China is destroying Philippine's environment...and could block sea lanes

LINK China is destroying the ecosystem in the West Philippine sea.

Ecology types are silent about this of course: one conspiracy site notes that Chinese proxies donate a lot of money to ecology groups to stop the US from mining rare earth metals, protesting drilling for oil or fracking, slowing down Elon Musk, etc. And then you have these iffy factories being built near military bases in various states, and ten thousand illegal migrants who recently entered the US being from China.

Nope, not a lot of news about this. It's Trumpieboy 24/7 on the cable news.

in the meanwhile, Youtube is full of pro chinese propaganda, so beware and check the source if you go there for information. 

So if a Philippine ship enters an area that is in our EEZ or been fished by local fishermen for 500 plus years, often the press reports this as Philippine aggression against those peaceful Chinese, ignoring recent history: That until Obama pressured President Aquino not to stop China no one (including the International Courts) believed they owned the place. But instead of obeying the international courts, they continued digging up the seabed, intimidating fishermen, building and militarizing islands in the area.

Now, if the Philippine ships or fishing boats enter the area, China is claiming they are entering Chinese territory illegally. and the MSM too often reports it as if this were true without mentioning that China has only recently stolen the area from the Philippines.

This is not just a Philippine problem: These artificial islands enable China to block shipping routes, internet cables, and even airplanes going over the area.

now China is openly threatening the Philippines, and part of this is because they are trying to pressure Taiwan to give in peacefully and let them steal Taiwan's assets and run the place. 

The Philippines is very close to Taiwan, and recognizes that Luzon could be next:  So with the increase in belligerence against Taiwan, the US has gotten permission to position troops in some Philippine military bases.

In the meanwhile, China is positioning their navy and other military linked ships in the West Philippine sea and getting more aggressive there.

But as I noted a few days ago: They are also positioning Chinese civilians in the Philippines: Mayor Guo's city is near one base, and there are quite a few Chinese who suddenly decided to study Chinese in the far north of the Philippines, not to mention that the government here estimates ten to twenty percent of the 100 thousand Chinese working here, mainly in casinos/internet gambling etc, are military assets.

The West Philippine sea has valuable fish resources, but also that part about sea lanes should be noted, because a couple days ago I read an article about how China is worried about the Strait of Malacca, near Singapore/Malaysia.

a small point here: Malaysia is Malaysian/Muslim. Nearby Indonesia is also Malay/Muslim. but Singapore is Chinese: some call it the third China (after China and Taiwan).

If Taiwan falls, one suspects China will start pressuring Singapore to join with their ethnic brothers to become an ally with China.

this explains why China is building a port in Pakistan (by importing their own personnel even though Pakistan has many skilled workmen who could have done the work)

fake trial with powerful interests behind it?

paying off someone blackmailing them to save their marriage is now a federal crime.

paying someone so they won't sue you in court is cheaper than going to court, as many docs accused of malpractice for unforseen complications or from greedy relatives, is also a common practice.

So what is the crime?

I also should note another irregularity about this sham trial:

This was a complicated case, but the jury got a verdict in 24 hours: and it was unanimous on all counts.

This is not possible unless the verdict was predetermined. 

So politics as usual? 

I obviously disagree with this verdict as do many others. I believe that the case will be reversed eventually either in the state or federal systems. However, this was the worst expectation for a trial in Manhattan. I am saddened by the result more for the New York legal system…

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) May 30, 2024

Or does it have a more sinister reason behind it?

Why do I write this?

Yesterday, I published this about the WHO Treaty

What was the reason WHO was in such a rush to close the deal? and the NYTimes answers:

 

“Donald Trump is in the room,” said Lawrence Gostin, director of the W.H.O. Center on Global Health Law, who has helped to draft and negotiate the treaty. Interestingly, the presences of former President Donald Trump looms large in these treaty negotiations. “If Trump is elected, he will likely torpedo the negotiations and even withdraw from W.H.O.,” Mr. Gostin said.

 So only MrTrump stands in the way of the WHO and other internationalist schemes.

Not really: Because this treaty was also rejected by the UK, who saw it as a threat to national sovereignty.

So who makes the laws? Who watches the judges in the USA? 

Just wondering?

WHO treaty not affirmed. Maybe because they lied in the past

the WHO treaty had not been approved by everyone, says LegalInsurrection:

who earlier pointed out the problems with the treaty.

The World Health Organization gets to define what a pandemic is, when a pandemic is in progress and how long a pandemic lasts. Then you read the fine print and you realize the W.H.O will have total authority over emergency operations in the United States if there’s ever a “public health emergency.” Huh?

but of course just because a lot of countries won't sign the treaty now, it doesn't mean they will stop: so called negotiations will continue until they can force it on you.

 

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

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

given the many mistakes by the WHO in covid epidemic, there is a lot of distrust out there, and not just by those suspicious of anything that hints about the UN destroying local control/national sovereignty.

