the Chinese genocides that are ignored.

Can you forgive the unforgivable?

 Lots of lies, propaganda and hatred out there about Gaza: 

Much of it coming from Hamas, Iran and the left. I take Israel's part, not because I don't think the Palestinians don't have a point, but because as a people, they have been manipulated by demagogues, do gooders, and people who are busy filling their bank accounts with money supposed to aid ordinary folk.

So what is the answer? 

One answer is the Hiroshima answer: When faced with an implacable enemy who is willing to fight to the death and doesn't care how many innocent civilians are killed as a result (read the estimates of deaths if the US had invaded, based on what happened in Saipan etc.), so knowing this, what do you do?

One is to make war so terrible they might chose peace, i.e the atomic bomb.

The other? The way of forgiveness. 

People cry genocide in Gaza, yet even with the exaggerated civilian casualty numbers (counting soldiers as civilian, using civilians as human shields), yet real genocides that the UN sat back and didn't stop are quickly forgotten.

One example is Rwanda, NPR report from 2019:

It happened 25 years ago - up to 800,000 people in Rwanda killed - mostly from the minority Tutsi community, all of that over the course of just a hundred days.

 Italics mine. 

And no one demonstrated in the streets, the UN peacekeepers withdrew, and the EU and US decided not to intervene.

and unlike Gaza, it was not outsiders, but neighbors who often did the murders. And yes, there were UN peacekeepers there who didn't stop it, and the US and Europe didn't send in special forces to stop the killings: which were often done face to face using machetes.

So what was the aftermath?

Today the hundreds of thousands of people who carried out those killings live among their victims. Journalist and author Philip Gourevitch has witnessed the unique way Rwandans have defined and navigated forgiveness after the massacre, using local courts. But it went beyond justice:...

truth can also be really traumatizing and, in this case, retraumatizing because, to go from the idea that - that person is the killer of my family..

I heard the word forgiveness, I thought it sort of meant you'd restore whatever the relationship was before....And they would say, no, that involves trust. That's a whole different thing. Forgiveness doesn't require trust. Forgiveness simply means letting go of the idea of getting even, forgoing the idea of revenge. Right? Now, even that's a big ask. But it means accepting coexistence.

read the whole thing.

Here is a talk by one survivor on EWTN,  a Catholic network:

 

more here from a secular site.

:

""an indictment of the chain of trust"": when physicians bow to pseudoscience

 

link to WPATH files.

the WPATH Files reveal that the organization does not meet the standards of evidence-based medicine, and members frequently discuss improvising treatments as they go along. Members are fully aware that children and adolescents cannot comprehend the lifelong consequences of “gender-affirming care,” and in some cases, due to poor health literacy, neither can their parents.

“The WPATH Files show that what is called ‘gender medicine’ is neither science nor medicine,” said Michael Shellenberger, President and founder of Environmental Progress. “The experiments are not randomized, double-blind, or controlled. It’s not medicine since the first rule is to do no harm. And that requires informed consent.”.

pdf file here.

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

In 35 years of practice, I had no trans patients. And despite the two heart idea that is attributed to the Native American community, I did not see any patients with this. 

So I know nothing about this hysteria: I retired before it became popular.

However, as someone who took various hormones for infertility, I am familiar with the medicines they use.

Puberty blockers means the drug that turns off your hormones. I took this to shrink my endometriosis and I cried all the time on them (i.e. depression). And when I had men on them for prostate cancer, I warned them about this complication, that if they were depressed, it was the medicine and that anti depressants might help.

But what about all those androgens given to young girls?

The testosterone hormones made me "Fat, hairy and horny". 

But 30 years ago these were widely used by athletes.

Young men often took these for muscle strength in sports. (also some female athletes took these, but I never treated any women)...And some wonder if this might be behind the high rate of sexual crime and violence in this group. I do know a man who had been a professional wrestler who stopped them when he almost hit his wife in anger: he recognized it as a symptom of the medicine. And of course, these hormones have medical side effects: Liver cancer, neuropathy, heart problems. Med article lists the problems by those taking this medicine. Which is why these medicines were essentially relisted as a controlled substance (strictly regulated) for ordinary folk.

Giving estrogen to men who transition? Well, it lowers their libido. And 40 years ago, we stopped using estrogen to treat prostate cancer because of the high rate of heart disease. And you also see breast cancer in those taking estrogen.

Not mentioned: osteoporosis. Cancer. Obesity related diabetes. Are these things being seen? Who knows?

and all that nonsense about men having babies? Uh, it is well known that the male hormone will affect the baby. And what about the other drugs that are often taken? Antidepression medicines for example.

Sigh.

As I said: in 35 years of practice (and years of training) I haven't treated such cases.

But now the young are being instructed that this is normal, and my granddaughter tells me that it is common to meet these young girls in her classes in the USA.

as for boys: Most are just gay. But because of taboos, some might prefer to say they are trans which is more acceptable.

Years ago, one famous Hollywood female writer quipped: These transvestites really don't want to be women. They want to be prom queens.

Sad.

Ironically, the country that has the highest rate of male to female transition in Iran, because Shiite Islam forbids homosexuality but allows transvestites.

and then you have the question: When you see women bragging about their trans kids, one wonders if this is a variation of Munchausen by Proxy syndrome.

In factitious disorder imposed on another, a caregiver makes a dependent person appear mentally or physically ill in order to gain attention. To perpetuate the medical relationship, the caregiver systematically misrepresents symptoms, fabricates signs, manipulates laboratory tests, or even purposely harms the dependent (e.g. by poisoning, suffocation, infection, physical injury).[6] It is important to note the caregiver is not performing this behavior for obvious external reward, such as money.

And not just parents: when you see tiktok videos of teachers bragging that they are doing this to their students, one wonders who gave them the right to do this.

Sigh. 

the problem with clinical trials part two

A few days ago I posted Dr. Campbell discussing clinical trials, and I had a comment about Hydrochloroquin use in covid that was nixed by studies, and I pointed out that it had to be given within 1 to 2 days in viral infections.

So today Dr C has a discussion about this with a doctor from Australia.

....

other things that worked were Ivermectin, of course, Vitamin D prevention, Zinc with treatment, hydrocortisone to stop the inflammation which is what killed people in the pneumonia stage and of course antibiotics.

I see nothing, nothing...

When the Philippine military had to do urban fighting against the Islamic terrorists who took over Marawi, they filmed what was going on, so that the people knew what they were doing. Of course, in Marawi, the local Muslims didn't want the crazies and often hid their Christian neighbors. 

One does wish the Israeli defense forces would do the same (or are they doing this, but their side of the story is just being ignored in the name of left who hates Israel?)

so in Gaza, what is happening is that Hamas is using violence porn to change the minds of the world, and in a world of sentimentality over hard facts, it seems to be working.

So is Israel killing innocent medical personnel and patients, or is Hamas hiding in a hospital to get maximum propaganda out to the world.

and of course, no one seems to want to discuss what will happen if Iran's proxies in Gaza win: The war has already spread and the West Bank

 

add to this the Houthis who are attacking everyone, even Chinese ships, pretending this is about Israel when it is about just hatred of civilization, sort of like the Boko Harum and Fulani in Nigeria, the Somalis, etc.

Nothing I can do about it.

Of course, we are vulnerable to ISIS working in the Moros in the South, but there is also fear of attacks by the returning workers who converted to Islam in the Middle East.

but of course our real danger is China keeps attacking Philippine islands and fishermen and now the Coast Guard, saying hey they owned the West Philippine sea in the past so get out. Never mind that in the days of the Ming dynasty, it was Chinese pirates who terrorized the place and tried to conquer Luzon, but got their puits kicked because locals hated them more than the Spanish.

Oh well: just ignore those 20 thousand Chinese citizens of military age working in our casinos.

The latest hysteria from the Darien gap is all those military age Chinese men who are joining the economic refugees seeking illegal admittance to the USA.

The buzz on the right wing conspiracy sites is to keep their power dry and get ready for a black swan attack.

Don't ask me. Since Lolo died, we no longer have any guns on premise...China has my OPM file, and probably knows where I am living, as if an aging grandmom (who had a waiver not to carry a gun) might shoot back.

Sigh

never mind.

The staff is busy with the winter harvest right now, so if the world ends, well, we are packing up our gourmet brown rice.

Lolo, who as a young teen fled to the farm with his mom and cousin when the Japanese invaded, assured me that if we retired here, I'd always have rice to eat.

And this week is Holy week. Florinda always had a small chapel for the locals to sing the Pasyon, but she died so the nearest singing is in the regular barangay chapel. The ladies sing, but the locals also come in and say a prayer or two, and people donate money for food for the singers and the neighborhood folk.

for those who think that the mess in the Middle East is due to religion, well, it was going on 2000 years ago, when Jesus was falsely accused of being a rebely by the locals who were scamming the pilgrims to the Temple. But of course, the Battle of Meggido happened 1500 years earlier.

Mozambique: isis types are terrorizing Africans

the problem with those trials

 I have complained about this before: That a lot of the covid studies that showed medicines didn't work was because the medicine was giving after the person came to the hospital, after they had been sick for a few days. But for Herpes simplex or zoster, or influenza, you have to start the anti virals within 24 to 48 hours or they don't make much difference. For bacterial infections, of course this is not true.

So a lot of the covid studies put into the ëvidence based medicine were flawed.

Dr. C discusses this with Professor Clancey: fast forward to 11 minutes.

They then go on to discuss about the mRNA vaccine investments are questionable: Because one could make covid vaccine using well known old fashioned methods, e.g. AZ, Sputnik for example. Sinovax uses an even older method but had much lower protection, but did help a bit.

It took three years for the courts to order the FDA to stop telling people not to use Ivermectin, which works (if taken early) in some studies.

As for HCQ: that was quickly shut down with a story of how a woman used fish tank cleaner to get the HCQ and her husband died. Yet I took HCQ for a year as malaria prevention, no problem. One study showed toxicity, but on much higher doses than is usually used in malaria. As for the story of HCQ/Fishtank cleaner: Who would know this drug would be used for algae in fishtanks? I can think of one group: back in the 1990s, HCQ overdoses were touted by the death/suicide groups as an easy way to kill oneself, and without antidotes. However, docs quickly found an antidote so it fell out of favor. But that information is still out there (I myself found it on line with a quick google).  In other words, this was homicide, but instead of indicting the wife for murder, it was used to condemn Trumpie boy who mentioned it might work.

Sigh. Like the drinking bleach hoax, which was a remark about using surface disinfectants to get rid of the virus, it was lied about and pushed: Because destroying Trump was more important than saving lives.

good vs evil

 watch first part of this interview.

Evil: The atrocities of ISIS vs the Yazidi people and other non Muslim minorities of nothern Iraq. And the good: Did Holland, an agnostic historian, have a religious experience, feeling the presence of Mary?

Evil continues to exist: The world laments the Gaza war, but ignores that the reason for those people's suffering is that Hamas is using the innocent as human shields against Israel. They stole and continue to steal aid money and food, divert the money into their bank accounts or to buy weapons, and are busy with their propaganda all over the world to inflame Muslim hatred of Israel. They could stop the war tomorrow by releasing hostages and letting the UN arrest those guilty of the atrocities against Israeli civilians and others, including the murder of one Filipina caregiver who stayed with her elderly charge at the time of the attack. 

Sort of like bank robbers, who when caught, take hostages and then show hostages killed by the police who were aiming at the criminals to divert your attention from their crimes (sort of like a worldwide Stockholm's syndrome).

atrocities by various Muslim groups get a lot less publicity of course: the terrible attack in Moscow will be blamed on the CIA, not on Islamic militants for Russia's war against them in Syria and by their Wagner mercenaries who are now fighting them in Africa.

News stories out of Gaza only condemn Israel in a way that cynically weaponizing your compassion so they can literally get away with murder, not to mention all that money they stole and have put into bank accounts.

But if you put it into the way that criminals have easily weaponized Islam, well discussing that is taboo, because no one wants to condemn a billion believers for the ten percent of them who are crazy. 

Sigh.

The second reason I put this up: It is a follow up of a previous post where I noted that while the Pope is promoting global warming ideas instead of God, even though the green religion is about weaponizing religion to enable the power grab by the international elite,.

So the irony is that we see the agnostics who are talking about God.

Who wudda thot?

The Music man: sing along

 So we were discussing songs, and I was asked where this melody comes from:

\

well, I remebered the lyrics and found the song:

what is interesting in the melody? It is almost the same melody as 76 Trombones.

So instead of watching the latest Netflix drama about rich narcissitic heroines in romantic kerfuffles, which is what my granddaughter seems to thrive on, I found the film at Internet archives to view:LINK.

OR you can watch it on YOUTUBE:

imagine: a movie with songs that you actually can sing along with!

Crochety old lady alert!

yes a piece of fluff. And not realistic. But then, I didn't think I could handle the Clueless woke heroines of Netflix, which I don't find realistic. I long to tell them: Get a nursing degree and find reality outside your bubble.

But then, of course, I don't watch dramas with medical themes either: in these dramas,  docs and nurses are not realistic either. I rarely watch them because I end up throwing stuff at the screen and screaming: You don't do it that way. Even the K dramas tend to get medical details wrong.

and the few that get the details and diseases true to life, well, I've lived through too many similar scenes in real live so they bring back sad memories. 

 Sigh. 

Conspiracy theory of the week

 

we grow organic rice, but the dirty little secret is that if everyone did that, poor people would starve.( See SriLanka)

get rid of fossil fuel, and there goes the cheap fertilizer and diesel to run farm machinery. So go back to peasants planting rice using water buffalo? Well, first of all, even in our Catholic area, people aren't having six kids per woman any more (we are about 2.3, still growing the population, but a lot lower than 30 years ago).

But you know, whereas 20 years ago, our staff would take off to help harvest the crop, now we rent a harvester/thresher to do this: Because as the farmers get older, they can't do it anymore, and thanks to land reform, they got richer, sent their kids to school, and now their kids work elsewhere (ten percent of Filipinos work overseas).

So we recruited people from the poorer Visayas to work as tenant farmers on our land, but the land that is now owned by the farmers, well, they are trying to sell it to us, but we are limited to what we can own. So returning Filipinos will buy it, install tenant farmers, and grown rice.

or maybe, sell the land to the local corporation that is trying to buy/rent our land to put up solar panels. So in a country that imports a lot of the rice, the aim is to divert valuable rice land to solar panels? Some poorer farmers might just do that if their kids don't want the farm land.

RIght now, with irrigation, we get two crops a year: With proper irrigation and investment, we could get three crops a year. But instead of investing in food, they will put up solar panels?

Sigh.

I am anti pollution, but there is a difference between development of resources in way that limits pollution, and and stopping farming/ forestry/ mining in the name of a green Gaia goddess. 

That will only lead to hungry people in the cities, and locals mining or cutting trees anyway, but in a more dangerous way that leads to people dying in accidents and more local pollution. Ah, but laws will stop this? Nope. In many areas all it takes is a bribe for authorities to look the other way.

Sigh.

Leprosy isn't what it used to be

Leprosy isn't what it used to be: It is now called Hansen's disease, and is easily treated with antibiotics.

and the cause? It's those dang armadillos.

https://mistralmtn.blogspot.com/2013/10/leprosy.html

But hey, someone at Newsweek notice that there are a few cases in Florida, so the press is having a field day.

from Newsweek 

The U.S. is experiencing cases creep upwards, with the number of infections across the country more than doubling over the past decade, both in people exposed to armadillos and those who aren't.

OH NO. Cases are doubling!

that claim is straight out of the book how to lie with statistics. It makes it seem like it is becoming an epidemic.

Until you notice the actual numbers

According to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year, there were 159 new cases of leprosy in the U.S. in 2020, around a fifth of which were in Florida. Of the Florida cases, 81 percent were found in central Florida.

I had to get my calculator out to figure it out, and ut turns out this fearful epidemic is...32 cases.

the bad news? Mild cases might be overlooked, since few American doctors have seen a case. Luckily most skin lesions will be biopsied, but mild cases in people with good immune systems might not have a lot of symptoms and might not be recognized by doctors.

Bur once diagnosed, it can be treated and cured. So not an epidemic, and probably not a disease you have to worry about catching.

but hey, it makes a good press, and will increase the hysteria about all those illegal migrants fleeing into the USA. And of course, by saying it is present in Florida, they can hit DeSantis, who is one of the whipping boys of the US MSM.

this is not a new story, of course: This video is from 8 years ago:

 

Smithsonian magazine has a nice write up here.

before you start to worry about epidemics or making armadillo eradication plans, find comfort in this: Though Hansen’s disease, as it is clinically known, annually affects 250,000 people worldwide, it only infects about 150 to 250 Americans. Even more reassuring: up to 95 percent of the population is genetically unsusceptible to contracting it. And these days, it is highly treatable and not nearly as contagious as once believed.

And as for armadillos—the risk of transmission to humans is low. Only the nine-banded armadillo is known to carry the disease. And, most people in the U.S. who come down with the chronic bacterial disease get it from other people while traveling outside the country.,

For a more scientific review of the disease in the west, check out this article.

the good news: It is easily treated with drugs.

The main problem? Few American doctors have seen it.

Despite working in Africa, I have only seen one case, and that was a minor lesion that I biopsied thinking it was skin cancer. Another lesion I suspected and biopsied turned out to be Kaposi's Sarcoma. In that case, one of our elderly sisters had worked with lepers and she said it didn't smell like leprosy, and she was correct.

The reason I stress she was elderly is that they now treat leprosy as out- patients.

In the 1980s I worked with a nun who held clinics that screened people in the villages of Liberia, and traveled periodically to give out medicine for them to take and monitor them for complications. So it is easily treated and cured if found early.

The problem? Once the damage is done, it takes a specialist plastic surgeon or hand surgeon to fix it.

WebMD has a long article about the symptoms of the various forms of Hansen's disease, and the various treatments, including long term treatment with antibiotics, and in some cases the use of the controversial drug thalidomide for skin lesions.

If you are interested in how it was treated in the past:

the 1950 book Miracle at Carville tells the story of a woman with the disease, including the story of the only lepersarium in the US in Carville LA, and about the miracle that happened when the sulfa drug Dapsone was discovered that cured it.

and another recent best seller, Covenant of Water has a subplot about a doctor in India who treated leprosy patients before the treatment was available.

Who had private Chinese biolabs in California on your bingo card?

 StrategyPage has a long analysis about what was going on with that Chinese biolab in California that made headlines last year but since then has sort of dropped out of the headlines.

I should note that Strategy Page is not a conspiracy site, and they are more accurate than much of the MSM on what is going on inside countries where I have personal knowledge. (Philippines, Colombia, West Africa, South Africa).

That shoddy lab in California  was discovered 7 months ago, not by the feds, but by a local building inspector, and the local authorities had a lot of problems getting the CDC etc. interested in finding what was being done there. 

At first, the lab was supposed to be about testing for Covid.

but later investigations found a lot more infectious specimens inside.

USAToday story here. the story has sort of disappeared from the news, but a Congressional committee issued a report  last November about what this was about.

The Congressional report includes this complaint:

The CDC’s insisted that there was “no evidence” that Select Agents were within Reedley Biolab or that Zhu and UMI imported infectious agents and “insufficient evidence at this time” of legal violations. It seems to have made this claim without conducting any investigation beyond reading the labels that were in English on a limited number of the pathogenic samples.,,,

WTF? 

conclusion:

At a minimum, the Reedley Biolab shows the profound threat that unlicensed and unknown biolabs pose to our country. At worst, this investigation revealed significant gaps in our nation’s defenses and pathogen-related regulations that present a grave national security risk that could be exploited in the future.

Italics mine...ya think? 

It is therefore incumbent upon Congress and the Executive Branch to address these vulnerabilities now before it is too late.

As I said: The story sort of disappeared from the news since then.

What me worry?

So what was this all about? 

  StrategyPage's summary here analyzes this in light of Chinese history and culture, such as the mandate of heaven, chronic corruption, and a resurgence of the war lord mindset that has plagued China for 2100 years.

So if the regime falls, the local warlords want weapons to retain power.

This tries to explain why small private rich guys might be investing in such labs. 

As SP explains:

A case can be made that the Chinese government has been waging a covert war on America for years. At least a few of the Chinese with biowar labs in China would certainly presume government approval for creation of similar labs in America, plus that would give them far greater bragging rights and status among their peers. China’s government has lost control of its regional leaders, who are now waging private wars against America. With weapons of mass destruction.

italics mine. 

So why does SP think this is done by a rich guy to gain power, not by the imperial Chinese government?

Because Xi isn't that stupid.

Had it been an official Chinese government biowar lab, that would have been an overt act of war. Fortunately, it wasn’t, but it is still a big problem because the California lab is unlikely to be the only one, and we absolutely dare not assume it was.

Hmm.. one wonders if the Chinese have such labs here in the Philippines.

Another note: It is often said that people/countries that are guilty will accuse their victims of doing what they are actually doing. This might explain Russia and China and the leftist Americans pointing fingers to Ukrainian biolabs.

Now, I have no idea what is in those Ukrainian labs, but I do know that local biolabs are needed to monitor diseases in both humans and animals, and to diagnose new outbreaks, and that even these diagnostic/vaccine producing labs can result in local epidemics, such as anthrax in Russia or brucellosis in China.

Yet these labs are needed:  I often cite the local outbreak in 2009 of Ebola Reston virus in local pig farms, that also infected a few local workers non fatally. 

this NatGeo article discusses that outbreak, and the detective work used to identify what was going on 

But there is a huge difference in labs that diagnose the latest outbreaks in animals or humans, and make vaccines to stop them, and labs such as the one in California that just was doing....exactly what is the question.

So one does wonder if there are more private biowar labs out there operating under the radar of the authorities in the USA, or maybe even in third world countries.

Drugs in the Americas

 From the website of Bishop Gracida: a summary of the explosion of gang violence in the USA and Latin American countries. by Marvin L. Covault,Lt Gen US Army, retired

too long for me to summarize here: just read it and weep.

here the shabu/meth problem comes from China.

Duterte's reputation was so frightening that many stopped taking drugs and many retired from pushing, knowing that they would be killed, not arrested and then left go. Kuya tells the story of two drug pushers in our farm area: One disappeared, and his friend got the message and left town.

Repeat this by hundreds or thousands and it means I can walk down the street again. That's why Duterte got 80 percent of folk supporting him, while the international human rights folk are busy trying to prosecute him. But of course it's really because he hated the CIA, and they tried to stop him by manipulating the press etc. Rappler didn't fund itself.

I believe the Chinese saying is kill a chicken to scare the monkey. 

Not very nice, but the problem with mass incarceration is what is seen in Haiti, where the gangs got their friends out of jail and are now terrorizing the entire country.

and what about the victims? JPeterson discusses what could work with the homeless drug addicts.

No. AI can't think (and the NYTimes can't use google).

So Elon Musk has released a code about his version of AI/chatbot, which he calls Grok.

Instapundit link

NYTimes article is behind a paywall but IArchives had it on the wayback machine, and the Register discsuses the issue HERE..

By opening the code up for everyone to view and use — known as open sourcing — Mr. Musk waded further into a heated debate in the A.I. world over whether doing so could help make the technology safer, or simply open it up to misuse....

 The move to open-source chatbot code is the latest volley between Mr. Musk and ChatGPT’s creator, OpenAI, which the mercurial billionaire sued recently over breaking its promise to do the same.

Mr. Musk, who was a founder and helped fund OpenAI before departing several years later, has argued such an important technology should not be controlled solely by tech giants like Google and Microsoft, which is a close partner of OpenAI.

The discussion is a bit technical for grannies like myself: I have had a computer since the early 1980s but am still stuck in the past with things like blogger. But my granddaughter says all the high school kids she teaches use chat bot etc to write papers.

I believe the danger is twoford: One: the left leaning bias of their informaion and Two: they can lie.

 But the big issue:

Letting only tech giants to use it gives them a huge control over the internet. 

Letting every high school sophmore get hold of the code sort of messes that idea up.

and of course, by posting the code, it undermines the idea that the computer is a thinking machine, instead of just something that searches and juggles information out there. 

I posted a video on this before: by saying the machine is an independent thinker, those with the agenda to demolish the idea of God and free will and the importance of humanity can manipulate people

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

.background about the power fight: interview with Altman. I post it to listen to it later.

fast forward to 1:38 where he asks Altman if he wants that much power.

Don't ask me: I'm a doctor, not a computer expert.

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

However, unlike the NYTimes, I do read science fiction and geeky stuff.

 I had to laugh at the ignorance of the expert reports at the NYTimes when they write this:

Grok, which is designed to give snarky replies styled after the science-fiction novel “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” is a product from xAI, the company Mr. Musk founded last year.

silly me. Anyone around in the 1980s know that Grok comes from Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange land.and means to understand intuitively, but the term has been picked up by computer geeks to explain how they intuitively understand code and programs. 

Being a partial geek, I understand that part: it is how I do math, and sometimes diagnose patients: the pattern behind things appear without a logical path to figure it out. Which is why I am not a good teacher: teachers have to teach step by step, and I just intuitively grasp what is going on.

but you know: If the writers don't even know this basic fact, you wonder how much of the article is accurate.

the world turns upside down

the Pope preaches global warming and preaches as if all Christians were affluent elites from European countries where no one goes to church, instead of preaching to the poor. Indeed, for him the poor are like pets, for him to care for, not humans whose lives might be made better with a factory job instead of handouts from a rich outsider.

And instead of pointing out the importance of motherhood for women and that women should use their feminine/maternal gifts in their work (for example, women doctors approach patients differently, in a motherly way: something well documented in the medical literature), he thinks making the activist feminists into female deacons is the answer: which of course is his stealth way to let women be priests .

This is not about equality of course: it is to impose a world view that women and men are interchangable and identical in their biology, and all that leads to. 

But of course we catholics know that letting uberfeminist often lesbian nuns to influence the church will lead to teachings that men and women are the same, not men and women are yin/yang and both needed in the world and that people are not isolated individuals doing their thing but part of a family, and that family, not job success, should be the basis of one's life.

Of course, Yin/yang is an Asian concept, but hey, don't go to Asia for wisdom, or ask Africans about the importance of the family: listen to openly gay rich European experts from countries where no one goes to church.
 

in the meanwhile, who dares to preach the gospel?

well, a quick look on youtube reminds one of Christ's saying that if you (i.e. the church authorities of his day) remain silent, then the stones will cry out.

so an agnostic Jordan Peterson leads the anti woke brigade who discusses the need to help people rebuild their life, and people like Jim Carey are preaching that God died for our sins.

heh. Who wudda thot?

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

update: The synodality people didn't go along with the Pope's agenda, so he is revising the meeting to make sure they approve of his heresies.

or as EcclesIsSaved blog explains:

maybe look at the aims of Hamas? Nah. Violence porn Propaganda is preferred

LINK

Link for book at Amazon

. ..

...

.

.. . .

The May 2021 conflict between Israel and the terrorist group Hamas generated headlines around the world.

However, much of the reporting ignored the history, funding, political dynamics, and other key components of the story.

Hamas initiates conflict every few years, but the reporting rarely improves.

Social media has only further clouded the picture. Hamas is rarely held responsible for its use of "human shields," blindly firing rockets at civilian areas in Israel, or diverting aid that should benefit the people of Gaza.

The Islamic Republic of Iran, a state sponsor of terrorism, has been the primary patron of Hamas since the group's inception in the late 1980s.

Hamas has received additional assistance over the years from Qatar, Turkey and Malaysia. These countries are fomenting conflict, while others, such as Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, have tried to minimize it. Gaza is therefore ground zero in a struggle for the future stability of the Middle East.

The Biden administration has important choices to make. Its intent to re-enter the Iran nuclear deal could have significant consequences, given that sanctions relief to Iran will likely yield a financial boon for Hamas, along with other Iranian proxies.

The Biden administration must also come to terms with "The Squad," a small but loud faction of the Democratic Party that seeks to undermine US-Israel relations.

 

The propaganda of showing the wounded civilians, and the high number of casualties that stress civilians not soldiers killed, is being used to undermine the backstory: That if Hamas is not stopped, it is not just a threat to Israel but to the Arab countries in the Middle East.

Iran's used of the Houthis to bomb Saudi has been going on for years, and now is being used against shipping, which is threatening not only to raise prices for the west, but is a direct threat to Egypt's economy.

Yet none of this is being discussed, and as to the press: if it bleeds, it leads.

Israel did not release photos of the dead and mutilated by Hamas in their attack against civilians, out of respect for their families. Yet the MSM has ignored what happened then, since that story is now "old"... too often the press and the social media prefer to just repeat press reports from Hamas propaganda outlets, often echoed by tainted UN reports, or reports from the clueless left, who has decided to turn on Israel and promote gangsters.

Sigh.

This is a war of civilizations: Not Islam vs the West, but of a radical form of Islam that has more in common with the Nazis and Marxism than with the beliefs of the majority of Muslims.

And the propaganda war is more about persuading these Muslims that they are victims of the west and need to join them.

The fact that Iran is the puppetmaster behind all of this is ignored of course.

By the way: Did you read that the UN just condemned Iran for their human rights violations against women?

Iran’s “repression of peaceful protests” and “institutional discrimination against women and girls” has led to human rights violations, some of which amount to “crimes against humanity,” according to a United Nations’ report.

Such violations and crimes include “extrajudicial and unlawful killings and murder, unnecessary and disproportionate use of force, arbitrary deprivation of liberty, torture, rape, enforced disappearances, and gender persecution,” the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR) said in a press release Friday.

Sigh. 

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

update:

Haiti

BBC article on what is going on in Haiti:

the AP article on the hunger and anarchy in Haiti.

some 1.4 million Haitians are on the verge of famine, and more than 4 million require food aid, sometimes eating only once a day or nothing at all, aid groups say. Expand article logo Continue reading “Haiti is facing a protractive and mass hunger,” Jean-Martin Bauer, Haiti director for the United Nation’s World Food Program, told The Associated Press. He noted that Croix-des-Bouquets, in the eastern part of Haiti’s capital, “has malnutrition rates comparable with any war zone in the world.”

This is a long analysis of Haiti: and he is very blunt about the problem.

Fetal and neonatal malnutrition is the cause of the low IQ. I saw this a lot in Liberia, and in the US, immigrants from Ireland and Poland in the past had the same problem for the same reason.
A lot of the analysis is very hard line, but alas it is true.

Just throwing in money just makes the corrupt rich. Something to remember when you read about the UN planning to send money to poor countries because of global warming. 

this 2019 article from the UK Guardian gives an analysis of the failure of aid before and after the earthquake ten years earlier.

No, I have never been in Haiti, but our church in Pennsylvania had a sister church there. And I know doctors who worked in clinics there. 

But although this is very bad, there are dozens of countries that have slightly less problems, and yes I have worked in some of those countries.

the good news for today: more kids alive

Childhood deaths are down.

“Behind these numbers lie the stories of midwives and skilled health personnel helping mothers safely deliver their newborns… vaccinating… children against deadly diseases, and (making) home visits to support families,” Unicef Executive Director Catherine Russell said in a statement. 

For example, after throwing out the Taliban, midwife training led to a huge decrease in maternal/child deaths. 

Routine vaccinations also lowered the death rate from measles and whooping cough.

and encouraging family planning that enables spacing of children, along with encouraging prolonged breast feeding, also helps.

and the general lowering of the poverty rate led to better food so the kids had better immune systems. That is why the covid shutdown was a disaster here in the third world.

the resurgence of an obsolete form of Islamic fanaticism will reverse these trends in many countries.

 And the anti vax types will ignore the good of the vaccines leading to deaths.

and the green movement to ban fossil fuels will make the economy worse by raising food prices and by subtle things like making LGP gas to cook with too expensive, so back to using wood (causing indoor pollution and asthma in kids, not to mention deforestation).

Sigh.

Headlines we got um

a follow up of my previous rant about Iran being the puppetmaster behind the latest war against Israel and the west:

.

all the stuff on Gaza casualties is of course exaggerated and much of it is violence porn and sophisticated so that it makes you want to hate Israel. but never mind. 

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

and then there is this.

BREAKING INSIDE THE PENTAGON: Associate Director in the Office of the Secretary of Defense says, “Why not just have an open border?” “Tear down the wall.”

“I think we should repeal the Second Amendment and take the guns all away!” says Jason Beck, who has a classified security… pic.twitter.com/QSuXmgQAPz

— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) March 13, 2024

remember this guy has a secret clearance, showing you that all that any nincompoop can get a security clearance.

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

and a virus experts explains why banning gain of function research is like silencing Galileo. But unlike Galileo, he didn't kill a couple million folks with a lab leak.

most biolabs are about identifying illnesses in animals: an example would be when Ebola Reston infected a bunch of pigs in a nearby farm. But a year ago there was a story here about EcoHealth trying to fund a lab here, not to help with these needed investigations, but to investigate illnesses in wild animals that might evolve to hurt humans. Luckily the Senate stopped it because they found the US Dept of Defence was funding it. But nothing in the news since then, so I hope the gov't stopped them from doing germ warfare stuff here.

and another story of how an expert who opposed some of the covid shutdown policies was punished.

it was the Great Barrington Declaration.

see above post about Galileo. But hey, it's okay to use a 400 year old mistake to destroy Catholicism, but don't dare criticize Pope Fauci.

and the rot isn't limited to the medical leaders in the CDC and medical societies/journals that should have published these questions.

Audit of Boeing's practices suggests a sloppiness that is dangerous and might sink that company's ability to sell airplanes. And the "suicide" of a whistleblower right before he was scheduled to testify makes things worse.

and a lot of people are now willing to stand up and say: Wait a second.

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

I thought Dr Phil was a new age guru in Oprah's religion. But now he is talking to Jordan Peterson?!

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

years ago, an Irish friend told me the press was very anti Catholic because they saw the church standing in the way of modern policies of what we call woke. So far they have succeeded, but last week's vote suggested push back.

of course this is the spin by the experts that give you an idea of how this is being reframed to explain why those deplorables didn't do it.

reminds one how they pushed a hysterical narrative about a death of a woman from sepsis from a botched and illegal second trimester abortion into the need to legalize abortion.

The bad news is that after Ireland rejected the Mastrict treaty, they simply started a propaganda campaign and promises of prosperity and it squeaked through in a revote.

so expect the same thing here.

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

finally, I know nothing about tiktok, but the addiction to social media was made worse by the isolation during the covid quarantines. It is not good for one's mental health, and you can be quickly sucked into a rabbit hole of the latest thing. But heck, talk radio has done that for years. The difference? The kids are more vulnerable to being groomed/brainwashed.

.....

Rand Paul's take on the issue:

🧵1/2

Reactionaries who want to ban TikTok claim the data can’t be secured because the “algorithm” is in China.

Not true.

The truth is the Algorithm runs in the U.S. in oracle cloud with their review of the code. (NOT in China).

Maybe we should examine the facts before…

— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 13, 2024

As to China mining data: heck, the FBI is doing that already from Facebook, 

and of course Chinese hackers stole my OPM file a couple years ago, along with the OPM files of over a million military and gov't employees. We were told it was criminals, but hey it was the Chinese gov't who now knows all about us.

The answer might be to take cellphones away from vulnerable kids.

My sister in law forbad facebook years ago because her daughter's skating team was ridiculed so much it was putting her into a deep depression. I should note that since then, she has skated with a professional ice skating company for one season, but now has switched to being a physical therapist instead of a PhysEd teacher for team skating.

I stopped going to facebook about four years ago because it was full of hate stuff posted by friends and relativesm, and have had to limit my tweeting viewership because of this extreme partisanship distorts reality.

And hey, with the election coming, it will get worse.

A film of Chinese overfishing in the west Philippine sea

Iran will push violence in the proxies for Ramadan

 Everyone assumes that the Hamas attacks against Israel was about the Palestinians.

Uh, wait a second: Hamas is run by Iran.

and what about all those stories about Israel bombing Lebanon for no reason?

The 100 thousand rockets in southern Lebanon are owned and operated by Hezbollah, which again is an Iranian proxy, and they have indeed sent a few to bomb Israel, but that part didn't get in the press. Why haven't they gone fully into the war? Because there are a lot of Sunni Muslims and Christians there who could restart that country's civil war, and hey if they want to plunder money from the country they need peace. Money is more important than religion you know.

Hezbollah is using Syria as a center to attack Israel too. That is why you read every now and then about Israeli airstrikes into that country.

Then there are the Houthis. These rebels don't run the place, only part of it, but they have been bombing Saudi for years (and don't even ask feminists why they haven't noticed their mistreatment of women there). And yes, they are funded by Iran.

The Houthis are against Israel and are using this as an excuse for using expensive missiles to hit civilian ships (and killing a few Filipino seamen while they are at it). What does this have to do with Israel? Nothing. But it is a twofer: They make the west look weak, and by diverting shipping from the Suez canal, they can hurt the Egyptian economy, and maybe have the Muslim brotherhood stage a rebellion there too. After all, Egypt, which had owned Gaza for 3000 years, but now refuses to allow the refugees (read a few civilians and lots of terrorists) enter into Egyptian territory is also the enemy.

and now, of course, when Israel goes into the west bank to arrest terrorists there, you won't read why they did this.

If you believe the propaganda that this is the poor Palestinians, you are wrong. It is Iran trying to intimidate the local Arab countries into letting them reestablish their Persian empire. 

But hey, inflating casualties and filling the press with violence porn works.

And Ramadan, the season of fasting that is supposed to let you be humble before God, is now here.

But the Crazies/Islamoterrorists think Ramadan is about killing their enemies. 

So the news are full of Gaza violence porn propaganda against Israel, with the press obediently reporting what Hamas says as if they never lied.

Sigh. 

family news

The house has been chaotic an noisy for the last two weeks, and the dogs barking on and off at night have interfered with my sleep.

The problem? Both female dogs went into heat: First Blanche, the dog in the business center, and now Baby who lives in my house. 

 The male dogs are crazy and fighting each other all day and night, and I have had to put two of them on amoxicillin for dogbites so the wounds don't get infected.

Baby is the worst, since she is related to the male dogs in my house and refused to mate with them... She prefers to mate with the brown dog down the street, and if left alone she is small enough to sneak out in the space between the two garage doors to meet him. That makes the two male dogs who are too large to fit through the hole angry, and they attack one another, or sometimes one of the younger half grown puppies.

Ruby didn't get her job in HongKong because she doesn't have enough work experience, so will probably teach in Manila for another year.

Me? One of these days I want to see a doctor to find why my exercize tolerance, which was recovering after my dengue attack, is now down again.

And the bad news? Hot season has arrived. It will hit the 90s until the monsoon arrives in June. Which means to exercize one has to get up at 5 am before the heat hits.

China destroys the ecosystem of the West Philippine Sea. Envoronmentowackos silent.

 from the Inquirer:

According to the report “Deep Blue Scars: Environmental Threats to the South China Sea,”  (according to a report from the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) of Center for Strategic and International Studies )

 increased fishing, dredging, land fill and giant clam harvesting have taken a “devastating toll,” especially on the biodiversity’s main foundation—coral reefs.

 yup. they blame every country, but ignore the real cause: China is doing this, and they don't care.

Indeed, China's overfishing is harming a lot of other countries too.

NYTimes report 2022 about CHinese overfishing (behind paywall)..

With its own coastal waters depleted, China has builta global fishing operation unmatched by any other country... 

Chinese fishing in ⬤ 2020 and ⬤ 2021. The Galápagos are part of Ecuador. And yet each year growing numbers of Chinese commercial ships, thousands of miles from home, fish here, at times right on the edge of Ecuador’s exclusive economic zone 

The Chinese ships since 2016 have operated off South America virtually all day, all year, moving with the seasons from the coasts of Ecuador to Peru …  and eventually to Argentina, where they have fished for what amounts collectively to more than 16,000 days already this year. 

The scale has raised alarms about the harm to the local economies and the environment, as well as the commercial sustainability of tuna, squid and other species.... 

Over the last two decades, China has built the world’s largest deep-water fishing fleet, by far, with nearly 3,000 ships. Having severely depleted stocks in its own coastal waters,

italics mine 

China now fishes in any ocean in the world, and on a scale that dwarfs some countries’ entire fleets near their own waters. The impact is increasingly being felt from the Indian Ocean to the South Pacific, from the coasts of Africa to those off South America — a manifestation on the high seas of China’s global economic might.

and on top of this, the Chinese are attacking Phil Coast Guard ships off our coast.

Security?

 There are reports that NYC, after arresting civilians who fight back when someone assaults them or stops the mentally ill thugs from attacking others, now are sending in the National Guard to protect the subways.

This sound suspicious. Just arresting the obviously high or taking the obviously confused for mental health (and making sure they stay detained for awhile) would protect people not just from assaults but from infectious disease from the homeless using the subways for toilets.

The National Guard has training for riots but also for helping with local disasters (for example, floods).

But the National Guard probably won't have bullets in their guns 

Years ago, the late great Mayor Rizzo  (/s) refused to call out the NG when there was a riot in Philly: telling his critics: Our cops are used to being spit at and have stuff thrown at them, but the National Guard are not...

Indeed, a few years late, Kent State showed what happens when a nervous semi trained person gets attacked.

 Of course, the National Guard just by being there might stop the gangs from attacking folks to steal their stuff. But heaven help them if they actually hurt one of these gang members who just want to terrorize people for fun and make some money doing it. And of course, what about the mentally ill? If you see a mumbling dissheveled person attacking civilians, will you be allowed to stop them?

Police or trained security guards would be better, and a lot less worrisome for civilians.

However, what came to mind when I read this: most people in the National Guard have some training in NBC/CBRN warfare.

And this made me wonder: did someone detect a threat out there about a terrorist attack.

The chemical attack in the Japanese subway in 1995 and the 2004 bomb attacks on the train stations in Spain come to mind.

Here in the Philippines, to go into a mall, one has to get wanded (or go through a door similar to those in airports) and get someone to check inside packages and purses.

However, that hasn't stopped attacks, mainly with bombs in churches, bus stations, casinos, ferries, and open air markets that usually have only one or two security guards to catch petty criminals but are not necessarily trained to detect bombs or explosives. Of course not all of these are Islamic or NPA attacks: some are just criminals or personal vendettas.

So which NG units are being sent into NYC subways? Those with expertise in crowd control, units of military police, or units with specialized expertise in detecting bombs etc.?

Why are some of them openly wearing bullet proof vests?

and why are they only being told to do random checks of bags? Anyone who has been in an airport knows that this means that grannies with bags will be searches, but suspicious looking young males will not be searched for fear of being called racist. 

Dirty little secret: Cops often detect problems by the perpetrator's body language, so are the NG trained in this? (the MP units are often cops so yes some of them have this expertise. but ordinary units not so much). 

The news reporters are a bit naive and hasn't seemed to ask such questions.

Civil rights are being emphasized by the governor, who assures the public that those with mental health problems will be taken for treatment.

the joke is that those arrested will quickly be left out on the streets, and of course the mentally ill will also be released.

Propaganda vs nuances

Father Leo has a video about the trans kerfuffle.

the poorly written ambiguous letter from Pope Francis about blessing couples in irregular relationships is getting pushback from a lot of Yanks, because a lot of us saw how teenage boys were abused by priests in the USA in the past because the influential experts said there was nothing wrong with this. 

Now I read it is worse:  with the sexualization of children at many levels, including gender training in grade schools and internet porn, a lot of parents rightly worry Pope Francis' stonewalling protests over blessing gay couple has nothing to do with blessing people, but is actually about going along with the woke agenda to throw out sexual sin in the name of the latest trend in society..

This is not paranoia, given the actions of some very important bishops such as Cardinal McElroy openly saying

it is becoming clear that on some issues the understanding of human nature and moral reality upon which previous declarations of doctrine were made were in fact limited or defective?

whoops. Guess we gotta throw out Thou shalt not commit adultery as non scientific and out of date.

What's next? Thou shalt not kill? (abortion, euthanasia are sitting in the wings). Honor thy father and thy mother (euthanasia is more convenient and cheaper). And how about thou shalt not steal? (don't prosecute shoplifters, ignore all that money in politicians bank accounts).

But Father Leo is seeing this through the eyes of FIlipino culture, where family matters, and where baclas and tomboys and trans and people who have second wives are not seen as sinners but as weak, people trying to do the right thing despite their weaknesses. 

the bad news? The western press sees this Filipino acceptance of family members who are gay as the same as acceptance of the gay agenda/ gender agenda being pushed by many western governments on poorer countries.

This started as just being nice to people but has quickly grown to grooming children, pushing trans as a trendy solution to emotional problems, and allowing pornography in grade school libraries.

Most parents are aghast. Heck, even most gays are aghast at this trend to sexualize children, but the cyberbullies attack anyone who dares post such an opinion, so you might not know about this.

And this is where Pope Francis made his mistake: in an attempt to be nice, he is naive. Everyone but him knows that the so called reformers will twist his words and actions to change the church into a morality free zone. And only some Yanks, and the African bishops seeing the danger dare to stand up to him and refuse to bless sin.

But we live in a globalized world. So the bad news? the gospel of woke is spreading even here, thanks to the US influence and social media. the trans etc. fads are in the upper class high schools in Manila according to my granddaughter who teaches there.

Yet ordinary folk continue to say no, and vote with their feet (hence the huge increase of Filipinos joining Protestant churches here, a phenomena also happening in Latin America).  

The trendier than thou brag about inclusion, but the reality is that Gresham's law applies: just like bad money drives out good money, institutions pushing inclusiveness of those bragging about their sins are seen as excluding those who live by the rules. 

as Father Leo explains: Those with same sex attraction can be welcome in the church, the same way that alcoholics and drug addicts and people living in irregular marriages can do this. By humbly trying to live a good life even if one's situation makes full repentance hard.

not going around flaunting the sin and blaming others for not accepting one's sin.