China will prosecute you if you say Taiwan is independent.

Global voices has a long essay on how China will seek out to arrest and try and even execute those saying Taiwan is an independent state.

read the whole thing at the link, but this is the important part: They will find you and arrest you even if you don't live in China.

The guidelines also specify that Chinese security authorities could issue international warrants on suspects and take action to arrest them. The Chinese government has an extradition agreement with 65 countries. Between 1997 and 2022, more than 420 Uyghurs were extradited to China from the Middle East and South and Central Asia. Under the pretext of fighting Islamic extremism, reportedly, more than a million Uyghurs had been detained in Xinjiang internment camps as of 2020.

so how could they do this? Uh, maybe via their international police stations: Wikipedia Wikipedia even has a page on them, 

And Wikipedia also has a page on their  Operation Fox hunt. which has been going on for quite a few years.

We’re seeing the Chinese government resort to blackmail, threats of violence, stalking, and kidnappings. They’ve actually engaged criminal organizations in the U.S., offering them bounties in hopes of successfully taking targets back to China. China applies incredible pressure on the targets of those efforts, many of whom still have family back in China. Some, unaware the Party was after them, have traveled back to China for a visit, only to find themselves suddenly trapped, and prevented from leaving. —

Christopher A. Wray (January 31, 2022)

 

but Taiwan's elected government says no

China has no right to sanction Taiwanese people for their political opinions or pursue prosecution across borders. Democracy is not a crime; autocracy is what’s truly malicious. Once again, I urge China to choose dialogue with Taiwan's democratically elected government.

— 賴清德Lai Ching-te (@ChingteLai) June 24, 2024

wikipedia on China's anti secession law.

this is one reason that the Philippines is getting more suspicious of miliary age "students" and casino workers from China.

And is the back story about the Chinese lady who became mayor of a small town near a military base who hid her citizenship. Here is a long video of the hearings about her ties: alas it is four hours long, and in Tagalog/English but has all the details in the beginning of the video...,

the problem is that China controls the economy and Chinese mobsters run the drug trade and smuggling, and many Filipinos who run the country are part Chinese of the diaspora so have links to China or could be vulnerable to Chinese blackmail: separating the economy from the Chinese connection is difficult, but so far the local business community  which includes many Chinoys, is taking the side of the Philippines but then there are the Chinese run business groups, and some of these groups ask for de escalation of the tension between the countries.

the problem of course is that China is a bully, and the only way to de-escalate the threat is to give them what they want and slink away in shame, bowing to the Emperor and promising obedience to Xi's dictatorship.

To make things worse: There are 20 thousand plus Philippine OFW in Hong Kong, who essentially are hostages if war should break out.

As for me: China hacked the US Federal OPM files a decade ago, so I am probably on a list somewhere in China, along with about 40 thousand other Yanks (plus Balkibayan) who worked for the US. Presumably we are all on a list.

So when I joke about China  invading Luzon, it is only a half hearted joke.

of course, the way things are going, there are quite a few lists who probably have my name, and not all of them are in China...

Make 'em laugh

Family news: time to plant the rice

 Our granddaughter is in the USA teaching a summer seminar for high school kids about economic matters. She loves teaching and is hoping to teach at an international school in Thailand next year. 

International schools are high schools that are accredited by overseas institutions: Rubys schools are accredited by American institution, and her degree/training is in the American method of teaching (lots of thinking/writing/research). Luckily she is quite adept at catching the kids using AI.

When she comes back, I told her that she needs to teach me how to use AI, because we old folks are still in the stone age when it comes to computers.

She was teaching at an internationally credited school in Manila this year, but she only had a part time job there. We hoped she would have stayed there for another year before going to a job offer at a school in Macao (that offered her a job but she needed more experience before they would hire her), but with the political situation with China, we are actually happy if she goes to Thailand for two years to teach English literature and composition, which should be safer than living in Macao/China or here in Luzon near a military base in case war breaks out.

No, I really don't think China would invade Luzon, but the world is so crazy one never knows.

Joy is going to Manila today to testify about organic farming. She works with the Dept of Agri here, supervising  a farm coop in nearby Bulacan, teaching how to grow organic rice and organizing processing, selling, etc... organic rice requires hard work for the farmers, but sells for a higher price than ordinary rice...

Years ago, she got a grant from the GoldmanSachs 10thousand women project, that taught middle level women how to run a business etc.

After that, since Kuya was able to run the farm business here with local help, she  started working on a project in nearby Bulacan (where her parents had a farm), to teach and supervise farmers there wishing to grow organic rice and vegetables.

President Marcos has made the agricultural sector a priority in his policies, This is harder than it sounds: If you let the price of rice go up, the farmers will make a profit, but if you import more rice and lower tariffs on imported rice, the lower price will benefit the poor in the cities, not to mention the rich businessmen who will import the rice.

Sigh.

With land reform, most of the farmers were allowed to buy their land, and the amount of land one can own is limited (Most of the farmers who grow rice for us own land that was owned by Lolo's father years ago). The problem is that now the young can get an education, and are moving away, so there is a dearth of people willing to work on farms (our farmland here is tilled by people from Joy's home area in the Visayas, which is poorer than our area).

So as the farmers age, their kids don't want to stay, so they will sell their land to rich folk, often Balikbayan, returning retired Filipinos, who will have someone farm it for them, or maybe build a house on the land, since with the improved roads, it is only two to three hours to Manila. 

There is also a project to buy or rent rice land to put up solar panels. I haven't heard if they are still pressuring farmer to do this as they were two years ago when the covid crisis had caused a lot of economic hardship, but with Manila nearby, and with the economy improving, the need for electricity has gone up.

Whether this is good or bad I can argue both ways, but when Kuya was approached with the offer, he also had thugs looking for our house to discuss selling the land to them. Welcome to the Philippines.

When I moved here 20 years ago, the farmers used our thresher, but still planted and harvested by hand. Now we rent a thresher/harvester to do the work, although we still solar dry the rice. We also have pretty well transitioned from waterbuffalo to handplows (sort of a large rototiller) to prepare the fields. The next step: machinery to plant the seedlings. 

We have two crops a year: The main season, you plant seedlings carefully spaced, but we just sow seeds by hand for the second crop, which requires a lot of money for irrigation since it is dry season. 

With decent irrigation and enough fertilizer, we could get three crops a year by planting only seedling, but right now there is not enough water or profit to make that feasible. 

Using the dry/wet way of growing rice (rather than constant flooding) has decreased water use (and cut methane emissions, although increasing Nitrousoxide emissions).

But all it takes is a drought or a typhoon and voila the crop is lost. Sigh.

Right now, it is the start of the monsoon, meaning thunderstorms/rain every afternoon evening, and soon the planting will start.

But I am retired, so I just sit and watch everyone else do the hard work.

and you mean the king has no clothes?

the phrase the emperor has no clothes/is naked refers to the fairy tale LINK not to the people being discussed.

 no one outside of the extreme right would dare to say it openly , but after the big debates debacle, it appears that Biden is not competent.

So the moderate who was elected to unite Americans but instead has allowed those around him to push radical leftist policies, has no clothes. And finally the MSM are admitting it.

my only hope is that China etc. doesn't see this weakness and figure they'd better invade Taiwan and Luzon before Trumpieboy gets in a cleans things up.

Sigh.

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

and quite a few bishops have started opposing some of Pope Francis' slight of hands to destroy the church.  When he says both A and B, the catholic press lauds the A part even though his minions are pushing the B part (wink wink).

So now a big shot Archbishop who has long been involved in church politics and knows where the bodies are buried (to use a sardonic phrase)  is saying what a lot of faithful Catholics believe but don't dare say: That the Pope has no clothes: i.e. that the Pope was a heretic when he was elected, and has continued to push policies that go against Catholic beliefs.

the Catholic press is shaking their heads saying Vigano is going nutty.

who does this crazy bishop think he is?  Saint Athanasius? 

There will be no peace in the Catholic Church until the McCarrick scandal is fully exposed along with all the corrupt prelates who are connected to it. The smoke & mirrors billowing out of the Vatican are just efforts to hide the deep corruption. Pray & cling to Jesus & His… https://t.co/ZSpPhvmUfW

— Bishop J. Strickland (@BishStrickland) June 27, 2024

Oh well: Nothing I can do except say the rosary as advised by our lady of Akita.

Ann Barnhart, call your office. You got it right again.

Gender fad; what happened to do no harm (especially in view of the UK Cass review)

the Cass review is a UK examination of the actual data on gender dysphoria and treatment, and has essentially resulted in that country shutting down the routine surgery that had been done.

All of this fad started long after I retired, so I am not an expert.

However, years ago I was a whistleblower in the IHS (for lack of funds and personnel that endangered our patients), I am aware of the way that things can be ignored and people can destroy your career.

another related item: At the start of the video, it is mentioned it was censored by Youtube.

And then a few days ago, the US Supreme court decided if the US government wanted to pressure social media sites it was okay.

The NYTimes was actually happy that the US government wanted to pressure social media sites it was okay. (alternative link at  wayback machine)

the NYTimes framed the story as the good guys (Biden) vs the evil Republicans, not as a free speech issue:

The Supreme Court handed the Biden administration a major practical victory on Wednesday, rejecting a Republican challenge that sought to prevent the government from contacting social media platforms to combat what it said was misinformation...

however if you look deeper into the story, they admit that it was dismissed on a technical ground: 

The court ruled that the states and users who had challenged those interactions had not suffered the sort of direct injury that gave them standing to sue.

The White House welcomed the ruling. “The Supreme Court’s decision is the right one, and it helps ensure the Biden administration can continue our important work with technology companies to protect the safety and security of the American people,” Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said in a statement.

so what was censored?  news about covid, which is something that should never have been censored, especially in view of the fact that many of the policies that were not allowed to be criticized, turned out to be correct.

and the other things censored was about complaining about election irregularities. Hello Garci on steroids. And censoring the discussion has only made a lot of people lose trust in the election system, whereas a deep inspection into possible fraud would have shut down the paranoid crazies.

Sigh.

Efficiency and cost effective death (worse for minorities and handicapped)

 all that stuff the AMA and other PC types about teaching racism to medical student so they are not racist misses the point: The danger is not dislike of a person's skin colour, but it is a cultural thing: a dislike of cultures that sees the sick and handicapped as part of their family responsibility, in contrast to the cost effectiveness/ efficiency of western medicine, where the culture stresses independence and a pleasant life as the goal of life.

Compare and contrast to Buddhism, where life is suffering, or of Catholicism, where we identify our suffering with that of Jesus, or of my Native American patients, who face suffering with bravery and see it as the path they are supposed to tread.

But the dirty little secret is that assisted suicide is being pushed as a right, ignoring that the dark side of this is that it is efficient: No caregiver has to give up their job, no expensive nursing home charges, and hey fewer old folks mean less money doled out on social security.

This cost effective western way of seeing things, combined with a culture by doctors that has little insight that some cultures have different priorities than success and happiness for the individual, is the real background to an ingrained racism in western medicine.

Let Anita Cameron explain: italics mine.

As access to healthcare, services and supports are being stripped from disabled people around the country,

(in the name of cost effective medical care of course) 

we cannot continue to push forward with assisted suicide laws.

Cuts to funding for home care services, as well as reduction or elimination of eligibility to those services, combined with racial and disability disparities and discrimination in healthcare, will lead to those being deemed to be terminal to feel that they have no choice but to ask for assisted suicide.

Lack of access to home care givers due to workforce shortages, with workers unable to work enough hours and earn a livable wage, will further compound this.

As a disabled Black person, I am alarmed at the negative impact that the normalization of assisted suicide will have on Black disabled, in particular, because contrary to what assisted suicide proponents say, assisted suicide is all about disability.

... According to the Oregon data (Oregon was the first state to enact an assisted suicide law), the top five reasons people request assisted suicide are: loss of autonomy, decreasing ability to participate in enjoyable activities, loss of dignity, feelings of being an emotional or financial burden on family and loved ones, and loss of control of bodily functions, such as incontinence and vomiting.

These are all disability related reasons that can be addressed with services and supports, not assisted suicide.

yes, but they cost money. For example, 53 million Americans are full or part time caregivers, many of whom cut back work hours or quit work to care for their family members. An alternative  approach is nursing homes or home care, but these too cost money. But a dead person doesn't cost a lot. 

The culture of caring is more common in the non elites, who see this as part of life. So how do you convince them to agree to die or let their loved ones be eliminated? 

Yes, lots of money out there trying to do this.

We Blacks are overwhelmingly against assisted suicide, but there’s an organization called Compassion and Choices that’s going into Black communities trying to convince us that assisted suicide is a good thing and that it’s a right.

funding sources here. Your stock market investments at work.

That’s how they bamboozle us by couching it in those terms, because we know what it feels like not to have basic human and civil rights.

Compassion and Choices, once known as The Hemlock Society, is an organization formed and led by middle and upper middle class whites. This demographic of white people overwhelmingly support assisted suicide.

this is why I point out it is not racism per se, but a culture war: efficiency and power over true compassion and family. 

Compassion and Choices hires middle class Black staff to come into our communities to spread the lie about assisted suicide because they know that we’re more likely to listen if information comes from someone who looks like us. As a result, some middle class and wealthy Blacks are falling for this farce.

As assisted suicide becomes normalized, racial disparities in healthcare will mean that Black patients will be more likely to be written off as terminal and steered towards ending our lives.

check out Dr. C's video below 

Being disabled compounds this. Disabled people also experience health disparities because doctors quite literally devalue our lives, don’t want us as patients and don’t believe that we are treated unfairly.

Add being Black to that, and the risks of being written off as terminal in a state where assisted suicide is legal, rises exponentially.

In the face of rampant healthcare inequities, it’s no surprise that assisted suicide is rarely used by the Black community. We fight to live. We fight to get access to treatment. We fight for end of life treatment. We fight for medical care that most white folks take for granted. Black people, wake up

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

this is not limited to the black community.

 
When I worked for the IHS we once sent a lady with frontal lobe syndrome (alert but partially paralyzed, with paradoxical crying when she was happy, something that disturbed the other patients. She also needed a feeding tube) 

 So we asked a neurologist about the best medicine to treat this (antipsychotics, or maybe anti seizure medicines or even beta blockers which are used in small doses for behavior outbursts in the brain damaged).

Instead, the neurologist without examining the lady except for a short glance, took the entire hour to pressure the family into removing the feeding tube. The family, who were Native Americans, kept quiet and did not respond (this was a cultural response to not saying no). But a cousin, a nurse, who was more westernized, at the end of the meeting turned to the doctor and said they wouldn't kill their relative, because Indians, unlike you white folk, don't kill our elders.

Indeed, their handicap was seen as another path that the Great Spirit gave them to walk, and often our patients in the nursing home were considered as being on the other side, i.e. able to see spirits and intercede for us.

and as assisted suicide is seen as the treatment for the sick and handicapped, the next step of course is for medical personnel to help them along, since the medical profession now sees death as a good outcome for people who are vulnerable. In the USA this is racist of course, but the mindset is already there in the UK, where N.I.C.E. guidelines stress keeping treatment cheap.

oh, the docs etc. won't push an overdose on you and voila you  are dead. They will do it indirectly, mimicking the treatment we use for truly terminal patients who need lots of sedation/pain medicine to control symptoms.

 

\\

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

update. This article was cross posted on my medical blog.

And in this blogpost discusses the problem of racism that leads to the high incidence of neonatal mortality and other problems in poor communities, both poor white, Hispanics, Native Americans and blacks.

Movie of the week

 

anti cia propaganda so what else is new?

 there is an article floating around conspiracy sites that CIA bots persuaded Filipinos not to get the Sinovax shot from China, and this resulted in lots of people dying.

Complete nonsense.

After the Dengue tragedy, the average Filipino is suspicious of any vaccine and this predates covid.

So  that propaganda about CIA bots working on the social media to stop Filipinos from using the Chinese vaccine is just that: propaganda.

The Sinovax was given widely in Indonesia and didn't stop the epidemic there (essentially it was useless), and so the Philippines used all sorts of vaccines from the UK and Russia etc, for high risk folk and sinovax was used in low risk populations 

and the article hints that the propaganda on the social media was to stop China from becoming popular. But China is very unpopular here because they run the economy, smuggling, computer sex and the drug trade. But especially because the ordinary Filipino can't break into their cliques to get rich, so most middle class folk work overseas to make ends meet.

our DOH didn't accept the mRNA vaccine when first offered because they refused to sign a no liability paper, so getting it here was delayed for over half a year.

What stopped the epidemic was the Omnicron variant. 

And unlike the USA, Duterte said if we wanted to use Ivermectin, no problem. 

The CIA anti Duterte propaganda is well known and shame on them for funding Rappler and lots of anti Duterte stuff on the social media that mainly inflamed the SJW and Catholic SJW types in the cities. But here in the rural areas, where drugs were behind a lot of crime, Duterte remained popular. Once he started his anti drug war, I could again walk the streets without fear of kidnapping, and Ruby could take a bus into Manila without fear of being robbed.

the new religion of woke and perversion

Father Leo expresses his concerns about Catholics celebrating Pride Month due to the changing meaning of pride as a deadly sin associated with debauchery and immorality.

 

He encourages humility and references St. Paul's letter to the Corinthians. \

 

The speaker also criticizes the negative effects of Pride Month on society, particularly its promotion of relativism and materialism, and the harsh punishment of those who damage Pride symbols.

 

He advocates for focusing on helping others and recognizing God's role in one's life as things to be proud of, rather than participating in Pride parades due to their sinful nature. The priest emphasizes the importance of being proud of one's faith without being ashamed or boastful

myself? In the Philippines, baclas and tomboys are just part of the extended family. Like second wives, if they are discrete and don't exploit the staff, no problem. But the US version is being pushed in a way that destroys the family: One only has to see how gay marriage has been a legal way to silence churches and institutions that don't approve, and it has morphed quickly into grooming children. I suspect most gays who just want to live their lives and be accepted by their neighbors are aghast at such things.

The gender agenda is essentially a secular religion that goes against what most Christians and Muslims believe.

This anti family and pro promiscuity morality is causing many countries to resent the USA: especially in Africa where colonial practices worked against the family (e.g. taxing people so men were forced to work away from their families, but not giving them social security, and allowing their land to belong to the tribe, so if they brought their wives with them, they lost their land...etc). 

then Americans wonder why the Wagner group, Muslim extremism and China are welcome there.

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

Update:

Those of us who still agree with pre-2012 Barack Obama that marriage is a “sacred union” between a man and a woman don’t exactly feel welcomed and included. | @johnamurdock https://t.co/RdaPGSwmJm

— First Things (@firstthingsmag) June 28, 2024

A Biblical Father;s day

 Garrison Keillor ponders on Father's day, and Solomon.

Just read the whole thing. A wise old man ponders on real life (as opposed to the screeds we tend to see posted on the internet/twittersphere).

The most prolific father of all time was surely Solomon, who, according to Scripture, had 700 wives and 300 concubines, which would certainly keep a man well-occupied on evenings and weekends. Just remembering their names and birthdays would take a concerted effort. 

And if the Song of Solomon is any indication (“How beautiful and pleasant you are, O loved one, with all your delights! How much better is your love than wine, and the fragrance of your oils than any spice!”) he was quite enthusiastic in the bedroom. So it’s reasonable to assume he fathered thousands of kids. 

 But in his Book of Proverbs, Solomon is not so euphoric. Fatherhood weighs on him. He says, “My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not. Walk not thou in the way with them.”...This is a father talking. Don’t hang out with jerks. Nothing good happens after midnight. I don’t want to hear that kind of language around here. 

... And when we come to Solomon’s Book of Ecclesiastes, we find a rather weary man, not the same guy who was sniffing his naked wife and smelling cinnamon: “The thing that has been is the thing that shall be … there is nothing new under the sun.”

The White Lady ghost of Buela Pennsylvania

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

the soil in this area is not good for farming: So much of the farm lands in the Cambria county area have all gone back to forest, and when hiking near our home, we'd find chimneys and parts of foundations, and apple trees and herbs that still survived. 

The population went up when the coal mines were open, but now the coal towns are depopulated, and some deserted (the local rails to trails hiking path is called the ghost town trail).

but when I moved there, often I would take the back road to our town from Ebensburg instead of the highway, and one section went down a hill and under a rail bridge: and that section of road was spooky, partly because it tended to fog, so my boys called this section the haunted road.

And indeed, we later found that locals claimed it was haunted, and that there was the ruins of a town called Buelah nearby. The town was settled by Welsh pioneers but it didn't last too long, and now all that is left is the cemetery: and the story that the area is haunted.

The story I heard was that the ghost was of a girl who was jilted and died of a broken heart.

Years later, we looked it up and indeed it is a famous ghost legend of the area. or as Wikipedia explains:

The Beula Ghost The abandoned ghost town, in its long period of being left uninhabited sparked the infamous "Beula Ghost" story. Many locals claimed to have ghostly experiences, a number of which ended up in the papers of nearby Ebensburg. The Alleghenian ran a lengthy story about the ghost in February 1861. The writer penned that he was out hunting late into the evening before stopping to rest in one of the last abandoned houses in Beula. After some time, he felt an icy hand on his head, following which he saw "a form clad in a flowing... garment, with long waving hair, of snowy whiteness, and a face as calm and pale as death!" Then it spoke to him, saying "'Mortal, be not afraid, I seek not to harm thee nor trouble thy spirit. I am lonely and weary."  After explaining that it was cursed to haunt Beula for loving "gold more than God", the spirit is apparently set free from its torment, or simply vanishes after lamenting its misery to a mortal being.

Photo from Countyfoxexplorer who writes about the legend:

The Lady in White can be seen along Beulah Road or in the Cemetery. There are a couple of stories that have been told about the haunting. One tale is that she was left at the altar on her wedding day. Unbeknownst to her, her husband-to-be died in a hunting accident. She never saw her beloved and died of a broken heart. The more commonly heard tale tells how she was one of the last members of the town of Beula. During a terrible winter snowstorm she attempted to make her way to Ebensburg. She was never seen again.

Musical interlude of the day

 

Happy flag day

HAPPY FLAG DAY From Wikipedia:

Flag Day is a holiday celebrated on June 14 in the United States. It commemorates the adoption of the flag of the United States on June 14, 1777 by resolution of the Second Continental Congress.

The Flag Resolution stated "That the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation."

Haitian rescue

 So two Knights of Columbus who were helicopter pilots rescued over 100 Americans from violence in Haiti.

It was the first call for Marinello since he started a helicopter air medical service, Tropic Air Rescue, just a little over a week before. After armed gangs had united in their opposition to the prime minister, who was away on a foreign trip, they shut down the international airport, stranding hundreds of foreigners. Among them were Mitch Albom, a bestselling author based in Michigan, and nine other Americans visiting an orphanage that he established in Port-au-Prince. A member of the group contacted a congresswoman in Michigan for assistance in getting them out of the country. She in turn contacted a congressional colleague from Florida, Cory Mills, a US Army veteran who had rescued Americans from dangerous situations before. Mills' staff in turn began looking for help with the Haiti mission. Twelve pilots indicated that they were unable or unwilling to take on the job.,,

they rescued a few people and then did multiple flights to bring more aidworkers home. And yes in corrupt countries the bureaucrats worry more about proper paperwork than human lives. I could be wrong and will apologize if I am, but I have lived and worked in several chaotic countries on four continents, and I suspect the reason for the barriers were because the pilots were too honest to give them a small gift to expedite matters. 

read the whole thing

beadsup SarahHoyt at Instapundit

propaganda lesson for today

 

when the Islamic terrorists took over a small city here, to fight their propaganda the Philippine military took and posted lots of videos to explain what they were doing.

But when reporters and UN employees and NGOs essentially are cooperating with Hamas, keeping secret what they were doing (i.e. stealing the aid money and supplies) and building tunnels and storing arms and missiles in civilian areas, now that the Israelis are trying to remove these things, these same groups continue to assist Hamas by putting out propaganda about genocide.

But no one is caring about the real genocides in the Sudan, Syria, etc.

Sigh.

cat v china

Move over Garfield; the cartoon cat that broke open Chinese censorship of the covid lockdowns in 2022.

A Chinese dissident - who is behind a popular X account fronted by this cartoon cat - says Beijing is trying to silence him source BBC

A Chinese dissident - who is behind a popular X account fronted by this cartoon cat - says Beijing is trying to silence him:Mr Li has since become a vital chronicler of information deemed politically sensitive by Beijing.