LI asks: What was the reason WHO was in such a rush to close the deal?

and the NYTimes answers: 

 “Donald Trump is in the room,” said Lawrence Gostin, director of the W.H.O. Center on Global Health Law, who has helped to draft and negotiate the treaty. Interestingly, the presences of former President Donald Trump looms large in these treaty negotiations. “If Trump is elected, he will likely torpedo the negotiations and even withdraw from W.H.O.,” Mr. Gostin said.

in the meanwhile, poor reporting and over hysteria about disease continues. 

see my previous note about birdflu, and now the headlines are screaming that the second case they were monitoring who had close contact with infected cattle (our of 3000 plus being monitored) has indeed tested positive. Not mentioned: How sick was he? nor was it mentioned the anti viral medicines work (if these work, maybe it means mass immunizations of everyone including low risk people, won't need to be done.)

but if I am cynical, it might be because the covid response was excessive, especially after omicron hit, and both immunity from vaccines and especially herd immunity slowed the epidemic

The public health authorities have saved millions of lives, but in covid they lost a lot of trust. Ditto for the trust in vaccines, where side effects were hidden, and the authorities insisted low risk kids get numerous shots, instead of what is usually done: Give it to the high risk who might die of the disease.

Here in the Philippines, the Dengue vaccine problems caused a lot of distrust of all vaccines, leading to kids dying of measles and other disease. So it's not like the public health establishment wasn't aware that you needed to be honest before you gave shots to kids.

and then there is the debacle of shutdowns and quarantines: which lasted too long, and then the public health authorities winked at the riots for social justice while shutting down churches that would have given people comfort.

Then you have the grannie killers who let covid into nursing homes, killing thousands, and were rewarded by jobs in the government despite this obvious incompetency because political correctness.

Another PC debacle, where political fads outweighed basic public health policy, was in the approach to MPox.

MPox was allowed to spread because no one had the courage to shut down raves or warning that MSM sex was risky and pretended shots would stop it without changing behavior (the white gay community educated each other, but no one told the black community about the risk hence most of the deaths were in minorities).

And now there is a report of dengue in Puerto Rico.

Killing mosquitoes works, something known since the time of the Panama canal, but that takes effort and chemicals.  After the debacle in the Philippines where dengue vaccine was given to children, and some poorly screened children died, some folks stopped trusting vaccines (and so kids died of measles and other diseases usually prevented by routine baby shots).

 a better approach to get rid of dengue you have to kill mosquitoes and that would mean chemicals. And of course basic sanitation would help: such as cleaning up the garbage.

even NPR, while lamenting it is due to global warming and new mosquitoes (as if the regular mosquitoes don't carry such disease), admits eliminating mosquitoes can be done by cleaning up the environment and using natural germs to kill off mosquitoes

we were having a lot of problems with mosquitoes for the last three months and then they all disappeared. I suspect the government sprayed the drainage ditches where they were breeding.

the MSM who quotes the propaganda

 this report seems to point out the details that are not being reported. Videos on social media? don't question the propaganda.

Spiked article discusses the question 

...Who was it that decided to use this former city of civilians as a launchpad for war? Who was it that posted their military commanders there, hid their ammunition there, fired their missiles from there, dragged hostages there? Who was it who hid the machinery of war among the women and children of Rafah, knowing full well bloodshed would ensue? It wasn’t Israel. Israel helped to facilitate the evacuation of over 900,000 civilians. No, it was Hamas....

 The IDF is surely right that Hamas’s use of Rafah for arms storage, hostage-keeping and missile-firing represents a ‘systematic exploitation of humanitarian facilities and spaces’....

One is reminded of the dog that barked in the night:  

When Inspector Gregory asks, “Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?” Holmes responds, “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” But, protests the inspector, “The dog did nothing in the night-time.” To which Holmes delivers the punch line: “That was the curious incident.”

the lesson is paying attention to what is not there. 

all the news coming out is from Hamas and their allies (including AlJ, the UN workers who looked the other way when aid was stolen or stored in civilian areas, or directly from Hamas.

Where the hell are the neutral observers?

Bird Flu: most recent report

 Here in Asia, there has been a lot of bird flu for years. And about 100 people infected with this because of close contact or from eating infected meat. About a decade ago the epidemic was expected, but now the hysteria is out again.

So I found this article on the CDC site interesting: Because the bird flu spread to mammals including two humans.

This is important, because if mammals can get bird flu, so can humans.

And if you read the article carefully, the CDC is monitoring people for this.

Two people might have caught it: One case is still being investigated, and the other had pink eye.

influenza A(H5) virus infection was detected in two U.S. farm workers during a multistate outbreak of A(H5N1) viruses in dairy cows; these are the first known instances of presumed cow-to-human transmission of avian influenza A viruses......

 

On May 22, 2024, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services reported an A(H5) case in a dairy farm worker on a farm confirmed to have A(H5N1) virus in cattle; this person was enrolled in an active text-based monitoring program and reported only eye symptoms.†† The investigation into this second case is ongoing..

POGOs and Guo the spy scandal

the casinos and on line gambling (POGO) were supposed to be a money maker for the government and provide jobs for locals. These organizations started under President Aquino but expanded under president Duterte.

the local Catholic bishops opposed these, not just because of the corruption that they inspire, but because they seduce poor local women into the sex industry.

Ah, but Wikipedia notes that it has been a windfall for importing Chinese citizens into the Philippines.

It was reported as of October 2019 that 470,000 people were employed in the POGO industry, with total annual payroll at $9 billion. These might included more than a hundred thousand Chinese workers

the fact that some of these young men might be soldiers in the Chinese military is an open secret.

President Marcos family comes from the Northern Philippines, so theoretically he should know who she is (he denies this, but hey, there are a lot of mayors, so maybe he doesn't recognize her)...

