overseas workers: a world wide phenomenum

 A lot of the kerfuffe about migrants in western countries is about illegal migrants, claiming to be refugees. 

Some are obviously on the dole and others are criminals. But the backstory is that a lot of these people are seeking work: and alas they are not encouraged to bring their families along.

The reason? Lack of workers, due to a low birth rate.

The Philippines has a huge number of OFW: the official number is over 2 million overseas workers, but of course this doesn't include those working without papers, those who legally immigrated to other countries, or those working on ships.

so where do they work?

The same data reveal that about “four in every ten” OFWs work low-status or ‘elementary’ jobs, such as street vendors, construction and factory workers, cleaners, domestic helpers, and agriculture laborers. A majority of OFWs work in Asia, specifically Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, Kuwait, Singapore, and Qatar.

and although usually discussions of migrants are about young men, half of Philippine OFW are women.,Many of them are parents who left their children behind at the care of others in order to provide for the basic needs of their children.

Sigh.

the answer to this of course is to get local jobs that pay well, but even then it often means migrating to another area in the Philippines (many of our workers are from Joy's village in the Visayas who we recruited. Many local workers prefer to go to Manila or overseas to work where pay is better, so ironically, the long term results of land reform is that their kids are now educated and don't want to work for a pittance on their family's farm. So gradually their older parents are selling the land to returning OFW/Balibayan who will hire tenant farmers to work, or more recently, will sell the land for second vacation homes to the affluent from Naila, or more recently, to the company that is putting up solar panels to supply electricity to Manila.

Sigh.

farmersneed money for modern machinery, fertilizer etc. and the government is pushing green organic growing of food. Healthier food, but more expensive.

But the shortage of farm workers is not a Philippine problem. As I noted: Many of our workers and tenant faremrs are from the Visayas, But in other countries, they import people from poorer countries>

From a Japanese pape :

of the nation’s 67.81 million workers, more than 2.3 million—or roughly one in every 29—are foreign nationals. Just over a decade ago, the ratio was one in 112. Urban centers such as Tokyo lead the way in foreign workers, with one in 14 workers being a foreigner, but rural regions are witnessing the fastest growth. Hokkaido, Okinawa and Kagoshima prefectures have seen foreign labor increase seven- to eightfold over the past decade.

the birth dirth means fewer young people to do low paying jobs and a snobbery often means they don't want to do "dirty jobs" (the blue haired feminist SJW who see themselves as activists but lament they can only find work at Starbucks with their advanced degree in feminist studies come to mind. Why don't they take a course in nursing or caregiving? That's a major way for Filipino women to get a job overseas to support her family). Or join the armed services.

So until the educational system encourages the work ethic, and until the birth dirth is corrected, if Trumpieboy wants to rid the USA of migrant workers, he is in trouble. 

Of course, the answer is to have them come legally, which means recruiting and screening them. 

In the past, Many Mexican took temproary work visas, and of course the large illegal Mexican migrant population in the US was winked at: Most assimilated in their own neighborhoods: Most Catholic churches had Spanish masses for them, and many small Pentecostal churches got busy recruiting them as members. Many kept ties to their families and sent money home to them, just like the Philippine OFW.

But Biden's policy not to regulate this, along with the way the drug gangs morphed into the people smugglers, along with a lot of NGOs that saw the needy as someone to help but ignored that part about criminal gangs and drugs, broke the social contract of America that said if you come and work hard, you can become an American.

Sigh.

Cabrini in the slums of New York

 when the movie Gangs of New York came out, it was about the Irish trying to survive against prejudice in the slums of NYC. 

The irony? A lot of the stars and the director (Martin Scorsese)  were Italian, and they saw it as their story too, because a generation later it was the Italians facing poverty and prejudice.

Fast forward a generation: and the movie Cabrini tells the stories of those Italian immigrants via the bio of a nun, Mother Cabrini, who helped the Italians of the next generation of immigrants by building schools, hospitals and orphanages at a time when Italians were seen as different, and even the Catholic church was not especially welcoming these Italians, whose approach to church and religion was quite different.

That is the background of the recently released film Cabrini.

Like the previous film from Angel Studio Sound of Freedom, about a rogue US cop working with the Colombian police to stop child trafficking, this film shows people willing to face obstacles to help those who often languish in the shadows.

And unlike the usual religious themed pap one sees promoted with cardboard characters, this one breaks all the cliches of the left and right: because it is pro feminist, pro immigrant, and pro Christian.

Cabrini reminds one that the problems faced by immigrants is nothing new, and indeed a lot of what is being said about the Italians in the film is the exact same thing is being said right now about immigrants on right wing discussion boards. They are different, they dilute the race, they will never assimilate, they will never become true Americans because their culture/religion is different from the good folk of America.

So the film is countercultural, in a Catholic way. 

And quite well done: the actress playing Mother Cabrini Cristiana Dell'Anna should win an award for her role.

But of course she won't: Because this will be ignored because the woke hate religion. 

And I have already read bad reviews by religious reviewers saying it isn't religious enough, because the deep belief in God that inspires Mother Cabrini is not shoved into your face with pious platitudes.

Sigh

In many ways it is a Catholic film: Because when confronted with poverty, sickness, or the other miseries of life, the approach of Catholicism (and indeed that of mainstream Christianity) is to go out and help. For most of us this is done in the circle of one's family and neighbors (50 million caregivers can't be wrong) or if one is lucky enough to work in the helping professions (nurses, teachers, social workers) it is done by direct action.

Not as glamourous as protesting but hey, it is real and meaningful.

with the unregulated influx of immigrants and refugees all over the world, the problems Cabrini confronted are going on right now in many countries.

In some ways, the refugees will have it easier in the USA than in other countries because the Yanks have been there before.

I had to laugh at the end of the film when Cabrini reminds the mayor that maybe the powers that be might see her as a trouble maker, and the Italians as unwanted outsiders, but in the future that Italians could very well run the city as the Irish were doing at the time: and even reminding him those Italians she is helping are proud Americans and they vote

('shades of Bill Murray).

something the Republicans might want to remember.

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

update: Hollywood vs history discusses the film and how close it is to reality (hint: some of the characters are fictional amalgams of several real people).

Haiti: Cholera and chaos

From the CDC:

On October 2, 2022, two cases of Vibrio cholerae O1 infection were confirmed in the greater Port-au-Prince area. As of January 3, 2023, >20,000 suspected cholera cases had been reported throughout the country.

What are the implications for public health practice? Multiple factors, including social unrest, have affected public health infrastructure and facilitated cholera resurgence. Although cases have declined, a multipronged approach, including sufficient and timely case management, strengthened surveillance, emergency water treatment, and targeted oral cholera vaccination campaigns are urgently needed.

the infrastructure has never quite recovered from the 2010 earthquake.

And more recently a 2021 earthquake that destroyed much of what was rebuilt. From UNICEF:

Early in the morning of 14 August 2021, a 7.2 magnitude earthquake rocked Haiti, causing hospitals, schools and homes to collapse, claiming hundreds of lives, and leaving communities in crisis. By mid-September, around 650,000 people, including about 260,000 children, were estimated to be in need of humanitarian assistance.

Two reports on the background of the epidemic:  

From PBS Newshour:

from WION, an Indian news site.

 The prevention of Cholera is fairly straightforward: when we were in Africa, we were instructed about what to do if it hit our area (luckily it did not):  

doctors or healthworkers should place patients in local schools etc that had running water since local clinics had few beds, And with IVs and WHO Rehydration fluid, the death rate is much lower than in  the past. Stress on washing hands and boiling water, and giving cholera vaccine was done.

One reason our area might not have had the problem: We had village health workers in many small villages to encourage little things like washing hands and boiling drinking water, and we had a well digging project funded by Oxfam to dig wells to provide cleaner water near the villages (that still had to be boiled, but was less contaminated than using river water, and with more water available nearby, washing hands etc. was easier to do).

But if you want health care workers to work in these areas, you need to guarantee them physical safety. 

So what is going on in Haiti?

So who was rebuilding the infrastructure? Why aren't locals, especially those with an education, taking jobs helping to rebuild their country?

Answer: Lots of chaos political instablity earthquakes and hurricanes don't help.

To make things worse, many who could rebuild the country, i.e. those with energy and education will flee the country to make a life elsewhere: 

from the MiamiHerald July 2022:

The university-educated Philippeson, who is fluent in five languages, is part of a generation of Haitians who have migrated to Brazil, Chile and other South American nations following their country’s devastating 2010 earthquake. After years of living in South America, they decided to make their way north in a treacherous 7,000-mile trek through the road-less jungles of Central America to Mexico in the hopes of living in the U.S...