His X account is a window into Xi Jinping’s China where authorities’ vice-like grip on information keeps tightening. From major protests to small acts of dissent, corruption to crime, it is zealously scrubbed off the Chinese internet, only to turn up on Mr Li’s account.

read the whole thing. From the BBC

 ------------------------------

 another report on China from StrategyPage notes the problem of corruption in the military, shoddy workmanship in manufacturing weapons etc. could mean these weapons would fail if they invaded Taiwan.

 the dirty little secret is if they invade Taiwan, the result will cause the Chinese economy to collapse, a world wide depression because of economic sanctions and the loss of Taiwan's computer chips.,

The Chinese government’s 2023 discovery of the disastrous degree to which corruption crippled China’s military capability may have led it to abandon its objective of conquering Taiwan.

The government is acutely aware that its imminent disastrous demographic collapse allows it only a relatively short window of opportunity to conquer Taiwan and achieve great power status.

Abandonment of the Taiwan conquest objective might have also entailed a more realistic assessment of other matters, notably blockade by the US Navy.

 I tend to believe reports from StrategyPage because they get things correct on countries where I have personal knowledge of what is actually going on (as opposed to what the MSM reports).

The shoddyness of Chinese goods here is notorious: They are all over the place here because they are cheap and the poor can't afford anything else. 

and another problem with shoddy cheap Chinese goods in the market: local businesses have trouble competing. 

but for the growing middle class here, if you want medicines, tools, clothing, pipes, cement etc. that are of decent quality, you buy at markets that get the supplies from Japan or the USA.

Right now, China is threatening the sea lanes in the West Philippine sea, which they claim they own. 

By building artificial islands there, they could threaten other Asian countries by blocking the sea lanes, the air lanes, and the internet that go by their artificial islands.

(international court say they don't own it, but hey no one pays attention to the international court). 

Duterte tried to make nice with them, but they screwed him, so now Marcos Jr. is back to trusting the Yanks. 

so every day we hear China complaining about those Nasty Philippine fishermen or aggression by the Coast Guard when the Philippines does what they have been doing in the area for a couple of centuries.

The fact that China is not popular here complicates matters for China, since the northern Philippines is not far from Taiwan, and now the Philippines is allowing the US to put soldiers in the local bases. 

The US is not there to fight, but to supply the latest technology if anything happens and China attacks Taiwan or (hopefully not) Luzon.

Which is why I posted about drones a couple days ago. 

Drone wars

 

more information HERE: they spy, they drop bombs on you, and then there is this: Logistics

Commercial cargo ships can carry hundreds of armed UAVs equipped with satellite communications so operators anywhere in the world can control them. These USVs can be unloaded at sea and sent to carry out attacks on targets in the area or move to a nearby harbor and remain tied to a dock until needed. The only maintenance is keeping the USV batteries charged.

These USVs are a radical new weapon for naval warfare and the war at sea will never be the same because of the success of Ukrainian USVs in their victorious war against the Russian Black Sea Fleet.

so the kid playing WOW in the basement could actually use these skills in a future war. 

I post that because here in Asia, drones and unmanned robotic submarines might change stuff if China invades Taiwan and yes China is busy with planning to use these gadgets.

and then there are unmanned ships that can move supplies: logistics!

more here about the modern ways of war, and the problem of the modern military: Prolonged periods of peace lead to a decline in military readiness, and traditionally Americans aren't eager to start wars....

The Disney cartoons that helped fight World War II.

Brian Sibley, who has many posts on classical Disney cartoons, has one today about Disney's help with fighting World War II via education and propaganda.

Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Disney's massive studio lot in Burbank, California was commandeered by the US Army and many of Walt's animators were moved from making entertainment cartoons to making training films for the Navy. By 1943, almost 90% of Disney's work was related to the war effort, from powerful propaganda films to posters such as this one that points out job hopping can interfere with the supply chain and slow war production.

Youtube has a list of these cartoons.

But my favorite are the ones about controlling malaria, which was a major threat to fighting the war in tropical countries.

Note that back then mosquito control did not use DDT or insecticides.

I should note that the mosquitoes that spread malaria are different from the ones that carry dengue or yellow fever, but the control is the same. And more modern weapons include not just insecticide but electronic zappers indoors, insecticide impregnated nets to sleep under, encouraging using DEET and other insect repellants, screening window etc, ,and more recently, for the dengue mosquito, infecting mosquitoes with Wolbachia  bacteria

 

Transplant with pigs

Tea at Trianon links to a xenotransplant, where a man was given a pig kidney. 

 He later died, cause of death not mentioned, and the family says thank you to the doctors for giving him seven more weeks of life. 

 what's wrong with this picture?

It was unethical since an alternative treatment was available: renal dialysis.

This is not the first time the ethics have been stretched to experiment with transplanting organs.

Last year, doctors in NYC hospital did a gene edited pig kidney transplant that worked for one month. And Univ Ala did a kidney tranplant and it lasted one week.

The problem? The patients involved were "brain dead", so could not give consent. (and I am not going to go into the problems of diagnosing brain death, nor will I discuss how ethicists are trying to expand that definition to get more organ donors from people merely comatose. That is a discussion for another time).

see ethical discussion of transplants from animals here.

the problem with pig transplants goes beyond ethics and the YUCK factor:

in the Massachusetts case, the gentleman and his family gave their consent, so the ethical question of choice did not occur, although one wonders if the family actually recognized the experimental danger. So the ethics was not worse than doing it on a brain dead person who had no choice.

But for the gentleman in Massachusetts, what is not mentioned in the articles is the dirty little secrets that  there is a well known treatment for kidney failure: Dialysis.

italics mine.

you can live for years on dialysis, but previous brain dead patients given transplants of pig kidneys only lived a month or two, so there was no guarantee that this would have kept him alive for a long time.

So maybe if he just remained on dialysis he might have lived a couple more years. I hope the family realizes this and gets a good lawyer to sue.

 But never mind. The headlines make the doctors proud of themselves.

and oh yes: Follow the money

But surging interest in xenotransplantation, predicted by some estimates to be a $25-billion-dollar industry within the next five years

Other ethical problems about kidney transplants:  we see here in the third world:  paying a desperately poor person to risk his health donating a kidney for money, or buying one in China from a FalunGong prisoner scheduled for execution.

so was the experimental treatment of this Massachusetts gentleman cleared by the hospital ethics board?

yes I am sure that the ethics boards okayed it.

 bioethicists are quite flexible in many ways, and any lay person reading the ethical literatures for the last 30 years would be shocked at things that have been proposed.

which is why civil libertarian expert Nat Hentoff once called bioethicists apologists for death, because they could always figure a way to make anything ethical, up to and including killing a patient.

D Day: 80th anniversary

 

.....

banning dangerous music

 China is trying to ban a HongKong protest song from Youtube.

Glory to HongKong.Lyrics here.

AlJ article here.

absurdities in the covid propaganda news

I am no fan of Dr. Fauci, but when Dr Paul questioned him about the six foot distancing, Fauci said he made it up.

Actually, droplets of saliva etc can be spread 6 feet plus with coughing and sneezing.

when we were in medical school, we were told that masking essentially kept us from spraying saliva into the patient's wounds during surgery. But of course, unless you use a close fitting specialized mask it doesn't protect you from germs (although it might keep dust etc out of your lungs if you have asthma, and heavy work masks keep out particulate matter like paint spray and dust).

anti maks types point out that a mask won't stop a virus. They miss the point: the virus isn't floating by itself. It is embedded in moisture from breathing, talking, coughing or sneezing, and the mask does catch these particles so you don't give it to others. Yes, a handkerchief also does this, but then the droplets get on your hands and spread that way.

review from 2020 has lots of links to older studies about using masks.

The spreading of the infectious pathogen responsible for COVID-19 is mainly through droplets ejected during coughing and sneezing (Jones and Brosseau, 2015; Asadi et al., 2020; and Bourouiba, 2020). The multiphase turbulent cloud formed during coughing and sneezing consists of hot and moist air and suspended droplets (Scharfman et al., 2016). The larger droplet follows a ballistic projectile, and under the influence of gravity and aerodynamic drag, it decelerates and travels considerably a smaller distance before landing on surfaces (Tellier, 2006; Wells, 1934). However, the smaller diameter droplets and particles. So thete is some logic abput masks and distancing 

that said, I think the repeated shots of covid to low risk people is absurd, My granddaughter has had four boosters and will have to get another one to teach a seminar in the USA this summer. Why? The booster makes her sick for two to three days, so it's not like she doesn't have problems with getting the shot.

the overkill of covid policy is making folks forget the toxicity from the early epidemic: vaccines are a cost/benefit ratio decision.

Early in the epidemic two local nurses who were pregnant refused the vaccine, because social media rumors said that it could cause miscarriages: one died (7 months pregnant) the other survived covid but the baby was born premature with covid and died.

So maybe their decision was wrong.

But now we are reading about the covid shots causing problems with pregnancy and fertility. So the fake news might have been more accurate than the official news?

Yet as studies are leaking out about side effects, one does wonder about a coverup.

Here in the Philippines the disastrous Dengue vaccine episode was one reason that the DOH refused to sign a non liability agreement, so we didn't get the mRNA vaccines for months. I got the AZ vaccine in August, but by then we knew about the blood clot problem, so it was only given to elders and high risk people who were at risk of dying from pulmonary problems.

here the worst part of the epidemic was from April 21 to April 22.

the Omicron varient hit here in December.

yet once omicron hit, and herd immunity kicked in, the hysterical push for vaccine, isolation, etc. was overkill  nonsense. And giving shots to kids who are low risk is nonsense, especially when they rarely die of it.

And now there are reports that various vaccines had side effects and this was covered up.

The reaction to what many think was a bad public health policy will result in lack of trust in the public health sector. Sigh.

and suspicion that the vaccines cause an immunity problem leading to premature deaths from other diseases like cancer etc. is only now being debated.

and now some question about government employees making money from patents they held on treatments. 

It makes one wonder if this might be why they didn't allow ivermectin or HCQ treatment, and only quoted flawed studies (i.e. given late in the course of treatment) that showed they didn't work, so they could push their drug and make money.

and the coverup of vaccine side effects, and the increase in death rates from all sorts of diseases, is making some people suspicious of the entire kerfuffle.

   

don't ask me: I'm just a retired family doc living in her room who has all the symptoms of post viral fatigue etc, but mine is from dengue, not covid.

Rice, African style

 We grow organic brown rice here in the Philippines, but a lot of rice is grown in West Africa, and originally that rice , Oryza glaberrima was a slightly different type than Asian rice, and was domesticated 3000 years ago.according to Wikipedia.

In comparison to Asian rice, African rice is hardy, pest-resistant, low-labour, and suited to a larger variety of African conditions. It is described as filling, with a distinct nutty flavour.

This rice was the one originally planted in the Southern Unite states, but even in Africa, it has mainly been replaced by the Asian variety which is more productive, but there is a push to continue growing this valuable crop.

more at Atlas Obscura.

If you’ve been paying attention to the growth in interest in West African culinary traditions, you’ve probably noticed the increased popularity of Jollof rice.

The name derives from one of the kingdoms of my Ancestors, the Wolof peoples living in modern-day Senegal, Gambia, and Mauritania. The Wolof have a great reputation as traders, artisans, musicians, and cooks, forming along with their neighbors the heart of the culture and cuisine of Senegambia...

Jollof rice, or benachin, may be from Senegambia, but it spread through Wolof and Mande traders and unfortunately due to colonialism. Different countries have different names and styles of preparation to match. The fiercest rivalry may be between Ghana and Nigeria. However, Jollof-style rice became the grandmother of Lowcountry red rice as well as jambalaya and rice from Mexico, Brazil, and various spaces in the Caribbean. All you need is tomato, onion, pepper, and spices.

Recipe at link

this video explains how you make it.

 

this cook uses Jasmine rice, a fragrant long grain rice that is often imported here and into the USA from India or SEAsia, since the African rice is not available in most western countries.

This article at FlavorInsider compares Jollof rice and Jumbalaya. Some similarities but not the same.

I have a rosary and I know how to use it

A million FIlipinos praying the rosary blocked Marcos'thugs from arresting General Ramos, who decided the army should back Tita Corey who won the election. And the sight of the demonstrations persuaded President Regan to tell Marcos he would not get US backing for stealing the election and it was time for him to go.

But such things won't happen today, would it? Especially in today's secular world of tictoc and gay pride.

so why do I read this headline:ROSARY BANNED IN PUBLIC IN SPAIN AHEAD OF EURO ELECTION

Spain’s Socialist government has sensationally BANNED the public saying of the Rosary in Madrid ahead of the European Elections.

Pedro Sanchez’s government has told the organisers of the daily Rosary in Madrid that they will not be allowed to gather in the city on June 8th of June 9th due to a ‘day of reflection’ and the election day.

It comes after already fining its leader thousands for praying in public.

Catholics have said that they will defy the order.

WTF?

Background can be read in this EWTN article from last December:

Growing numbers of Catholics continue to defy Spain’s socialist government by publicly praying the rosary for the country as it faces spiritual, political, and economic turbulence that a pro-life lawyer says stems from a crisis in values and clear persecution against the Catholic Church.

and there are political inspirations behind some of the rallies:

Rosary rallies in the country have coincided with large-scale protests against an amnesty law that the government offered to socialists and communists for the failed 2017 bid by Catalonia to secede from the rest of Spain.

The Catholic news agency, in Dec 23, has more background.

other gatherings of Christians who oppose governments include rosary rallies in Ireland, (anti EU policies being pushed on that country among other things), a huge pilgrimage in France, Evangelical Christians protesting the corrupt socialists government in Brazil, and even numerous Eucharistic processions in the USA promoting revival.

No, I don't know if such things are increasing or would have any influence on the world which seems going to hell, but like the drip drip drip of water, it could.

Which explains why the FBI had Catholics on their radar for possible threats, and why peaceful abortion protesters in the USA have been sentenced to jail under the FACE act, that specifically bans pro life protests.\\\

update:London

Lebannon

Philippines

Iranian mullahs vs women

Kids, if you want to change the world and not just tie up Monday morning traffic, this is the apartheid that desperately needs your attention: The #GenderApartheid. pic.twitter.com/0Ajep3JUnN

— Bill Maher (@billmaher) June 1, 2024

quick: How many Hamas loving protesters recognize that Hamas is an Iranian proxy? 

And how many know about the woman who won a Nobel Peace prize for her activism to promote women's rights in Iran, and was jailed for doing so?

shame on the Hamas loving protesters for being so ignorant. 

they not only ignore that Hamas not only has attacked Israel and stolen much of the aid money sent to Gaza, but they seem unaware that Hamas, and probably a lot of the groups that are behind the so called protests, are inspired by Iran, whose mullahs are kleptocrats. To distract the country from pointing fingers at their corruption, they find a scapegoat, and are busy pretending that Israel is the only problem in the area.

 But the Arab countries know better. More here: