the propaganda persuaded folk he wanted to be king). But when a government uses their power to censor their opponents, and works with the social media to do such censorship, then democracy is in danger.

And of course, the bias in covid coverage, even in medical journals, has resulted in people just not trusting these institutions.

Sigh. 

Boogie Woogie is back (thanks to China)

 In a notorious act of censorship, Chinese activists tried to stop a local piano player from playing a public piano in a public place. Why? Did they hate music?

No: probably because they were handing out Chinese propaganda and didn't want to be filmed.

Of course, he wasn't filming them: They were in the background and most folk simply wouldn't notice what they were doing.

Watch the video: The first ten minutes shows piano playing by Dr. K and friend, until the Chinese government activists, who have been standing in the background and didn't bother to move, finally realized they were being filmed, tried to censor him. They  affront him (start video at nine minutes) to tell him to stop playing:

this caused a bit of an international kerfuffle, including the Chinese government pushing their fake story on social media and the activists trying to get the actual video censored since it shows the truth.

 it was the activists who were passing out Chinese propaganda to passerbys, who essentially started the incident by simply not bothering to back up ten feet so that their faces could not be seen. But never mind. They are China, and routinely censor stories they don't like (heck, the tech savvy Philippine Coast guard guys have them in a temper tantrum because they dared to film their aggressive moves against both the PCG and small fishermen inside the Philippine waters).

But there is something out there called the Streisand effect: as Wikipedia notes:

The Streisand effect is an unintended consequence of attempts to hide, remove, or censor information, where the effort instead backfires by increasing public awareness of the information

so the effect of the kerfuffle is to make the Chinese propaganda look absurd, but it also might have increased awareness of music that wants to make you dance:  you know: happy music that has a melody and happy lyrics that encourage people instead of making them mad.

Dr. K's videos, including playing this same piano, go back a couple of years, so it's not like he is new in "disturbing the peace". He has 2 million followers and after a couple of TV interviews it's probably more.

But he isn't hogging the spotlight: He routinely posts others playing boogie woogie etc.on his youtube site.

so if Gen Z watches his video, could this maybe start them being interested in actual music instead of the rap music being passed off as music nowaday?

well, given the popularity of Taylor Swift, whose music resembles old time Nashville etc,

   

  and Lady Gaga singing oldies with Tony Bennet,

 

there might be hope for the music world returning to music that can actually be enjoyed by all.

Beer in space

 

Tell the Pope to stop watching Netflix

I was always puzzled about Pope Francis who seemed to live in a world that had nothing to do with where I live and work. Always bashing people for greed and having too much "stuff", yet winking at promiscuity. 

 I finally figured it out: He watches Netflix and thinks that mirrors the world. 

 My granddaughter, who recently came back to the Philippines after studying at an elite college (on scholarship) has a Netflix subscription, and although our family TV watching sometimes included a Netflix movie, I often didn't bother with the ones aimed at the young. Whereas Hallmark stresses the 30 something single career girl goes to a small town and finds love and marriage, the Netflix ones seem to be about having affluent jobs and one night stands. 

 My granddaughter insists that these romances indeed echo the way her generation approaches dating, especially after the pandemic shutdowns. 

But I wonder: because her Minnesota college was PC but had lots of upper middle class kids, but when I worked in Minnesota, it was on the "res", and we faced a lot of problems: Yet unlike the Netflix dramas, families were still there, and grandmom often was the one who took them in when problem happened. 

 Sigh. 

Of course I moved here to the Philippines twenty years ago and we live in a small rural town. Until about eight years ago we were Filipino, but now we have malls and McDonalds and the society is changing to become more Americanized as the local economy improves. This is, of course, both good and bad, and would take a book to point out the subtle social changes in this time of transition to globalization.

The bad news is that the elite in Manila seem to be importing all the bad social practices of the American elites: now that my granddaughter teaches at an elite school in Manila, she sees the same problems there (albeit probably not as much promiscuity). Narcissism. Ambition. Materialism.

Sigh. So in this elite world, it makes sense that Pope Francis preaches to these narcissists and insists that they recognize that there are poor people and they should get off their puits and help the poor.

He is searching for the lost affluent narrisistic sheep, but he is also ignoring the wolves that are attacking the rest of the flock. 

And those attacking the flock include a lot of those around him, who are pushing the gay agenda and the promiscuity/gender agenda on children: you know: Political correctness... 

And while the Pope condemns this as cultural imperialism, he supports the anti family policies being pushed on poor countries by the USA and European Union and UN elites on poorer countries under the threat of losing much needed foreign aid.

Yes, Pope Francis has called this cultural imperialism,  yet at the same time he pushes gay marriage blessings and blessing of non married couples as if temporary liasons were the same as marriage, and seems clueless as to why Africans, who were sexually exploited by their Arab and European masters, oppose these laws.

The Africans see this as westerners trying to destroy the family, which in poor countries is the main institution that supports the poor, sick, elderly and children. So it is the African bishops who are asking the church to start emphasizing the holiness of the family, instead of letting his minions try to change the commandments against sex outside of marriage

and third world bishops know the problem is not just capitalism but corruption: so why isn't the Pope making a big thing about the sins of corruption. Nor is there a lot of talk out there about  murder (abortion/euthanasia) that is being normalized by the elites who run the world; 

Instead, the Pope even openly supports the elite agenda of ecology (that will result in starvation), sustainability (read population control) etc.

sigh.

what is missing: Talking to people who follow the rules. 

Yes, I know; Jesus came to the lost sheep. But he led the rest of the flock to cool waters and kept the flock safe from wolves: something that Pope Francis is not doing (indeed, some wonder if he is actually hiring wolves to destroy the faith of the flock. I mean: he knows in South America, in places where his Jesuits pushed liberation theology, the result was that a lot of good Catholics became good Protestants).

How bad is it?

Well, that well known agnostic Jordan Peterson just told him off:

.@jordanbpeterson says @Pontifex should be focused on ‘saving souls’ instead of ‘saving the planet,’ slams post-#Vatican II developments#CatholicChurch #CatholicTwitter #PopeFrancis pic.twitter.com/dqzHtkQZPj

— LifeSiteNews (@LifeSite) February 16, 2024

....

EWTN and the papal posse are condemned for telling the truth: 

watch the first ten minutes of this news report where there is a good discussion that summarizes the problems facing the church and how the Pope is not doing this.

sigh. try this link

update:youtube made it private? 

EWTN has it here check 2 16 the World Over

this is typical of the Pope: He ignores 2000 years of church tradition, the Bible (that dang Paul), and then sends his minions out to push something that is important only to the elite dissadents in the church.

But hey, don't push things that might make the family stronger, or embrace the blessing of femininity, or the idea of yin and Yang, or the theology of women as written by JP2 or Edith Stein: just push the elite idea that women are the same as men.

so it's Lent, and time to pray that the Pope starts being a pastor of the average Catholic by teaching normal people including the middle class and poor, how to live by the rules that church and state have until today's modern world had long recognized as leading to both personal happiness and a stable society.

no one reading my blog?

about a year ago, my average blog readership was about 60, and then it quickly fell to about 20, and stayed there. Now since last week it fell to 5 and has stayed there for ten days. Wonder why?

are things turning around?

 It's easy to get discouraged if one only reads the internet since both sides tend to exaggerate and point out the worst of the other. This is especially true since I essentially became home bound with the covid shutdowns, and now that things are open, I rarely go out due to musculoskeletal weakness that I have had since I had a bad case of Dengue fever. (covid negative, or I'd call it long covid).

But my granddaughter, who studied at a woke college and now teaches high school, assures me that a lot of the youngsters are no longer accepting the in thing, and although they don't go along with my old fashioned bigotry opinions, they also don't parrot the crowd.

Which brings me to this meme on that paranoid conspiracy theorist modern Jeremiah Ann Barnhart:

LOL.

Psychological warfare: Covid and Cordwainer Smith

for watching later. This is government manipulation, but manipulation of news and of course the advertisement culture is part of this. So medical journals censored questioning the covid story, but the dirty little secret is that what they publish was influenced by drug companies, mainly because only drug companies could fund the expensive research, but also because they saw developing a miracle drug would make them rich, so even if the new drug wasn't much better than the old drug, they now could point out the medical journal article.

Dr. C discusses manipulation about covid with an Australian psychologist:

Nothing new about psyops, of course. This book is by a psyop specialist during WWII... best known under his pen name Cordwainer Smith:

,,

Dr. L/Cordwainer Smith's sci fi imagines a world run by the wise, aka the instrumentality, complete with underpeople/ animal derived slaves, robots,

..

..more here and here.and HERE...

Hmmm... is the WEF the modern version of the Instrumentality, the council of the wise who manipulate the culture to make you happy?

of course this is not just manipulating people on covid.

Much of the stuff being revealed nowadays is about the full court press to destroy Trumpieboy...this started years ago, when CIA director Brennan asked other countries to spy on him and to manufacture conspiracy theories.

There is a disturbing report this week that U.S. intelligence may have nudged foreign intelligence to surveil dozens of Trump associates. The request to the “Five Eyes” agencies allegedly was made by Obama’s CIA Director, John Brennan...https://t.co/jQ3YkB3H9D

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) February 15, 2024

  PJMedia discussion.

but of course it's not just in the USA: the dirty little secret is that the Ukrainian mess started after the funding of the revolution against the pro Russian president, which worked. But it is not always sucessful: The attempt of the CIA to stop Duterte included funding Rappler (illegally by the way) to try to stop him. I love the part where she claims that Omidyar didn't try to influence the stories. Of course not. The trick is to hire only people you know who will push the agenda, and then say freedom of the press.

The point is that busy people just believe what they are told, because most people have a life and don't have time to investigate what is going on. But the flip side is that once they see the lie, they flip and start believing conspiracy theories. 

Sigh.

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update: Tucker interview about psyops: transcript here.

how dare they film our aggression

China keeps pushing around the unarmed fishermen who are fishing in their traditional areas in the west Philippine sea, even in areas within our economic borders.

And now the Philippines is daring to push back and help protect our fishemen,

starting last year the tech savvy coast guard started to to film the aggression and tweeting about it.

Manila Standard 2 12 24:

Videos released by the PCG show a CCG vessel just meters from the port beam of the Teresa Magbanua, before it crossed the path of the Filipino boat. “Nevertheless, the PCG vessel professionally engaged both the CCG and CMM vessels through radio reiterating the clear and principled position of the Philippines in accordance with international law,” the PCG statement read. The Chinese embassy in Manila did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

also upsetting China: Placing military on our northern islands. This is near Taiwan, but is also near the shipping routes and internet cables, which could be blocked if China invades Taiwan. 

 

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Update: Chinese cyberattack against Phil Coast guard.

Unknown hackers attacked the X (formerly Twitter) account of the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) early Thursday morning, wiping out its entire page content since it was put up in 2013, including its logo and profile picture, but this was “retrieved” about five hours later. The hacking came nearly two weeks after the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) blocked cyberattacks “from within China” against the Google Workspaces and email addresses of the PCG’s National Coast Watch, the DICT itself, the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration and the official website of President Marcos.

China, which has a decades long maritime dispute with the Philippines over parts of the South China Sea, has denied any involvement in that attack.

 

Read more: https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1905252/ph-coast-guard-comes-under-2nd-cyberattack-this-month#ixzz8Rrj5Difr Follow us: @inquirerdotnet on Twitter | inquirerdotnet on Facebook

History lesson of the day: Boffin power

Wikipedia:

Boffin is a British slang term for a scientist, engineer, or other person engaged in technical or scientific research and development. A "boffin" was viewed by some in the regular military or government services as odd, quirky or peculiar, though quite bright and essential to helping in the war effort through having and developing the key ideas leading to transformative military capabilities....

So if you are reading this, it might be because a boffin worked for years developing a blue LED.

Why are blue LEDs important? after all, red LEDs had been around for years.

This video explains why making a blue LED was so difficult, and why this is important. And it also tells the story of the stubborn boffin who found the solution by  doing hands on work, and the two other university scientists whose work contributed to the discovery...

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Shuji Nakamura won The Nobel Prize in Physics 2014

shared with Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano

The Nobel committee explains:

Lighting plays a major role in our quality of life. The development of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) has made more efficient light sources possible. Creating white light that can be used for lighting requires a combination of red, green, and blue light. Blue LEDs proved to be much more difficult to create than red and green diodes. During the 1980s and 1990s Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano, and Shuji Nakamura successfully used the difficult-to-handle semiconductor gallium nitride to create effecient blue LEDs.

headsup from Kuya. 

the blood clot conspiracy

 Dr, John Campbell has had a series of talks about fibrous blood clots being found at autopsy. I am aware of the theory that this is from the spike protein of covid and the various covid vaccines.

watch this, and go to his youtube page for more discussions. He ran across this after analyzing the excess death problems.

he also has a Rumble channel in case this is removed from youtube.

So is there a link?

ON my medical blog, I checked out some studies about clotting problems with covid reported early in the epidemic, and a discussion if blood thinner should be used. Then they decided it didn't make a difference statisticlly, but one study showed that people on aspirin (as a mild blood thinner) had a lower death rate. In other words, it needs to be started very early, before a lot of people saw a doctor.

the reason I put this up was not to say conspiracy theories should be believed, but that sometimes conspiracy theories might be true.

And given the story of the Post Office scandal in the UK, the refusal to try to check such things by authorities sounds like people placing rules before reality.

alas, having worked for the state and the federal clinics, the problem is the mind set of being a bureaucrat, where you are pressured for not being cooperative with their rules.

Seigi Ozawa: Thanks for the melody

Seigi Ozawa, who for years led the Boston Symphony Orchestra, has died.

After working with the San Francisco Symphony and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in Canada, Ozawa became artistic director of the Tanglewood music festival in the United States in 1970. From 1973, he served as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra

as students we used to go to Tanglewood and listen to the music there. My brother lived nearby and was an usher and could get free tickets for the lawn seating.

Propaganda? Who wudda thot?

I am following the AlJ pro Hamas reports on what is going on in Gaza. 

But of course ALJ is not the only ones who quote verbatum the reports of what is going on there but without context that these might not be civilian targets but military targets hidden in civilian areas. 

 and then you have casualty reports.

Are they accurate? Are they verified by outside reporters who haven't been outed as Hamas supporters, such as one lady reporter for AlJ who said she went to Gaza to report on Israel's atrocities, openly admitting she would write stories to fit the propaganda, not report on reality? we see a similar bias in so called UN and Human rights organizations, whose reports often are more sympathetic to the insurgencies than to governments trying to protect civilians from these pc groups. 

This is nothing new, of course: When we worked in Africa, every possible government atrocity was trumpeted, but the many civilian deaths by the communist insurgents were ignored, as was the later atrocities after their favorite insurgent started running the government.

we also saw this manipulation in Iraq:

the worst example of this was a report on Iraqi civilian casualties released two weeks before Bush was reelected. Published in a major medical journal, by a guy with public health experience, it gave the anti war types a victory, and only later did people question why the numbers didn't match the actual deaths on record (maybe because the doc who did the report had worked for Saddam, and bias in who was asked). 

 So anyway, just like ALJ always shows photos of women and children, in emotional poses, the MSM and the intellectuals just gobble up this propaganda and believe it. Yet these photos are often too good to be true. Were they staged? 

Are the shrouded bodies of military age men, or is this a variation of the goats shrouded and buried in Afghanistan so the families could claim a family member died to get money from those naive Yanks? (numerous reports by soldiers who fought there, but hey reporters and human rights types never caught on to the scam).

well, anyway, has anyone actually analyzed what is being reported? 
I mean, if I, an aged grandmother sees such things, where are the reports?

the Washington Institute report did, and it says almost the same thing that I noticed: Deep fake.

As analysts noted at the outset, civilian harm is inevitable in urban battles where terrorist fighters hide among the population and refuse to surrender. The humanitarian cost in the current war has caused justifiable dismay, and fatality figures from the Gaza Ministry of Health and the Government Media Office (GMO)—both Hamas-run institutions—have provided a focus for global horror, providing metrics that have been relied on almost universally by international media and NGOs and at the International Court of Justice.

 italics mine. War is hell, but manipulation of atrocities as a war tactic is not new, as John Kerry knows when he repeated the claims of human rights groups about the VietNam war that turned out to be false.. Yet did John Kerry notice the thousands who died in re-education camps, or the millions who fled after  the US pulled out of the war, partly because of his testimony? 

But in some ways, the Gaza lies are more blatent: Because they simply don't report any soldiers being killed. WTF? 

 If Gaza fatality counts fail to distinguish combatants from noncombatants, underreport the deaths of men, and highlight the deaths of women and children—as they have done until now—then observers can be expected to assume that mainly women and children are being killed. ..

no honest observer would assume that fact. An honest observer would note that the figures come from Hamas (a fact) and that there is a lack of military age men in the casualty figures (also a fact). They might dispute about the weapons hidden in civilian areas if they didn't see them with their own eyes, but they have access people who can detect secondary explosion evidence from stored weapons, or (in the notorious hospital hoax) the lack  of a crater and evidence it was a fuel fire explosion not ordinance.

Although thousands of Palestinian noncombatants, including military-age males, have undoubtedly been killed in the Hamas-initiated conflict, the world must also recognize that the group has manipulated and exploited civilian fatality claims for its strategic benefit, in an attempt to truncate Israel’s air and ground operations and stir international outrage. The international media and NGOs have repeated such claims without proper scrutiny and in turn validated and reinforced Hamas propaganda efforts. ...

So why is no one questioning this openly? Maybe because of all those photographs; yet a quick perusal of the photos suggest they are too perfect: so a real situation was posed to show maximum emotional disgust, or even completely faked. 

but in the hospital attack hoax, it was the photos that caught them in a lie.

 

...Hamas’s public relations and information warfare campaigns, especially after the October 17 explosion at al-Ahli Hospital, are instructive. For instance, on the night of the hospital explosion, Hamas claimed an Israeli strike had killed 471 Gazans. Israeli, U.S., and other intelligence agencies now confidently assess the disaster was caused by a failed Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket, with a death toll closer to one hundred, raising concerns that Hamas may be inflating fatality figures for other incidents as well.

Ya think?

if you read the article, it gives an analysis of their reports on who died in detail, and why it is suspicious. Here is a short example:

Hamas’s GMO—part of the group’s propaganda machine—is particularly active in pushing the narrative that a large majority of deaths are women and children. Health Ministry figures from December 31, as noted earlier, show males making up 40% of fatalities, and this figure excludes northern Gaza after November 11, where the proportion of men killed can reasonably be expected to far exceed that in the south, owing to the weeks of ground fighting there.

Yet the GMO figures for the same day show males making up just 23% of fatalities. The Health Ministry also claims, contradicting its own data, that 70% of deaths are women and children. At the very least, these inconsistencies, both within Health Ministry reporting and between the ministry and the GMO, necessitate more explanation of methodology and procedure before the data can be regarded as trustworthy, with specific attention going to the fatalities evidently derived from media reports in northern Gaza.

 In summary, deep fake.

One might suggest one sided reporting is bad and we need to listen to both sides. But what if one or both sides are exaggerating the truth? A good reporter will simply report, but let the reader/viewer realize that it is a one sided report.

An example of this is the recent, much condemned, interview by Carlson with Putin.

Tucker Carlson goes to talk to Putin and gets a boring lesson in the 1200 year  history of Eastern Europe and the Ukraine. But without recognizing Putin's version of history that sees Russian imperialism as necessary based on it's long history that shows a strong government is needed to stop  attacks by enemies and prevent anarchy that threatens ordinary folks. Without knowing such history, we lack background to judge why Russia wants to do. He claims there was a CIA coup in the Ukraine to get a pro American president there,  and without this context you won't understand why Putin sees this government as a threat to Russia, and without knowledge of the need of a warm water port, or that the Crimea was never part of the Ukraine, you might not recognize that there are good reasons to split that country.

By the way: the remaking of a Greater Russian empire would enable resources to be joined as a way to peace and prosperity...

So yes, Tucker let Putin manipulate opposition of the war in the US and Europe. But there are hundreds of other reporters who report the reasons why the US needs to support Ukraine's independence. And maybe the result will be to split the country as was proposed years ago, before hundreds of thousand died in that conflict.

Americans don't know history: but other countries remember and are basing the wars that disturb the NWO on the memories of past greatness.

Gaza is not about Gaza: it is about making Israel the bad guy (and as an extension, the Yanks the evil  empire). This will inflame the area into a war against the Sunni Arabs that Iran is planning to win.

Hamas is an extension of the Persian empire:  Hamas and Hezbollah are threatening the Sunni Saudis and Jordanians. The Houthis used missiles to hit Saudi sites for years, and their war against shipping will bankrupt Egypt by cutting traffic through the Suez canal.

if Hamas wins Iran's proxy wars in Gaza, their proxies in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, will spread Iranian infuence.

what was standing in their way was the Abraham accords, where the Sunni states quietly decided to admit Iran, not Israel, is the real enemy.

In the meanwhile, of course, Biden is weak, and probably senile, but preferred to Kamela who is more incompetent than Jill Biden.

As the Chinese curse says: May you live in interesting times.'

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

Musical Interlude of the day

 turn up speakers and dance

......

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and lessons how to play 

we don't need no stinkin' maps

 one of the absurdities in the Clinton administration was when the US bombed the Chinese embassy in Serbia because their map was out of date.

Nowadays we read a lot of stuff about people getting lost because their google maps are inaccurate, and the availability of up to date maps was one reason I used to belong to AAA in the good old days.

But now StrategyPage has a nice article about China mapping the West Philippine sea. 

Well, they have been out there for awhile mainly looking for where they can dig up the seabed for their artificial islands and trying to find the huge natural gas deposits there. (as long as the 1970s, I was assured that the VietNam war was about these natural gas deposits, and our lovely president awhile back essentially tried to cooperate with China to find them, i.e. giving them rights to the natural gas etc until our intrepid press caught her at it).

So now SP discusses how China is mapping those areas, presumably in preparation for getting the fossil fuel deposits, or maybe just mapping the area so they can figure out where it is safe to sail and if they could blockade the sea routes.

But then I ran across this: about when a US submarine hit a sea mount in that area in 2006. A lot of sailors were hurt from the bump, but luckily nothing imploded so only one died.

Several sailors were punished for not watching out where they were going and not checking the depth of the sea nearby.

Why do I bring this up, and what does this have to do with Serbia? This part:

the sea mount the sub hit had been spotted by survey satellites in 1999 and 2004, but the intelligence agency responsible, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, said it didn't have the money to update naval charts. Neither did the navy, or anyone else. Because of this American submarines were allowed to continue moving around amidst all manner of uncharted hazards.

so the article goes into what they are doing to update the problem including mapping that updates itself all the time.

But then:

The second American SSN underwater seamount collision occurred in October 2021 to the very advanced and expensive Seawolf class SSN Connecticut. The damage was so severe that the sub had to surface immediately, and some ballast tanks were damaged so the sub could not remain underwater.

 there are a lot of rumors out there about training problems in the USNavy, and I'd love to ask my grandson about it but he is no longer at sea (he served on an aircraft carrier but now is doing paperwork).

But when little things go wrong, it suggests a bigger problem needs to be done.

Sigh.

and to make things worse: If two US Submarines hit these shoals, one wonders how many maritime accidents have occurred in the Chinese submarines or ships in the area. 

Film Review: Lost in Napoleon (minus the dynamite)

 So we started watching the movie Napoleon. 

Lots of gore, Check.

Sex scenes. Check.

So what's not to like?

ugly cinematography, check.

incomprehensible screenplay, check.

Unlikeable leading actor, check.

In other words, a badly made movie, which made me sad because it is a fascinating time of history.

And the reviews were of no help:

The reviewers mentioned that the battle scenes that were gory. But these scenes were also very short., so that was no problem in today's R rated world where violence porn is common.

But here, we were given no context and no idea what was going on, or where they were, or who they were fighting. I mean, I am slightly familiar with that part of history bur I had trouble following the story.

At least this film started with his use of cannons against the British Navy. And then the film showed how he used these same cannons on civilians protesting the revolution, an atrocity that is usually left out of history or glossed over in a sentence or two. 

So I applaud that the film did show the Paris massacre since it reveals to us that he is a cold hearted B----d...

Indeed ,during the entire film, Phoenix plays Napoleon as an unemotional somewhat deluded person with a soupcon of megalomania. But how would such a person inspire the fervent loyalty of his troops, many of whom came from the common folk?

The film does show how his artillery enabled his first victory, over the British Navy early in the wars, but it is not explained why they allowed him to invade Italy  and go on to Egypt. Indeed, the campaign in Italy disappeared (as did the fact he jailed the Pope), and Egypt campaign did suggest there were numerous uprisings of locals in Egypt. But no mention of why he left there (uh, Nelson's victory might have cut his ability to get supplies) or the scandal that he left a lot of troops behind to become POWs or worse.... 

Lots about having sex with Josephine, and then divorcing Josephine but not much about why the Hapsburgs agreed to send him a princess, or what she thought about being forced into a political marriage (backstory: her story ends happily since she married for love--twice--after Napoleon's death) 

And then he invaded Russia. I think he invaded Russia: that too was glossed over so quickly I almost missed it. Kuya, who was watching it with me, kept asking if this was Waterloo yet. 

Sorry, at this point it was almost two hours into the movie and we were falling asleep, so I turned it off.

The reviewers had it wrong: it was not the gory scenes or even the emphasis on his love life that was the problem. The problem was the screenplay. And the ugly cinematography.

so my advice to Amazon: re edit it and make it into a miniseries. 

Add someone to explain what is going on (maps would help, as would dates of when things happen, or the back story of other people around him.) And this narrator not only would clarify the history for those watching the film, but would be a lot cheaper than filming more gory battle scenes.

I won't give my review a rating, since maybe the last hour of the film would improve things.

My advice? There are lots of films and miniseries about Napoleon and the various Napoleonic campaigns out there. Sharpe's Rifles, Poldark, and even Jane Austen have these wars as a backstory. And don't miss War and Peace.

But if you want a fictionalized version that might give you an idea of Napoleon's personality, check out Marlon Brando's portrayal of Napoleon in Desiree: it might not be history (it's a chick flick) but it does give insight to his charm, his ambition, his willingness to manipulate people, and his megalomania.

political prosecution: no free speech here, folks, just move along.