Lots of holes in her story (She doesn't speak the local language of the town where she is a mayor, for example, and her claims of homeschool ignores that such students have to be associated with an outside school who certifies such studies), and there are lots of other paperwork discrepancies.

so what party sponsored her? 

Wikipedia says she was an independent candidate. 

So how could she win? Well, as Lolo used to say about politicians: They are all crooks. So locals, figuring they are all crooks, just vote for the highest bidder.

given her connections with various scams in the Philippines one suspects that maybe this is more about money than spying.

Rappler has a list of the holes in her story.

the POGOs are not just about employing often illegal foreigners who might be spies or military but are about laundering money and even stealing it. And then we have them involved in hacking the Phil Government websites.

the corruption of the POGOs is not new: GMA article from 2020 reveals 14 billion pesos (3 billion USD) in suspicious transactions

as for national security: MSN resports:

Small Town in the Philippines Shocked by Accusations Against Mayor Alice Guo of Being a Chinese Spy as she could not explain her background during Inquiry.

the money laundering, sex trafficking, and other money making scams associated with the POGO in her town raised suspicions:

Law enforcement recently uncovered that this Pogo centre was a front for a large-scale scam operation, where 700 workers, including 202 Chinese nationals, were rescued from being forced to pose as online lovers.

nothing new about this: so why should a small town mayor's lies about her background and a common corruption scandal erupt into a major scandal? 

Strategic Location of Bamban EDCA sites are joint US-Philippine military facilities, created through the two countries’ Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement, that allow for the rotational presence of US troops. Bamban is located 30km north of Basa Air Base, one of the country’s nine EDCA sites Bamban, a quaint town located north of Manila, has become the epicenter of a national controversy following allegations that its young mayor, Alice Guo, is a Chinese agent. The accusations surfaced after Mayor Guo’s contentious testimony at a recent Senate hearing, which raised suspicions about her background and activities.

we rememberer

Downton Abbey

 I hear there is to be a third film about Downton Abbey.

But in the meanwhile, season one is on youtube (until the copyright police find it's there):

Musical interlude of the day

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The University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB) Choral Ensemble

Family news

 After two years of weakness post dengue I finally got my doc to order a bunch of tests. All negative. But I am developing cataracts and other problems so was busy yesterday getting fancy tests on my eyes.

the good news that didn't get reported

 lots of conspiracy theories about solar storms and the Carrington event.

Lots of hysteria.

So the latest solar flare gave us lots of lights in the sky, but no disaster. WTF? We were told it would kill us all.

But it didn't happen: because:

From Behindtheblack, a space blog:

What this most recent storm has shown us all, however, is that the engineers and managers who run those systems did their proper due diligence in the ensuing decades. By 2024 they were prepared for such a big storm, and when one arrived on May 11, 2024 they made sure that infrastructure continued to function throughout. And it did.

Fat is beautiful

We docs spend a lot of time encouraging our patients to lose weight and exercize, but all the kerfuffle about fat models on magazine covers sort of misses the point.
Example One:

when JP said “Sorry. Not beautiful. And no amount of authoritarian tolerance is going to change that.”, the woke fought back:

“I love that he (Peterson) did this because it’s going to get us to talk about this issue. That is clearly an important issue to talk about. You can’t be one way. You have a whole bouquet of beauty,” Emme said.

well, aside from the health problems associated with obesity, the main problem with touting a plump lady on the cover is that the swimsuit is ugly, and makes her body look ugly. And the swimsuit, instead of flattering her, emphasizes her rolls of fat while letting her bosom sag.

and to make it worse, she is not smiling or looking happy: she is looking either mad or puzzled, and scratching her scalp as if she had dandruff.

If this is feminism, then I think they need a visit from the fashion police.

so why not use one of the swimsuits that actually flatter plus sized women?

LINK   

this is not about letting chubby women look nice.

nor is it an overlate push back at the anorexic models that high fashion imposes on society as normal, ignoring the health problems of these women: diet pills, anorexia nervosa and bullemia, with the problems of amenorrhea and in the long term, osteoporosis.

no wonder all those models don't smile and tend to look miserable rather than happy. 

the irony? the problem is the fashion industry that makes women ugly, not the men who look to oogle a beautiful woman.

Maybe it's time to go back to classic fashion styles to look nice.

Lane Bryant Catalogue from 1942:

https://chronically-overdressed.com/2021/05/27/1942-plus-size-vintage-styles-from-lane-bryant-catalog/

but the good news is that some stores are actually offering nice looking clothing for size 14 or over. 

and some stores are even offering swimsuits that cover us up, like burkinis and longer sleeves: Not just for modesty but a blessing for those of us prone to sunburn.

what brought this up was that Ruby just had a Canadian friend visiting, and she was pale in complexion and had numerous black moles (and yes she monitors them for melanoma). Me, I am not that pale but so far I've had two basal cell cancers removed from my face.

So yes, sunlight is good, but like everything it has a side effect.

movie of the week

Pope hates American Catholics who cling to god (and guns?)

 from Breitbart: a report on the Pope's interview with an American MSM reporter.

And it sounds like he admits he is planning to change the 2000 year old dogmas of the church to fit the fads of the 1960s.

“I would like to remind those people that ‘backwardism’ is useless, and we need to understand that there is an appropriate evolution in the understanding of matters of faith and morals,” the pope said. “Our understanding of the human person changes with time, and our consciousness also deepens,” he stated. “The other sciences and their evolution also help the Church in this growth in understanding.”

so throw out the Bible while you are at it and obey the experts and modern hedonism.

So why is the American church standing in the way? You know, half of Catholics gave up the church, some to be nothing, others to be good Protestants.

But the main reason the Yanks remain Catholic is the late Mother Angelica.

 

how dare they defund the guys who gave us covid

 LA Times Business page opinion column laments

 

Democrats prove that they’re no better than Trump in allowing politics to interfere with science

It wasn’t just that the GOP majority used the occasion to promote the ignorant, imbecilic and 100% evidence-free notion that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that caused the COVID pandemic, originated in a Chinese laboratory, through work funded by the U.S. government, and overseen by EcoHealth

 Italics mine.

Imagine: despite repeated leaks that show that covid came from a lab leak from the Wuhan lab, and that the guy who ran Ecohealth and his friends at the CDC helped him cover it up,  they continue to gaslight you.

Notice this is in the business section of the paper? 

I am old enough to remember when Democrats were the ones that defended the little guy from the toxic policies of big business, so I am happy some of them still remember they represent ordinary folk, not the interest of big business, or maybe the interest of the military industrial complex.(a conspiracy theory first promoted by that right wing idiot (/s) President Eisenhower)?

the LAT article continues: 

On Wednesday, the bell tolled. EcoHealth received a notice from the Department of Health and Human Services, the parent agency of the NIH, that it was immediately suspending all funding to the organization and moving to “debar” it from federal funding going forward.

rejoice. Problem settled, and in a bipartisan manner!

Or maybe not.

Why do I say this?

Well, as I have posted before, about two years ago, a sharp eyed congressman noticed that Ecohealth was applying to start a lab here in the Philippines: Not to help us with animal viruses that are affecting our farmers, but to investigate viruses in the wild that might cause a problem if they moved to humans.

Description

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REDUCING THE THREAT OF VIRAL SPILLOVER FROM WILDLIFE IN THE PHILIPPINES

And the lab was stopped: Because it was not funded by the HHS, but the US Dept of Defense.

and that made the government suspicious.

So was the lab built? No news about it for awhile, but if you check the site, none of the money has been spent, so it looks as if the Philippine gov't stopped it.

so has any of the reports lamenting that Ecohealth is now defunded by the HHS noticed that Ecohealth was also funded by the US Dept of Defence? 

This NYPost article from 2021 notes:

Pentagon gave millions to EcoHealth Alliance for weapons research program

federal spending data shows that EcoHealth has a long and profitable relationship with the Pentagon, receiving $41.91 million in awards since fiscal year 2008. That’s more than three times the next-largest amount awarded to it by any other agency over the same period ($13.17 million from the Department of Health and Human Services).

why was is the DoD funding research into germs, using a third party (not military labs) so they can hide what is being done?

the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), which describes its mission as “to protect the United States and its allies by enabling the DoD and international partners to detect, deter, and defeat WMD and threat networks.”

italics mine. 

Beginning in fiscal year 2014, the DTRA began awarding funding to EcoHealth for a work program labeled “Scientific Research – Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction”.

After three straight years in which awards were fewer than $1 million, the amounts sent to the program jumped considerably. In fiscal year 2017, $2.34 million of the $2.91 million EcoHealth received from DTRA went toward the weapons research. In 2018, 2019 and 2020, 100 percent of DTRA’s awards to EcoHealth went toward the program — $4.24 million, $2.99 million, and an eye-popping $21.33 million, respectively.

,,,,,

here is the justification:

in the National Guard, we had classes in how HIV would affect the readiness of the military, and our federal IHS clinic was given instructions after 911 on how to do ring vaccinations in case the terrorists released smallpox.

This work, which is essentially wargaming possible threats, is done to prepare for such disasters (not to plan the attacks, as real conspiracy theory crazies claim).

but it is a thin line between allowing research to protect you, and giving money to research that is dangerous, or to scientists who naively don't understand the danger of what they are doing.

Sigh.

are we now allowed to be Catholic?

 The Pope is busy pushing the environmental dogma and something called synodality instead of Jesus Christ, and even the catholic bishops here seem to be embracing the same psychological gobblygook instead of talking about loving Jesus and serving him  by doing the duties of one's daily life and caring for one's family.

Why is this important? Because outside of the trendier parts of Makati with the elites trying to mimic the worst trends from the USA, the dirty little secret is that Filipinos still revere the family: This is partly because they are Catholic, but also because of Confucian ethics still influences Asian culture.

People in different cultures think differently: 

So when I listened to this nice liberal lady on JP's podcast, she made a remark that assumed conservatives were busy bodies who wanted to control sex in women and gays presumably because they hate women and gays.

Uh, no. you are missing the point. We see reality differently.

Rules of religion and common law are not made up according to the fad of the day, but based on thousands of years of human experience on what makes a healthy society.

Catholicism (and Islam, and Hinduism, and Confucian ethics) see the world differently: All of these cultures assume that the basis of a stable society is not the isolated individual but the family: And that a person is happiest where families are strong.

Since the Pope is busy with his psychobabble and green policies that will make poverty worse, who will defend Catholic teachings?

The Lord has a sense of humor and uses the least likely people to do so. 

Enter Harrison Bunker Butker

how dare he shouts all the influential people on the internet calling him all the usual names they call believers who don't support promiscuity, destroying marriage, abortion and the rest of society's sacraments.

or as the (satire site) Babylon Bee writes;

The Chiefs kicker, a devout Catholic, expressed several controversial opinions during his speech, including strong support for traditional family values, none of which fall in line with the NFL's standard behavioral code upheld by teams filled with woman beaters, child abusers, drunk drivers, and drug traffickers.

the libertarian lawyer behind Instapundit (not a Christian as far as I know), notes that a mayor doxxed him from an official city website. Well, must stay popular by supporting the trendier than thou folk.

But that pesky first Amendment got in his way: the mayor apologized, sort of, but that might not have removed the damage done.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has weighed in, criticizing the city’s action, calling the mayor’s apology inadequate, and threatening to employ civil rights law:

“I will enforce the Missouri Human Rights Act to ensure Missourians are not targeted for their free exercise of religion.”

Reynolds then goes on to add:

Well, this is a tempest in a teacup, really.

But I think it’s also a harbinger.

 Over the past 50+ years, traditional ideas, like Butker’s, about marriage, child-rearing, and gender roles have been marginalized, in favor of those the put much less emphasis on, well, marriage, child-rearing, and traditional views about gender roles.

Reynolds then points to the population explosion (Ehrlich, echoing Malthus of course) that started deliberately to destroy the idea of a family.

this was helped by easy divorce (so women held jobs in case they were dumped) and don't forget economic factors that made two incomes necessary to support a family, while making part time work not an option for most women.

read the whole thing.

This will probably blow over, of course: but like the little boy who cried the king had no clothes, sometimes the truth is so obvious that others will get the courage to say: You know, I think that too...

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discussed on EWTN:

Child sex trafficking in the Philippines

 TeaAtTrianon post a link to this article on cybersex abuse in the Philippines.

Read the whole thing.

More HERE.

Youtube and facebook let these people get away with it, and it took a court case for the Manila police to try to track who is behind one scam.

/////////////////////////////////////////////

The first article notes: often the parents are poor and doing it for money: so when you rescue the child, they don't understand why you are doing this and see those trying to rescue them from a home where they are exploited and abused as if the rescuer, not the abusive parent, is the bad person who takes them away from the parent they love.

as an adoptive mother I have to add this:

That is the backstory to a lot of the stories the press likes to tell of bad orphanages and bad adoption: (back story of this: if orphanages and adoptions are a good alternative, hey they can't justify abortion).

Alas, since  the kids view the rescuer as evil, they subconsciously often reconfigure their memories to project the abuse memories from  their original parent who didn't want them or had abused them to the ones trying to help them., and then they project the stories about that abuse from their original family on the rescuer. Link here discusses this problem.

We were told that if we adopted a girl from Asia, she probably had been abused sexually, even if she was preschool age. And a lot of the boys were abused also: but less about this is documented because the victims won't talk about it.

sigh.

Art vs reality

 when I saw the new portrait of King Charles, I thought it was a joke.

is it bad art? Yes of course it is. The background swallows the subject, and the colour reminds one of blood. Or maybe fire.

Or is it the artist sensing the soul of the King? 

 The sardonic Aussies comment on the picture:

 

however most of the news reports either praise it or insist that the opinions are mixed on if it is a good portrait or not. 

And yes they are gaslighting you.

I am reminded of what we were taught in Psychiatry as a warning not to swallow the tales told to use by our patients: Use the taxi driver rule.

If the average taxi driver would say these opinions were crazy, maybe they have a psychiatric problem.

so yes, Charles: It is a bad painting (in style), and a the average person hates it.

OK Guys: Let the memes begin.

update: Best comment on twitter:

Heinz wants their ketchup back

— Fardeed (@fardeedz) May 14, 2024

Discussing the material world

 This podcast by the Met is really really interesting.

about the material in the world around us: But not from a scientific point of view but the point of view of art and culture.

these latest episodes are about metals:

,,,

robots in war

 Mainly posted so I can watch it later.

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

now China is attempting to build one of their artificial islands within the borders of the Philippines.

the three body problem: a warning about genocide

 the miniseries the Three Body Problem starts out with the cultural revolution, where Mao instructed students to reject the past and punish their teachers.

actual photo in a meme: always remember.

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

The destruction continued afterward. Not only did it destroy the intellectuals and teachers, but the afterward was just as bad: The students lost the education during the uprising but learned about cruelty and learned it was okay to hate and kill class enemies. The uprising got so toxic that Mao finally stopped it, by sending the students into exile: Many were reassigned to work in rural areas, essentially in exile.

In the 1980s, I worked with a Korean born American professor who went to China to help teach these students to try to restore what they should have learned during those years.

At the time of the cultural revolution, the US college students often believed this was a good thing: Only we Christians didn't believe the propaganda that was promoted by leftist groups in the colleges. You see, we had alternative sources of information via the missionaries working with refugees who tried to publicize the story knew what was going on.

If this sounds familiar, it is.

How many students in today's colleges know of this history? Why all the anti Hitler stuff but no one says Mao was a mass murderer. And why do students of today swallow the propaganda and lies of Hamas, when they make no secret that their ultimate plan is genocide of Israel and the west?

from the Atlantic 10 10 23:

 wayback machine link

Released on August 18, 1988, the original covenant spells out clearly Hamas’s genocidal intentions.

Accordingly, what happened in Israel on Saturday is completely in keeping with Hamas’s explicit aims and stated objectives. It was in fact the inchoate realization of Hamas’s true ambitions.

The most relevant of the document’s 36 articles can be summarized as falling within four main themes:

The complete destruction of Israel as an essential condition for the liberation of Palestine and the establishment of a theocratic state based on Islamic law (Sharia),

The need for both unrestrained and unceasing holy war (jihad) to attain the above objective,

The deliberate disdain for, and dismissal of, any negotiated resolution or political settlement of Jewish and Muslim claims to the Holy Land, and

The reinforcement of historical anti-Semitic tropes and calumnies married to sinister conspiracy theories.

Thus, as fighting rages in Israel and Gaza, and may yet escalate and spread, pleas for moderation, restraint, negotiation, and the building of pathways to peace are destined to find no purchase with Hamas. The covenant makes clear that holy war, divinely ordained and scripturally sanctioned, is in Hamas’s DNA.

that is why this sci fi series might teach students about what happens when evil takes over a mob who thinks they are making a utopia.

How many present day students who love Marxism and are ignorant of history will learn for the first time about one of Mao's many atrocities: not because they read it in the writings of those evil Republicans, but  because a science fiction writer from China snuck it into his story of scientists and alien life: 

I haven't watched or read the entire story, but the start of the novel tells of a girl whose father is killed by student mobs.

Later, she is assigned to work at a project looking for alien life, and one day she gets a signal from an unknown source looking to make contact and maybe send people there. But she also receives a warning from a dissadent there that the aim is to kill everyone and take over the land.

But the scientist instead sent a welcome signal to the aliens because she figured they couldn't be worse than the reality around her.

The film then goes on about the scientists who might stop them being killed and their work destroyed. 

But don't ask me how it ends: I am only up to number 3 and am actually reading the book to fill me in on what I am not picking up from the fast moving plot. 

Anyway, it is ironic that it is a film from a Chinese novel that might alert students in woke universities that their socialist utopias might not exist in real life, and about how students can easily be manipulated into destroying the good in the name of a nebulous utopia that will never exist.

WHY MOTHERS ARE ALWAYS BEAUTIFUL

 

Roald Dahl

The history of cats

 more here.

lesson for today: the war is complicated

 

what is astounding is that the Hamas propaganda of victimhood is being accepted by much of the world.

The press is in an "if it bleeds it leads" mode, meaning they cheerfully publish Hamas propaganda, often without checking it out first if it is true.

These stories blame Gaza's problems on Israel, ignoring their looting of aid money, a lot of which goes into these leaders' bank accounts, but also to buy weapons and hide them in civilian areas, meaning that if Israel tries to destroy them, civilians are harmed. 

To them, this is not a tragedy but a desired effect: dead babies are much more impressive than showing weapons and missiles destroyed. 

And it distracts the world when they continue to steal supplies meant for civilians, place weapons in aid trucks and ambulances, and even rob backs openly with no one bothering to arrest them.

the Iranians are behind the Hamas government, and of course, news from that area is controlled to be one sided.

Also ignored is their ultimate aim of Hamas and the Mullahs of Iran: Kill all Israelis and then on to the west.

the rule is: when confronting an epidemic, always stand with the doctors, not the disease. 

Here, the radicals use Islam as a cover for their power and money grab are not the good guys. But hey, when was the last time any news report quotes what they actually say openly in Arabic on local news sites?

How much publicity was given to the fact that Iran sent hundreds of missiles into Israeli territory in April, luckily most of which were shot down. So how did the press report this? As if it was a minor attack proving Iran was not really trying to kill Israelis.

the history of who lives in Israel is complicated: but when the Islamic crazies kill Christians, it is blamed on the Jews. When the Islamic crazies steal literally billions of dollars of aid money, the poverty is blamed on the Jews. 

The irony? if they made peace, all would prosper. That is the idea behind the Abraham accords. Instead, Biden is releasing money to prop up the regime in Iran, who essentially is funding Hamas and Hezbollah and propping up the Houthis to attack Saudi. Why is Biden helping Iran while he is stopping weapons from being sent to Israel? Place conspiracy theory here.  It either didn't happen, or it's a Republican made up story to harm Biden, or it's Trumpieboy's fault.

This war is puppets all the way down.

But it's hard to forgive when both populations know people harmed by the other side, and the propaganda continues to slant what is going on.

Sigh.

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update: Guess what? The number of civilian deaths cited by most of the media were exaggerated:

The United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) revised its child fatality figure from the Gaza war sharply downward, reporting more than 14,500 deaths on May 6 but then 7,797 on May 8. OCHA also revised downward its figure for women fatalities from more than 9,500 deaths to 4,959 deaths. ,,,,

The UN attributed its original, higher figures to the Hamas-controlled Government Media Office (GMO) in Gaza, whose figures OCHA has cited continually for the past two months. The UN gave no source for the lower figures in its May 8 update, but the figures precisely match those in a May 2 report from a different Hamas-controlled organization, the Gaza Ministry of Health.

yes, still too high: But remember that Hamas deliberately uses civilians as human shields.

DavidBrooks at the NYTimes notes the tunnels storing weapons are under civilian areas and institutions, and then writes: 

in this war, Hamas is often underground, the Israelis are often aboveground, and Hamas seeks to position civilians directly between them. As Barry Posen, a professor at the security studies program at M.I.T., has written, Hamas’s strategy could be “described as ‘human camouflage’ and more ruthlessly as ‘human ammunition.’” Hamas’s goal is to maximize the number of Palestinians who die and in that way build international pressure until Israel is forced to end the war before Hamas is wiped out. Hamas’s survival depends on support in the court of international opinion and on making this war as bloody as possible for civilians, until Israel relents.

the war against farmers Part 2

 this is a follow up on several posts on the war on farmers, the latest one is here if you wish to read it.

World Bank launches first global framework for agri-food emissions
"to halve current agri-food emissions by 2030... by ensuring that the environmental and health costs borne by society are fully included in food prices"
So, less food, higher priceshttps://t.co/Avbazsf5FA pic.twitter.com/gyWw46Z78G

— Tess Summers 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇮🇪 (@tesssummers98) May 7, 2024

here is article behind a wall of course from the UKTelegraph: or read copy at the wayback machine link.

after lamenting the cacao bushes are in trouble (whoops there goes Cadbury), they go on to insist:

Globally, agriculture is responsible for around 20 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions,

That's us: Rice growing is a major source of greenhouse gas, especially if you prefer to rot weeds by flooding instead of using herbicides. Oh yes: We can either use a diesel powered handplow, or a methane emitting water buffalo to plow.

and is the biggest driver of biodiversity loss

yup. Growing food and getting rid of weeds does that. 

yup. Reminds me of hundreds of Nat Geo documentaries lamenting the loss of habitat for those beautiful wild animals.

Those dang Africans prefer to grow food and not starve, so are moving into the areas displacing those lovely wild animals that the rich Europeans and Yanks love.

Yes, I am being sarcastic: I mean, who do you lament: a dead elephant or a starving African? Don't answer quickly: because Botswana is now telling Germany to take 20 thousand elephants that are too many for the environment to support.

”It is very easy to sit in Berlin and have an opinion about our affairs in Botswana. We are paying the price for preserving these animals for the world – and even for Lemke’s party,” Masisi said. Germans should try to “live together with the animals, in the way you are trying to tell us to,” he added.

This imperialist mindset can be found in the UKT article I cited above:

“I think we’re seeing the end of the era of cheap food, because of the impact of that cheap food – not just on people’s health but the external impact, the environmental impact, the societal impact of that cheap food. We need to witness the end of cheap food and a reversal of the value of the food people are eating.”

Does this guy realize what he is saying? He is saying make food so expensive that the poor can't afford to buy it. Do you know what happens when you do this? People starve or die of disease because of malnutrition. 

yup. the poor are hungry? Let them eat cake. Sound familiar? 

the proposal is growing food in the same way that people farmed  200 years ago: when farms produced a lot less food.

Waitrose is hoping to appeal to its existing shoppers, who have both the time and money to choose a more expensive product that has a lower climate impact.

and the other folk? The average worker in Manila who lives on 9 dollars a day?

I lived in Liberia when the government allowed an increase in the price of rice. The result was a coup that eventually led to years of civil war and a lot of deaths. But hey, they are poor Africans so who cares (/sarcasm). 

But never mind: Because luckily for Africa, the Chinese are coming and they are teaching how to grow enough food to feed the population by the old fashioned way: Modern agriculture.

the dirty little secret: A lot of western NGOs opposed modern agriculture and made these government afraid of growing such food. 

Well, duh. We see this in the Philippines where our government encourages organic food and although they encourage modern hybrids they try to avoid GMO foods. 

Hey, we grow organic brown rice, and I agree it is a lot healthier. But if I had to chose between dying of hunger or facing the side effects of modern GMO food or food raised with chemicals, then guess what I would chose?

(the answer: we need both, enough cheap food for the poor but allowing organic and old fashioned ways to grow food and preserve the genes of older crops, but hey the green zealots don't seem to recognize this is possible).

So the Philippines is pushing organic growing in some areas, but has to import rice to feed the city poor, (which makes the rice importers rich) and I suspect a lot of this cheap imported rice is GMO and full of chemicals.

Guess what: GMO seeds which are being used more and more in China to feed their huge population and export to other countries

..but in Africa, thanks to the green mindset of many GMOs, some countries have avoided embracing these modern crops: Indeed, in the midst of a famine a decade ago, Zimbabwe refused to accept life saving food aid from the USA for fear it included GMO crops.

Enter China, who is heavily investing in Africa at many levels...So will China be the world's savior by helping Africa to feed their growing population by using these modern methods that are now being prohibited  by the green lobbies in the modern west? 

Mulwa said that by cooperating with China, African nations will enjoy enhanced access to technologies, innovations and research required to develop new crop varieties that can withstand climate shocks, pests and diseases. He noted that the exchange of germplasm between China and African countries will thrive under the plan to ensure local smallholder farmers' access to high-yielding crops.

tapeworm of the brain?

 RFK Jr said he had a brain tapeworm. 

He did not say what kind of a worm it was, but these doctors thought it was a pork tapeworm.

Medical treatment usually consists of a two-drug anti-parasitic regimen, and steroids to reduce the inflammation that usually occurs when the parasites die. Even without treatment, the parasites usually die out on their own, causing the cyst to calcify, a process that is often harmless. The condition rarely causes long-term damage.

this is a common cause of epilepsy in Latin America: some estimate a quarter of people with seizures have this as the cause.

study here.

CDC page on the problem

Cysticercosis is a parasitic tissue infection caused by larval cysts of the tapeworm Taenia solium. These larval cysts infect brain, muscle, or other tissue, and are a major cause of adult onset seizures in most low-income countries. A person gets cysticercosis by swallowing eggs found in the feces of a person who has an intestinal tapeworm. People living in the same household with someone who has a tapeworm have a much higher risk of getting cysticercosis than people who don’t. People do not get cysticercosis by eating undercooked pork. Eating undercooked pork can result in intestinal tapeworm if the pork contains larval cysts. Pigs become infected by eating tapeworm eggs in the feces of a human infected with a tapeworm.

Both the tapeworm infection, also known as taeniasis, and cysticercosis occur globally.

The highest rates of infection are found in areas of Latin America, Asia, and Africa that have poor sanitation and free-ranging pigs

Teaching about farming

A lot of the nonsense about global warming seem to be oblivious to how their policies affect farmers: I read about bureaucrats shutting down farms in Europe, and the activists who rejoice when the cost of diesel goes up, for example. 

 So who is educating the public on how public policies actually hurt the farmer? Or how farmers face drought, floods, disease, and other so called Acts of God that can destroy their livelihood, while politicians blabber and pass laws that make it even harder for farmers?

The first thing needed, of course, is to educate the public without putting them to sleep.

and that is coming from an unlikely place: bad boy Jeremy Clarkson, who is best known for his shennanigans in his car shows (Top Gear and then the Grand Tour).

His latest outing: Clarkson's Farm.

like his car shows, one suspects a lot of the plot is crafted for entertainment, but the challenges he faces are not. 

now going into season 3

Getting rich via farming...uh, not really, as any farmer could tell you.

Which is why as rice farmers in the Philippines we laugh and identify with his problems, and love the show that demonstrates the hard work of the average farmer to get food to you.

One of the delights in the show is when Clarkson gets a put down from a local kid, Kaleb, who knows about farming.

and interview with Kaleb here:

so the next time you read about clueless activists getting publicity by acting out in public, and clueless bureaucrats who tell farmers what to do, remember: some people actually are working for a living to feed you.

Here, no one is taking to the streets yet. But growing food here faces many of the same economic problems.

Kuya mainly grows organic rice and subcontracts local farmers to grow rice for him. This means he helps fund money for machines, repair of machines, diesel and irrigation fees, while getting a percentage of their crop in return. He also checks they are growing organically (chicken manure anyone?) because we sell only organic rice. So part of the deal is buying the rice, packaging it, transporting it to supermarkets, and doing the logistics of selling the product.

however, Joy no longer works with our farmers here but is working with a farming coop in her family's area in nearby Bulacan to grow organic rice and vegetables.

 Much of this is being done with the help of the Philippine government who is promoting organic food as being healthier.

Part of her job is not just subcontracting farmers to sell their organic rice under the coop's brand, but teaching and supervising them to check they are really organic, then doing the marketing for them.

She is also supervising summer courses for high school kids to teach them the economic side of farming, so that they have the ability to farm and make a decent living.

But poverty among farmers is still alas the rule in our area, and the kids of farmers continue to prefer to move to the city or work as OFW to make a living.

The elite bubble shows it's ignorance

 Ann Althouse writes about a bigshot who recognizes that DEI is being ridiculed at various levels as racism, so decides instead of clarifying the criteria they use, they will merely rename the policy IED.

"DEI is getting a new name. Can it dump the political baggage? Under mounting legal and political pressure, companies’ DEI tactics are evolving" (WaPo)(free access link)...

[I]nstead of referring to DEI, [Johnny C. Taylor Jr., chief executive of the Society for Human Resource Management] switched to calling these efforts 'IED,' putting the focus on 'inclusion' as DEI accrued cultural and political baggage....

I guess too many people started making jokes that DEI meant DIE. As in "go woke, go broke".

But the decision to change this policy to IED just shows that these people live in their own cultural bubble: 

a typical comment on Althouse's blog:

  Political Junkie said... IED. Now that's a winner. Do they recall Iraq and Afghanistan?

of course the answer is no. One doubts they actually know anyone who had been in the military or injured by an IED.

Because to the average non woke Yank, IED means improvised explosive device, similar to a land mine, that has injured so many soldiers and civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And it says a lot about these people that they are ignorant of this: especially since, in the past, a lot of companies had a veterans preference hiring policy. 

But apparently these consulting companies don't have any veterans or people with veterans in their family in their upper ranks to point out this obvious error: 

and what is worse is that the fawning article in the Washington Post was published praising this decision: I guess despite it's many fact checkers no one noticed this might be a bad choice, because unlike Joe Biden, I guess no reporter or fact checker in the WAPO has a relative who is in the military.

For if you think memes equating DEI as DIE is funny, wait until you start seeing memes about what IEDs do to woke companies.

the article actually names three of these consultants who run companies that make money by advising industry to adopt these policies. Presumably one should look into the history of such  companies, and who is funding them, and why they hire experts who are so tone deaf to public opinion.

Joelle Emerson, chief executive of DEI consultancy Paradigm [said] 'DEI has only been the acronym du jour since 2020... Regardless of what we call it, we’ve done a really poor job storytelling what this work is actually about.'"

actually I see what they are doing: 

Making money: 

 the DEI industry — which was worth an estimated $9 billion in 2023...

one is reminded of the quip: They came to do good and they did very well.