These educated Haitians could easily find jobs in other countries, but are the tip of the iceburg for what is now a world wide migrant crisis. For exmple: 

A recent national survey by the country’s Citizen Observatory for Institutionalization of Democracy found that 82% of Haiti’s nearly 12 million people would migrate if they had the chance.

The deep disenchantment with the country and democracy has been shaped by the volatile nation’s downward spiral over the past six years..

So what is the answer? Send in the marines? The US and UN has done this in the past, and it didn't work. 

And often those trying to help become scapegoats for the problems.

For example: Some blamed the failure of rebuilding the infrastucture after the 2010 earthquake many years ago on the Clinton fund scandal, including many in the US Hatian community, but that aid has to be put into the context of the problem of foreign aid in general. 

BBC report on the Clinton fund problems gives insight into the problems of foreign aid in general.

 

A US Government Accountability Office report discovered no hint of wrongdoing, but concluded the IHRC's decisions were "not necessarily aligned with Haitian priorities". Mr Clinton's own office at the UN found 9% of the foreign aid cash went to the Haitian government and 0.6% to local organisations.

The bulk of it went to UN agencies, international aid groups, private contractors and donor countries' own civilian and military agencies. ...

part of the problem: 

Jake Johnston, an analyst with the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a nonpartisan group that has studied the quake reconstruction, told the BBC "it's hard to say it's been anything other than a failure".

But he believes the State Department and IHRC simply replicated the mistakes of the whole foreign aid industry by chasing short-term gains instead of building longer-term capacity on the ground.

"They relied too much on outside actors," Mr Johnston says, "and supplanted the role of the Haitian government and domestic producers."

 Sigh.

Summary: Do you let efficient, trained, and honest outsiders handle the aid, or encourage and help locals do it, knowing that they are often untrained and alas too often corrupt and so much of the money will be stolen by them or by local gangs?

and now the UKGuardian reports famine is coming.

Read it and weep.

 

us vs them or US with Them with respect

 I have been busy with family stuff here, so only had time to scan the news, and not time to comment on it.

But a lot of it seems to be biased: It assumes the elites should rule the world, and it sees the upper middle class culture of the west as the norm.

One longs to say: Reality check.

Quick. Is this guy merely an examplevof freedom  of speech or is he a domestic terrorist? 

backstory here.

so why are parents dissenting at a public meeting being threatened that they could be arrested as terrorists?

It is one thing to arrest a father very very angry over the school whose gender policies let a boy into the girls restroom then coveres up the sexual assault of his daughter in the school...but the real aim of this policy appears to be to silence dissent over the school curriculum... as in the tweet insisting that experts, not parents, need to devise the school curriculum.

But teaching Marxism and Gender theory to children is the same as teaching them a religion: one whose rules negate the rules of the family's culture and religion.

Essentially, it is teaching a secular religion to students that is openly anti traditional religion. And silencing those who object. 

This is not a new problem, you know:

The reason for the Catholic school system was that Protestantism (and anti Catholic bias in history) and the King James Bible was taught in public schools.

Another problem that people object to is the rewriting of history. BLM bias in history to teach only the negative aspects of western history. But by ignoring the other part of American history, it distorts history.

Any objection means you are an evil racist.

Which brings us to similar fight is going on about immigration.

I support immigration, but think it needs more regulation to stop the exploitation of the chaos by drug and sex traffickers. And my family love the country. So what is behind opposition to what is essentially unregulated immigration?

in one word. JOBS.

 it isn't purely racism to oppose open immigration: Immigrants will take the jobs that otherwise would go to American born poor whites or poor blacks. So it is essentially an economic problem, being made worse because of unemployment due to the Covid shutdowns.

Make more jobs, and the problem will not go away but will settle down slowly.

So who is helping to resettle and educate the immigrants in the massive flood due to Biden's lax border policies?

Not much reporting, because I suspect much of it is being done by churches and families.

 Is anyone reporting on this, outside of the rabid anti immigrant anti Catholic right wing press? 

Catholics (and yes, other religious groups like the Jews) have been helping immigrants and other resettle and integrate into American society for over 180 years by social welfare and education work.

Assimilation and integration takes time, and the aim is not to hate your home country but to accept the culture of the new one: and in American culture, this means tolerating others who disagree with you.

Nothing is new under the sun: this film is about the Irish, but the director admits he saw in it the story of his Italian family.

so the danger of groups fighting other groups who they see as the enemy is a real danger: and when some push this meme to get popularity or ratings, it is wrong, be it MSNBC or Trumpieboy.

So who is trying to stop the incipient civil war that some thoughtful scholars are worried about in the USA?

Maybe be a peacemaker, and start by remembering not the wrongs of history but the heroes who tried to help normal people build a comfortable life despite prejudice based on racial, ethnic, cultural, or economic differences.

Trivia: Bishop Healey, an African American, worked tirelessly for the civil rights of the Irish immigrants, and presumably the poor Canucks in New England, and Mother Drexel  a debutant and distant relative of Jackie Kennedy, sponsored schools for black and AmerIndian minorities (I spotted her portrait is on a mural in the Osage Nation Council meeting room).

I should ask my son about what is going on in the USA: but my son is an immigrant as is his wife, and his church works with Haitian and Central American immigrants to help them navigate the immigration laws. 1918 article about churches and immigrants. 

Which brings us to another item that is rarely seen in the media:  The importance of the family.

Most immigrants come from traditional, conservative cultures where the family is the first source of help in times of trouble...

this is why the gender ideology is a real problem for them.

It is so bad that Pope Francis has condemned it as an attack on the family... and indeed is seen by some of it's instigators as a way to get rid of the "patriarchal" family, which they hate.

Yet it is the family that allows people to prosper in times of trouble. 

That is why immigrants tend to move to areas where they have family, friends, or people from their own culture.

...

but the trick is not rejecting your culture, but to learn to respect the culture of others:  find what you have in common, while respecting your differences.

 

Family news: feeding the poor, immigration problems

Joy is still coughing, but her internist thinks that she will be okay for her surgery after two more weeks.

She's reading all the side effects on the internet and looking for an excuse not to have surgery, but most of that information is for younger women. One problem: the internet page lists side effects but not the actual risk or risk/ benefit ratio of both the surgery or NOT having surgery.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and often the crazies don't put things into context, or think we docs went into medicine to get rich. Heh. Study 8 years, do 3-6 years post graduate training be stuck with a 100K dollar debt and then you have to work 80 hour weeks. What's not to like?

But we do it because most of us have a calling to heal.

Ruby has been working in an outreach to feed the street kids in Manila. She says many of them are orphans due to their fathers being shot as drug runners. Actually this is partly true, but the problem long predates the drug war. So I pointed out that the problem of missing fathers (mainly by desertion, but also drug/alcohol abuse or accidental deaths) and alas often the moms take a new "husband" who doesn't want the kids so they end up raised by poor relatives or on the street.

The problem of street kids is not new: blame the industrial revolution that brought out of work rural families to the big city.

Maybe I should have her read "Oliver Twist", or maybe the biography of St John Bosco...

However, it does show the need for a type of welfare/ social security for these single moms/widows/deserted spouses. The problem? Fraud, corruption, and encouraging men to desert their families so the wives can get the money.

Ruby says the most sucessful type of outreach in the slums is ordinary folks helping: i.e. the working class and middle class folks who often are just a generation from dire poverty and know what it is like.

This includes many outreaches by the churches, both Protestant (like Ruby's church) and Catholic churches. I should add that Joy, who runs one of our rice businesses in nearby Bulacan and is working with farmers to grow organic rice so they can get a better price for their crops, is also involved with local authorities in feeding programs.

Ruby has worked with her mom and also with her small Protestant church's program with the kids of the poor farmers here, so is used to working with children.

In contrast, the upper class SJW aren't used to slum conditions (the smell, the dirt, the naughty kids) so find it easier and more ego gratifying to virtue signal by tweeting than to actually have to feed and touch street kids and their families.

The government here does subsidize rice for the poor. If you have a card, you can buy it at a lower price. The problem of course is corruption. The Manila Bulletin says there are still problems of targeting the right people, and that there is "leakage". (rice diverted by businessmen and/or politicians to sell for a higher price).

Sigh.

As for me: I'm still in the midst of visa problems: My permanent visa was because Lolo was supporting me, and now the family supports me by letting me live here, while I support them by helping with Ruby's school fees.

 But since my permanent visa was approved, my husband died, and then later they passed a regulation saying that non blood relatives don't count so I am essentially illegal. And no one noticed the problem in when I updated the visa for the last 5 years. Well, duh.

But since the Philippines honors the elderly, and since I do have a pension, it is just a matter or resubmitting the paper work. Joy is good at that type of thing (she used to work for the government and knows the ins and outs of paperwork).

This is why I feel sympathetic to the "immigrants" who miss their court appointments and paper work. It is bad enough for Americans to cope with faceless government bureaucrats (e.g. the DMV to get a driver's license) so you can see how they would prefer to avoid the hassle.

My son's Catholic church in Florida has an outreach to help people there do this, plus other help for immigrants (many of whom are from Central America or Haiti).

The Catholic church's immigration policies predates Trumpie boy: The dirty little secret is that Obama deported hundreds of thousands in his time... but then felt sorry for them and made loopholes "for the innocent children" aka "Dreamers".

Big problem: This move helped the "dreamers" but encouraged people to bring their kids on the long, dangerous trip. And not just their kids, but often they "borrow" a kid to bypass regulations.

Trumpieboy is less sympathetic, because his "base" knows  employers prefer illegal immigrants who work for lower wages, so there are fewer jobs for them. (This is especially true for the black community, something that a lot of people haven't realized or don't want to point out for fear of being called "racist".).

Ironically, if the Democrats had agreed to the wall and more money to process the "incoming", he would probably have agreed to give the dreamers an amnesty. But politics/hatred got in the way.

And now the "squad" of radicals are crying tears over immigrants while refusing to vote for funding to process the immigrants. Huh? what do they want: Dump them on the streets?

I do agree Trumpieboy's tweet: "go back to your old country" (and then solve the problems and then come back here to solve ours) sounds bad, since some of those who were implied in the criticism were born in the USA, but hey, maybe AOC should go back to NYCity and solve their problems before messing up the entire USA.

This type of left wing manufactured/"astroturf" hysteria happened before:

Reminds me of McGovern and 1968, with Pelosi as Hubert Humphrey. Sigh. That was how you got Nixon and now it will probably get you 4 more years of Trump.

The people smuggling business is a world wide multi million dollar business, often run by the same cartels that smuggle drugs.

It's a world wide problem, and until you manage to stop the big shots behind drugs and the banks that launder the money it won't stop.

Duterte is doing his best (but the crooked politicians are fighting back in the name of "human rights").

Everyone laments murders here, including the murder of some priest activists, and points fingers at Duterte (even when it is local politicians ordering the deed).

well, quite a few Mexican priests have been killed by the drug cartels too. And these priests are killed so the cartels can be in power: some because they criticized the drug cartels' violence, but some because they helped migrants escape the violence of the smugglers.

UKGuardian article from Sept 2016: (i.e. before Trump)

Before last week’s murders, Mexico’s Catholic Media Centre had tallied the killings of 28 priests since 2006, most of them in states where criminal groups are powerful, such Michoacán, Guerrero and Veracruz...

So do you play nice and let the cartels make you into a narco state, or start shooting? (It can be done, but it's long and bloody. Colombia did it, but no body noticed. But Duterte is trying to stop things before they get that bad).

You have to figure out a "cost/benefit" ration in these things.

The  number of people killed here varies (whether or not you consider all the dead bodies, including "amoks", pay back murders, political murders, and murders by gangs). But Wikiepedia says our murder rate is 11 per 100 thousand people.

In contrast Time Magazine said Mexico's reported murders in 2018 were 33000;  Wikipedia quotes Mexico's murder rate as 19 out of 100 thousands people.

StrategyPage has this background on Mexico: Ironically their economy has improved thanks to NAFTA forcing them to modernize their economy.

Most of the present wave of immigrants, however, come from Central America, and you can see why:

Wikipedia reports the murder rate in Honduras is 56 and in El Salvador is 61, some of the highest in the world.

and waiting in the wings: Refugees from the wars, disease, and corruption problems of Central Africa, who now that Europe is trying to slow down their refugee flow, are finding their way to the southern border of the USA.

Sigh.

Headlines below the fold

Ironic, isn't it, that the "terrible Catholic redneck boys" (who included at least one black kid in their group) who went through a twitterstorm condemnation by the SJW actually had their side of the story vindicated by... the black group who was busy taunting them and filmed the entire incident.

The twitter site apparently is not a "teacher from California", but originates in Brazil and puts out over a hundred tweets a day. WTF?

it may not have been a spontaneous interaction, notes Professor J. of Legal Insurrection blog. You confront someone and then shout they are hurting you, and voila, they are guilty.

This is, of course, unfair to the students, whose only sin was to sightsee after attending the Annual March for Life (which didn't get in much of the MSM because, hey, they are bigots). So what are kids doing at a March for Life? Well, teenagers are the ones who often know friends who were pressured into aborting their kids and left devastated. I never attended (I'm not a demonstration type person) but my son (and his pregnant girlfriend) attended one year a while back. Heh. and of course, afterward they sight see. why not? Catholics see no problem with mixing a pilgrimage with a good party. As Teresa of Avila said when someone criticized her (usually vegetarian) nuns for enjoying a partridge that someone sent them: Well you know, penance is penance, and partridges are partridges.
Or as the sage said: There is a time to mourn and a time to party.

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

and this is on top of several other fake anti Trump stories, not to mention anti Catholic/anti Christian stories out there that sprung up out of nowhere.

I support gay marriage but would be considered a bigot because I am also aware of how the "gay lifestyle" (not those with Same sex attraction or who refrain from acting on these temptations or are truly monogamous) is a terribly dysfunctional and medically dangerous  lifestyle. We docs tend to live in a reality based world after all.

But now it seems if you support the old fashioned definition (i.e. the definition before 2008) you are a bigot, be you Mrs. Pence or a famous British professor of Philosophy.

Hint: Must demonize Catholic Christians in case the replacement of Judge Ginsburg is a believing Catholic.

Knowing Trumpieboy, I predict he will appoint a Jew or Muslim instead and make their heads explode, but that's just my guess.

as for the russia Russia RUSSIA story: That seems to be falling apart too, but never mind.

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

it's not only those crossing the border illegally: another source of illegal immigrants are those who overstay their visas. (either work or visitor visas). For example, Joy was interviewed and was given a visitor visa, but my son was turned down because he was considered high risk to stay in the USA where he had family.

Which is why there is at present a moratorium on Philippine workers. Filipinos tend to blend in with Americans and there is, of course a large FilAm community in the USA.

However, this doesn't upset me much: These people are screened to keep out criminals.

The border problem is that it allows not just people wanting jobs, but includes human trafficking and drug smuggling. Which is why the criminal gangs have killed so many local priests who often help the migrants down there.

And of course, the reason for the much publicized groups marching to the USA is to keep these people protected from the drug cartels/criminal gangs who do the smugging.

A story of one girl who on impulse joined one of these groups from the BBC.LINK

------------------------------
the big controversy here is a bill allowing 9 year olds to be jailed as criminals. 

these are street kids who often are used by criminals to do their dirty work, since the criminals know they can get away with petty crime and drug sales.

an old story: Oliver Twist is Dicken's expose novel on the problem.

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

First they cleaned up Boracay beach, and now they are planning to clean up Manila Bay.

And they closed the Manila zoo to clean it up c(one source of pollution since they dump their garbage into the bay),

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

the Bagsamoro folks voted yes 

slowly making peace? Don't hold your breath: the Moros have been fighting everyone (including each other) for at least 400 years.

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

Can Big Brother get worse?

StrategyPage summarizes China's surveillance state. First you control the media, then you control the people by spying on them.

In the last few years, as their facial recognition via a growing network of high-resolution video cameras became a proven technology, it led quickly to the creation of a SCR (Social Credit Rating) system in which all the accumulated data on an individual can be analyzed to determine which patterns of behavior lead to criminal or anti-government behavior.

China needed someplace to test all these new technologies together and over the last few years, China has used Xinjiang province, which has a large Moslem minority, as the test site. In Xinjiang, China is discovering how well this cell phone, Internet and public (captured via vidcams) behavior and other forms of population monitoring can be used to exercise more control over large populations. It turns out that the degree of control (or at least personal information) is substantial.

and you thought twitter mobs were bad.

Cheezemaking story of the week

AlJ has a story about making Parmesan cheese.

Actually, about how immigrants from India are saving the Italian Parmesan industry.....

A decade ago, when Jaswantsing imagined his future, he saw himself working as a computer engineer in his native Punjab province in India. But at home, there are more computer engineers than there are jobs. Others from his village had already made their way to Italy - they said the pristine farms along the Po Valley looked just like home. The difference was that in Italy there was work and the possibility to provide some financial security for his wife and two daughters, now aged eight and 11. So, eight years ago, Jaswantsing followed the "Sikh Road" to Italy to work in the milk factories. He arrived at the Catellani Gianni Farm in the village of Masone.

more here:

Philippine song of the day

a reminder why people migrate to the USA: