Headlines below the fold

StrategyPage update on the Philippines. China is acting aggressive against one of our islands in the Spratlys. But never mind. Obama will just posture about it.

In January China very publicly opposed Filipino plans to a new Filipino air traffic control facility on Pagasa. In late February Chinese coast guard ships began showing up at nearby Jackson Atoll, which has long been used by Filipino fishermen from nearby Palawan (inhabited by 770,000 Filipinos and not claimed by China, at least not yet). Now China appears to be making preparations to build an artificial island at Jackson Atoll, install a small military garrison and declare the area part of China. Nearby Pagasa is the second-largest (37.2 hectares/93 acres) of the Spratly Islands and is inhabited by 200 Filipinos civilians and a few military personnel. China has been increasingly belligerent in its claims to Pagasa and threatens to “take it back” by force. 

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related item:China points to Trump to instruct their people on the dangers of democracy...
and they are aghast he plans to build a wall (duh).

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related item: Mom Jones is happy that China's greenhouse emissions might have peaked.
but what is behind the drop? In the past, changing the way to grow rice from the "natural" methane releasing flooding method to "dry" farming helped lower the greenhouse gases produced by China.

But this time it is the economic downturn that is cutting factory jobs.

Yeah, nothing like a recession to stop the factories from spewing greenhouse gasses.

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According to Drudge, "students" who are professional agitators and don't need to work at a regular job and get their hands dirty, and organizations funded by millionaires closely associated with President Obama, who are making expensive plans to make huge demonstrations against cheeky millionaires running for president.

President Obama: "We can have political debates without turning on one another. We can disagree without assuming that it's motivated by malice." Watch complete video here: http://cs.pn/22hDwgv

I don't know: the demonstrators' rhetoric is pretty hateful on twitter.

Trump's minions are repeatedly blamed for violence, but is it violence or push back against aggression? The poster child for Trumpette violence is a 78 year old ex Korean war veteran who was upset at obscentities sprouted at him and those with him and spontaneously hit back for being disrepectful.

of course, it's 1968 redux...which gave us a lot of violence and resulted in Nixon being elected.

And yes these groups will use the internet to arrange things, but the bad news is that, unlike 1968, the internet will let the rest of us know the story that is not covered on the MSM...

the way I see it, the most dangerous man in America is not Trump but Drudge...
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Youtube lecture of the day: You know what happened to the Titanic, but do you know the story of the Brittanic?



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for 250 years, StPatrick's day was a celebration that Irish Catholics in the US were allowed to follow their religion (at a time when Catholics in Ireland couldn't hear mass or vote etc).

 Why is it such a big celebration in American communities? One reason is that the freedom of democratic life is such a great experience that people simply cannot be kept from celebrating it. The Irish have had to struggle so long and hard for their freedom that they take a special delight in celebrating the religious liberty and free association that they have enjoyed in America.

Well, no longer. The parades are "inclusive" and must includ groups who openly disdain Catholic beliefs. Essentially, if you hold Catholic beliefs you are now considered a bigot.

so much for "religious liberty and free association".

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the Arabs arrest spying Israeli vultures.

But in London, the pigeons actually do spy on you:

Headlines below the fold

While you were watching the hyperventillating talking heads on superTuesday, other stuff was going on.

StrategyPage has a report on Iran's election, what it means, and about the Saudi/Iran fight proxy fight in Yemen.

The EU and US are not the only ones where the hoi polloi is restless.

 Preliminary results of the February 26 national elections indicates that the reformers did much better, more than tripling representation in parliament from about ten percent to at least a third. Unlike 2012 the ruling clerics did not try to rig the voting. There were two main reasons for that. First, many hardliners have become pro-reform. Second the ruling clerics know they are in trouble. 

hmm...seems like the clerics not only pulled back from stealing this election after the demonstrations from the last one....and they are in trouble because they got rich from corruption while punishing women if their chadors are too lose...

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BBC: China punishes those behind a huge investment scam.

MBulletin reports China's manufacturing is not expanding.
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also BBC: Barclay's bank is pulling out of Africa.

complicated, but a lot of it is about the fall in worth of the South African Rand.

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The Pakistani lady who won her second Oscar...
for a short film about honor killing and forgiveness.

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stem cells from the patient's bone marrow restore retina and some sight.


I assumed the "controversial" part of the headline was about using fetal cells, but here like in most successful stem cell treatments, ethical stem cellswere used...the controvery was about bypassing the paper work and preliminary experiments to just treat the patients.the problem: because of the lack of basic investigations, they don't know why the treatment worked.

via Instapundit.

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so for the last 19 years the GAO can't make out the books?

 Katie Watson of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group says GAO just announced – for the 19th consecutive year – that the federal government’s accounting is so bad that it “did not render an opinion on the federal government’s consolidated financial statements.”
Think about that for a moment. 

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The problem with the "two minute hate" on Facebook and Twitter that they impose "groupthink".

And as ABC (Aus) science news points out:  too much groupthink stops innovation.

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how to survive a shooting attack.

Might come in handy here, since election season is a blood sport in our area.

problem? It didn't work for our nephew, who was leaning over one of the victims when he was shot. We debate is he was applying first aid (he was a doctor) or if he was trying to find the guy's gun to shoot back. Sigh.

We have gun control in the Philippines. Most people have an illegal gun hidden in their homes for protection, but you can get jail time if the roaming police roadblocks find you carry one without a hard-to-get permit.

Alas, If our nephew had a close carry permit, he might be alive today, because he took after his father who had been the police chief, and like my husband was a good shot.

No, we don't have a gun in our house: I am a poor shot, and his son is a Christian who refuses to break the law. But until his stroke, my husband kept a handgun and his old World War II machine gun in the closet.

My husband always carried a legal hand gun in his car when we lived in the USA because he carried morphine with him for housecalls and emergencies... and even back then there were a lot of druggies around.

I am starting to see soldiers around town wearing a new uniform, a pixelated grey urban warfare pattern.

In the past, the military wore the "brushstroke" dark green pattern, for jungle warfare (against the local NPA).

more on Filipino uniforms HERE and Here

and if you see the old BDU pattern, it's probably civilians since used clothing is sold all over the place here, and usually better quality than the new shoddy stuff from China.

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Madonna's concert is making even hip Pinoys feel uncomfortable, and here's why.

and she couldn't even start the concert on time.

Nothing like ridiculing her audience to make her popular (/s)

in contrast, LadyGaga put out an album with Tony Bennett...

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AnneAlthouse reports the oh so politically biased BMJ now published an article that criticizes western countries that ban female circumcision.

what is being ignored: the mild "nick" which is sometimes done in Indonesia and Malaysia, is not what is being discussed.

THIS is what they are talking about.Diagram here.

This form is more common in the Middle East and North Africa.and is indeed a form of mutilation to stop women from enjoying sex, not to mention making childbirth more dangerous.

From a medical point of view, it should be abolished. And the UN's WHO has been trying to do this.

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Before there were Trumpettes, there was the KnowNothing party. from First Things.

or is it a revolt of the working class, who see their families decimated by their jobs sent overseas in trade deals and cultural leaders whose anti-traditional family policies are destroying the social fabric?

Rod Dreher expanded on Domenech’s comments, noting that after the SCOTUS Obergefell decision, Christians understand that “the deck is stacked against them.”  Many of them believe that the only thing standing between them and “liberal authoritarianism” may be “a combative SOB who doesn’t care what Enlightened Opinion thinks of him.”

headsupVia TeaAtTrianon

on the other hand, that part in the article

...As the country is transformed by immigration, including by non-Christians, a significant number of them hostile to our faith....

Reality check: Most immigrants are Christian, (Mexico is a "catholic" majority country) nor is being a "non Christian" necessarily mean they are hostile to "American" values (Buddhist Koreans and secular Chinese have a lot in common with the Republican party,  many Arabs in the US are Christian, and many of the "Muslim" immigrants who are not refugees are secular and educated) .

Since, as the proverb says, "only Nixon can go to China", it is probable that Trump will allow working illegal immigrants a way to stay, while deporting the others, screening "refugees" a bit closer, and making sure the borders are strengthened. And others think so too....

If his policies allow more job creation, there will be enough jobs for all.

Maybe Hillary should take her husband's advice: It's the economy, stupid.

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The Trouble with revolutions

The meme about those heroic rebels destroying an evil empire is nice, but watch what you ask for....

so is the latest Star Wars an example of how revolutions can go wrong?

(Headsup Instapundit.)

and, of course, everyone knows that this would have happened in the Hunger games, if Katnis was a poorer shot...

this is not the story of the Arab Spring, but an inevitable result of history.

The fall of Rome and the dark ages, the massacres of the Vendee and the reign of terror, the Irish massacres after Englan's "glorious revolution", not to mention Stalin's gulag, Mao's secret famines and red guard destruction of culture, and of course, Cambodian holocaust are all the result of glorious rebellions gone bad.

The Rebels often win because the empire is not ruthless enough...or the empire is already weakened by fighting between factions, famine or disease.

another alternative is worse, as when both sides fight ruthlessly against each other, as happened with the little remembered Taiping Rebellion that ultimately failed, because of the bloodiest civil war in history...

Yes, a few turn out well, but often the "good guys" who win are not ruthless enough to stop the bad guys, and alas they remain bad.

Yes, there are exceptions to the rule: George Washington's honor allowed a chaotic American republic to time to stablize without chaos (although the country had earlier expelled a couple hundred thousand loyalists).Washington also left an example of not staying in power after his term of office was over, allowing others to rule. (which is why a lot of people wonder about Hillary and Jeb).

The best case scenerio could be Augustus Caesar, after his initial takeover, became a bland emperor allowing the Senate to "rule" (in name only, of course.). This worked for him, but now when later emperors became senile (Tiberius) or insane (Caligula, Nero). One wonders what would have happened if he had stepped down? Another civil war? Or a better Rome?

Finally, not all revolutions are bloody: I suspect few in the West realize that communism's fall in Russia and Eastern Europe was a true miracle that could have ended differently...

Stories below the Fold (plus rants)

strategyPage reports that one source of friction between North Korea and South Korea is....junk food: i.e.ChocoPies

August 28, 2015: As if North Korea does not have enough problems one of the most annoying has to do with South Korean snack foods getting into the country and becoming enormously popular. It got so bad that in June 2015 North Korea ordered South Korean companies operating in a special zone in the north to stop bringing in South Korean snacks as rewards for North Korean employees. This follows a 2014 ban of Choco Pies and the subsequent failure of a substitute made in North Korea

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Father Z notes a Breitbart story about a petition to the Pope to stop messing with the marriage laws, signed by half a million people.

The petition, which was started by U.S. conservative group TFP Student Action, calls on the Pope to “clarify the growing confusion among the faithful” at October’s Synod of Bishops and “implores” him to “prevent the very teaching of Jesus Christ from being watered down”. [The issue is confusion, surely.  The confusion is being created especially by Germans.  We shall see if the Holy Father tamps it down.]The group accuses “dissident Catholic pressure groups” of attempting to subvert Church teaching on marriage

This is not about divorce, but about letting unrepentant sinners receive the Eucharist. Since Catholics believe the Eucharist is the body of Christ, it is holy... And having a non believer or unrepentant sinner receive is an insult to God and implies the Eucharist is just a symbol.

Of course, I should talk. Like most pre Vatican II catholics I support the law, but don't always follow it.

which is why I think this essay (by a convert, of course) about the problem of "bad catholics" misses the point:

Evangelical and pentecostal Protestants chose to follow Jesus and are transformed. Back slide and you are in deep doodoo.

Catholics are part of an extended family, and like the younger prodigal son are always welcome home.

the phrase that Catholic means "here comes everyone" is more accurate: We are part of a family, so hey if we stray we are still part of the family.

However, I do have a problem with the "I'm okay You're okay" idea that people are really good, and that they never do anything wrong when they steal/lie/cheat/sleep around/get angry/get high/abuse or neglect their children.... There is a difference between human frailty and sociopathy...

In the USA, being "merciful" to sinners is about letting a gay or divorced person receiving the sacraments without being chaste.

Wonder why they don't notice the other 9 commandments?

Did I mention that the corrupt mayor who ordered the hit on his rival (that killed our nephew) died and not only had a Catholic burial but the Knights of Columbus were there...

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related item: Local cult shuts down streets when Gov't goes after their leaders for looting the till and harassing whistleblowers... it's not about stealing, hey it's about freedom of religion.

and all the crooked politicians who are also under investigation for corruption are backing the church members...

so it's not just Borgia popes, the Vatican bank and Televangelists who do good and get rich...

So should one go after churches, especially when sometimes what looks as fraud is just naive or bad bookkeeping? Ah, and who polices the policeman?

Wheat and tares anyone?



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TeaAtTrianon links to a book by Gareth Russell on the British monarchy...that discusses the ex church that housed Richard the Lionhearted and his parents' graves.

The bright new world of de-Christianised republican France had no use for places like Fontevraud and the damage done was so extensive that even after Louis XVIII and Charles X were restored to the thrones of their forebears, the broken abbey retained the purpose assigned to it by the revolution, a prison, until 1963. To amuse themselves, the souls trapped in terrible conditions within its walls, some poor and victimised, others criminal and malign, vandalised what was left of Fontevraud’s once-splendid interiors. The misérables hacked off the nose of Richard the Lionheart’s effigy and whittled away in boredom at his carved joints.
Today his tomb is a small splash of colour alongside his mother’s, father’s and sister-in-law’s in the vast white emptiness of the disused chapel, 

Couldn't happen to a nicer (/s) bunch of folks...who in their day were called the devil's brood.

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The Saudis are hiring a  million Ugandans to work as maids, drivers, etc...They work cheaper than Pinoys, Indians and Bengalis...

One African bishop mentioned the problem of couple forced to live apart because one has to find a job away from their families, in cities, mine or even overseas, as something that the conference on families needs to discuss...


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Secret societies you never heard of (and/or are ignored on C2c)

includes Katipunan....

The Katipunan was founded on July 7, 1892 with the singular goal of freeing the Philippines from Spanish rule. It was led by Andres Bonafacio, a warehouse clerk from a poor family, and recruitment from the working and middle classes was incredibly fast.

It led to the revolution to overthrow the Spaniards here.


headsup Presurfer:

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Via AnneAlthouse: PeggyNoonan discovers that legal Hispanic immigrants dislike the illegals breaking the law to get in and many support Trump.

Well, when my oldest adopted son who lost his green card status is unable to visit his brother in the US (turned down by the embassy for a simple visitor's visa) it does sort of annoy me that those who follow the rules are punished, but those who break them get away with it.

No easy answer to this: I know too many hardworking people who came illegally when the rules were winked and except for papers do follow the law. They should get amnesty, as was done by Reagan... they are now are caught in the middle when Obama, instead of getting a just amnesty, just decides he will ignore the law.

Destroying rule of law for a higher good? 

This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? 

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ah those nature loving Indians

Victims of human sacrifice at Cahokia were locals.

most were young women with no evidence of violence (suggesting human sacrifice), but another grave were a more mixed group that had been violently killed. (criminals?POWS?)

Given the many massacres in the histories of Europe and in Asia, I am not condemning AmerIndians, I am only pointing out that the pc myth of the peaceful primitive man is bunk.

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Family news

Internet off and on all weekend.

Chano busy at a birthday party in Manila on Sunday, and then helped to take down and bring the tradefair exhibit back home.

Joy and Ruby and I went to Luz for Sunday lunch to get out of the house.

I got my passport in the mail. Joy is going to Manila today to get the visa restamped in the new passport and check if the papers are finished for me to get the survivor part of Lolo's small veterans' pension. I don't get his Pennsylvania state pension since he wasn't married when he stopped that job so didn't have a wife clause in it, for me or for his first wife.

His first wife is ailing, and has to use CPAP for sleep apnea. So I guess she won't be moving in with her son here. Alas, she refuses to leave her house, where she is a hoarder with 30 years of junk. Her daughter and grandsons keep an eye on her, but they are 100 miles away so can't visit daily.

The newest kitten is trying to eat: If they live long enough to eat solid food, they usually live, until they get older and explore and get killed by the dogs.

Me? I am depressed as usual. No decent tv shows, so I listened to audiobooks on my tablet. Lots of them on Librivox, and a lot of newer ones probably illegally posted on youtube... they get removed quickly so you have to check frequently.


Someone downloaded the book about the Himalaya disaster on Youtube, but they seem to have the chapters mixed up.

Anyway, it is a depressing book. The best survivor story? When they had to triage on who to move down to camp, two dying unconscious people were left behind because they just couldn't take everyone. Then one of them, a Texas doc, woke up and walked into camp. Guess they didn't know about Texans. Discussion on how and why from a medical standpoint here.


The most depressing part? No, not the misjudgements or that people just were to exhausted to help, but some Asians who saw the problem and instead of helping those injured and could have been saved just continued to climb to reach the peak. Their explanation? Well, we didn't know them.

that is one problem with Asia, and is implied in religions like Hinduism and Buddhism, even after those beliefs are watered down by modernism. The idea that one has a karma, and deserves what happens to  you is one subtext of reincarnation that is rarely acknowledged by western religious dabblers...(and is alas a subtext of Oprah and other new agers who insist if you think right you can be healthy wealthy and wise...the implication that it is your own fault if you are sick or poor).

True, the saints of these religions do help, and good people are good people all over the world, but Buddha, seeing a poor man die, went up the mountain to find enlightenment: he didn't start a hospital.

Christianity, however, and it's sister religions Judaism and Islam, have the idea to help your neighbor as part of it's essence of serving the deity, so even post-Christians in the west insist on being nice and helping strangers as the essence of ethics.

hackers needed

Anonymous has mainly hacked western government's secrets, but maybe they need to hack a few more secrets to find what is hidden in plain sight.

It was Russian hackers who exposed the fakeness before the climate conference in Copenhagen,but there is another one coming up and one wonders if the fake information will be implemented in treaties.

Congressional vetoes won't stop Obama in this. Like in immigration, he will just implement "regulations" that do the same thing.

the Russians have hacked the Saudis and guess what? They are sponsoring terrorism via their charities. StrategyPage link

so now what we need is Russian or anarchist hackers to find out what will be mandated in the so called "Iran agreement". Belmont club has more.

 The true facts are hidden or selectively emphasized in order to shape a narrative. One of the many examples is the Iran nuclear deal.  Before you declare yourself for or against it, ask  yourself: what does the public know about it?  That question turns out to be surprisingly hard to answer.
The Wall Street Journal notes that much of what the deal is about is hidden in Closed Covenants.  ”The Obama Administration insists there’s nothing secret about the Iran nuclear deal, even as it claims not to have read two crucial side deals Tehran has struck with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). “Confidential agreements, but no secrets” is the way top U.S. negotiator Wendy Sherman describes the deals, which are thought to concern the military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear programs.”

Belmont club also brings out how a partisan judge has stopped the baby body parts videos.  Well, why not? And since affluent white women only have late term abortions when the baby is disabled (e.g. Down's syndrome) and less valuable for parts, I suspect that most of these babies come from minority women...who might be upset that their babies are used for profit.

Again, hackers are needed to hack the videos and put the on Youtube/thepiratebay. And hackers are needed to check if minority women are being pressured into late term abortion so they can make a profit.

a third item in Belmont Club's article is an email from an affluent NGO that already astroturfed local groups asked Hillary to help push abortion on Kenya.

So we didn't need hackers for that email.

But will anonymous hack emails that link "marriage reform" or "maternal child health" (read abortion/population control) with the willingness of the US to defend us against China?

Has a gay ambassador been sent to Viet Nam as a clue that America the wimp has other priorities than defending the sea lanes and oil in the West Philippine seas?

Yet few here expect the US to defend us against Chinese aggression, so Japan and Australia are stepping in to help.

The "gay ambassador" to VietNam story from Drudge brings up a coterie there.

Uh, Gresham's law? one wonders if all these "inclusive" policies are destroying the US military? And discouraging people of faith from working at the State Department (something that bodes ill for understanding the religious impulses that are important in foreign cultures).

Ah, but don't worry,
Distraction alert!

we are now being told the dead lion's brother is protecting his cubs... hello: it doesn't work that way...real story is probably that the dead lion's brother took over his pride and kicked him out, which is why he wandered off the reserve to find food.

and who released that story to begin with? a western funded NGO of course. Locals don't care. As even TIME magazine noted: Locals eat the animals, and poach to make money to support their families.  Allowing hunting is a good alternative for locals to make money and discourage poachers.

So who decided to push it as a narrative? The editors of the MSM, (who also chose to ignore the abover stories) and the SJW who run the two minute hate fest on Twitter/facebook.

Look! a dead Lion!

you can be whatever you want to be

We live in a time when old men can become 19 year old beauty queens, and white people can become black or Indian to get jobs. Just ignore reality: they felt they were really women/ minorities so it is so, and don't you dare suggest otherwise.

So how far should this go?

Literature suggests pretty far:

Dustbury links to a video about an opera based on Kafka's metamorphosis.

A man becomes a cockroach:



it's a nihilistic allegory about the state remaking man into their own image.

and a commenter points to this variation on that theme:



So do we remake ourselves (Jenner), or does a coercive society remake us (Kafka)?

the bad news: reality exists.

The modern versions of Jenner et al suggests you are free to do anything, including discarding those around you. The ultimate result of a society that stresses ME ME ME.

The Kafkaesque version suggests you are an isolated individual vulnerable to forces you cannot stop. But again, it is the story of an isolated individual.

what is missing from these stories?

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

Compare and contrast with District 9, about a fussy bureaucrat who finds himself turning into a prawn-like alien....

This is actually based on a short film about prejudice. many of the opinions expressed were made against refugees from Zimbabwe by native South Africans..so the film is about being a refugee, forced by circumstances to be a stranger in a strange land (this reference, for the clueless, is not Heinlein but Moses).

One thing mentioned by the Pope in his "ecology" encyclical is the importance of human ecology. The same forces of greed and egotism that are destroying nature are destroying the family in the name of freedom. Just as we need to recognize the interconnectedness of nature, we need to recognize the interaction between biology and culture that makes a person find his reason to be by living in a family.  And what he insists is that rich lands should welcome refugees from poor lands or those who flee from wars, he is emphasizing that all men are our family.  The refugees are not faceless enemies, but people with families, some torn from their roots, others migrating with their families in hopes of keeping their families safe, and still others looking for jobs to send money home to keep their families alive..

Kafka and Jenner have it wrong: it's not about ME ME ME, and it's not ME alone vs an all powerful state.

It is about the tiny flower of love and humanity kept alive in the chaos of the modern world.

A picture is worth 1000 words, plus racism

the headline says:

In Abadi meeting, Obama says he is confident Islamic State will be defeated

but the picture accompanying the headline suggests sweetness and light will stop them.

Compare and contrast:

Merkel:

Pool photo by Michael Kappeler

Maria:

yes. Sit down ISIS and teach them DoReMe...

the problem, of course, is that when the choice is between two bad guys, (e.g. Hitler vs Stalin, ISIS vs Iran) who do you chose? The lesser of two evils, of course. Which is why Obama is promoting Iran behind the scenes.

It screws the Saudis, but then there is a big worry that Isis could takes over Saudi, especially if the Saudis buy a couple of bombs from Pakistan.
So Iran just might need their bombs, not against Israel but against their traditional enemy, the Arabs.

-----
short update: I'm not the only one who compared Merkel to Maria...I ran into a MSM article that mentioned the same this afternoon while reading news on my tablet, so no link....
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And here, hiphop is about joy and dancing, but the photo on my rss feed about the latest hip hop riot suggests it is about thuggery:

if you just scroll around the dials here in the Philippines, where most of our channels are Asian editions of US TV, and we get a lot of the tamer MTV video stuff, you would get the idea that all blacks were thugs.

Yes, you get Denzel Washington and black cops, but their body language is "white", whereas the thug heroes in films and videos suggest the opposite, that thugs are the authentic black experience.

So Malaysia and China might object to white entertainers like Madonna, but the reality is that this is a heads up to the money men who run the recording industry, that some countries worry about spreading the idea that promiscuity and thuggery is "chic" among their kids.

And the side effect of the US entertainment industry is the reinforcement of the (taboo to speak about) EastAsian idea that blacks are subhuman (something everyone knows but few talk about).

Where is Robert Townsend when we need him?

not mentioned in the article: Overcrowding at concerts can lead to deaths from too many people pushing each other to get in or running out in panic when fights occur.

But the meme in the obedient US MSM will be to blame the cops.

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

Some opinions on racism:

This racism is less severe in the Philippines, where most of the resentment is against the rich  (i.e. Chinoy) elites (or the elites vs anyone who is an outsider...outsiders are quickly coopted to join the elites of course), but even here skin whitener is a must for girls, who want to look like the Korean stars of the popular telenovels. And here, Americans are liked...Americans are only officially hated by the left, who spout their anti american talking points, yet everyone wants a green card and often have relatives there (our area supplied many Navy recruits in the good old days).

But this unspoken racism needs to be recognized when you talk about Obama vs China is the Anti Chinese racism.

There are a lot of racial antagonisms in Asia, but it is hard to find much on line about them. It is not polite to talk about...

Philippine vs Chinoys, Indonesia and VietNam purging of their Chinese population, Indonesia against the Melasians in Papua, the Rohingye exodus, the Hakka being at the forefront of Chinese capitalism, the Koreans vs non Koreans or mixed blood children who live there in increasing numbers, etc.

in the West Philippine Sea, Japan is offering to help the Philippines...against the Chinese  sealane grab that could strangle air and sea routes to Japan.

So do locals dislike the Japanese, remembering WWII atrocities, or do they really fear China, who if left unopposed will try to grab their ancient lands in Luzon and Vietnam?

Sorrow and joy and communion...rant

Librivox has Tolstoy's "Confessions" there for your sleep inducing listening pleasure.

If that doesn't put you to sleep, try Schopenhauer.

Tolstoy and other great writers kept faith alive during the days when religion was taboo but the old classics were still read on the sly. (there is a part in Soltzenitzen's  "Cancer ward" where the patients discuss one of Tolstoy's books for example.)

One longs for the days of the "Great books" discussions, which are now censored because they were white men, yet multiculturalism actually ignores the great books of other cultures in favor of a marxist nihilistic view of life.

 I mean, why not compare Musashi to Tolstoy? Shakespeare to the Genji? So one wonders where our children will find the great ideas still exist on the sly. Percy Jackson? LOTR? X Men?

One insteresting aside on the Librivox page about the Will to Power:

Schopenhauer squarely faces the fact that existence is fundamentally suffering, but it would be simplistic to label him (as is so often done) as nothing but a pessimist. His affirmation of Art and Love is a transforming principle, having a powerful influence on writers such as Tolstoy. In the end, he chooses the Way of Negation as the path toward peace; by denying our Will, by silencing the many outbreaks of Will in our lives, we can approach the ultimate peace of annihilation that is the theme of the great Vedic philosophy of India, to which Schopenhauer admits his profound debt.

hmm...annihilation as peace....is that the "vedic" Philosophy?
Don't ask me. But I wonder if he noticed how that part about "denying will" actually worked in reality: It translates as telling the poor and the untouchables to just suck it in and you'll find pie in the sky when you die...

which explains why so many in India and Afghanistan turned Muslim, which in it's south Asian form was Sufi, stressing the joy of being one with one's God, (as in the Gita) not the rigid rule oriented Islam that the Saudis are busy exporting. The Saudi exported version of Islam reminds me of Calvinism "converting" all those easy going papists to a rigid theocracy, while destroying all who stood in their way. What is needed in Islam is a counterreformation...
the president of Egypt is trying to do this (Cairo is a center for Islamic scholarship) but one does not know if he will succeed.

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Related item: Get Religion and David Warren both comment on the touchy feely "god loves you" churches that then wonder why they don't keep their members.

GR quotes a conservativeblogger about this

This is the problem with Christianity in this country. Not just inside our church buildings, but everywhere. It often has no edge, no depth. No sense of its own ancient and epic history. There is no sacredness to it. No pain. No beauty. No reverence. Or I should say Christianity has all of those things, fundamentally and totally, but many modern Christians in every denomination have spent many years trying to blunt them or bury them under a thousand layers of icing and whipped cream and apathy.

it's not the joyful part that is the problem. It is the superficiality of it.

CanadianBloggerDavid Warren frequently post about the problem and today's lecture is about how the traditional liturgy is best when it sees the whole, and not just in a linear fashion.

“traditional” (i.e. genuine) Catholic worship, the Mass serves as a kind of moving eye, through the whole scriptural heritage, casting light into its parts through the turning seasons. ... it adds a specifically divine, extra-temporal dimension to that reading, through the use of time in a grand circuit: beginning where we end, and ending at the beginning, and unfolding from any point at all. The Lord who calls us is not confined to this arrow of time, calling us as much from past and future as from the present moment.

Ah, but is the Latin mass better for non European culture? That has yet to be proven. Maybe the real problem is lack of reverence in modern religion, and too often I am left feeling as an outsider hanging on my my fingernails in the midst of a touchy feely crowd who sing about their love for everyone else but never bother to actually get to know or to help their neighbors in a practical manner as the old fashioned Catholic/Baptist/Lutheran ladies usually did in the good old days.

so why go to church at all? To meet Jesus one to one by receiving him in communion...

One is reminded of Tolkien's reasons:

“Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament. . . . There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth...

Also I can recommend this as an exercise (alas! only too easy to find opportunity for): make your Communion in circumstances that affront your taste. Choose a snuffling or gabbling priest or a proud and vulgar friar; and a church full of the usual bourgeois crowd, ill-behaved children—from those who yell to those products of Catholic schools who the moment the tabernacle is opened sit back and yawn—open-necked and dirty youths, women in trousers and often with hair both unkempt and uncovered. Go to Communion with them (and pray for them).
"It will be just the same (or better than that) as a mass said beautifully by a visibly holy man, and shared by a few devout and decorous people.

"It could not be worse than the mess of the feeding of the Five Thousand—after which our Lord propounded the feeding that was to come.”

My main complaint on the "modern" touchy feely churches is that they ignore the sacrament, so most "modern" catholics don't even recognize Jesus is met there.

which is one of the real problems of the much needed but too superficial charismatic types of worship that are spreading around the globe: it's about making people feel good, not about meeting Jesus in the trenches of life.

of course, it's easier to just have the kids sing and do liturgical dance like my Granddaughter does every weekend at her pentecostal church...and then have the kids do "outreach" to teach Jesus to those wise old Catholic ladies in the poor villages who smile at the youngsters and then go back to placing sampagita fronds on their Mama Mary statues. The old ladies see Jesus and Mary as part of their family. Mary lost a son, so she understands you when you mourn. And Jesus? Well, you learn about Jesus via stories (aka parables) and fiestas...

 but they can't quote scripture (usually out of context) to explain this logically, so they are considered pagans who need to be "converted" to the superficial get happy pentecostal churches where there is no place for sorrow, for deep joy, or even knowing that Jesus was a man like us and liked a SanMig once in awhile.

Sigh.

Yes, I'm feeling nasty again.

the good news? Pedialyte cures hangovers.
(viaInstapundit)

Rant of the day: Would Jesus defend himself?

Do reporters ignore the truth and slant stories to fit the narrative?

DUH.

It’s absolutely true that we don’t have a wave of outright fabrication-out-of-whole-cloth. But what we have is much worse. We have a tsunami of inaccuracy that is generally tolerated, embraced and even celebrated so long as it serves the right political and cultural goals.

The meme this year is the war on women, so you search out a story that fits the narrative, and bump into a hysterical woman who is exaggerating to get attention. Duh. Ironically, the story was debunked by the local staff of the WaPost (not the national staff). In other words, if the enterprising reporter had picked on the Univ Alabama etc. she would have gotten away with it because no one would have read the investigation in the small local papers.

Presumably the next meme will be "torture".

Duh.

If you didn't know this was going on, you live in Cloud Cuckoo land. It keeps you safe, but it's not PC to say this. Now that the threats are being ignored in the news, it is open season on the ones who bent the law to keep you safe.

Expect this report to be used to bash Republicans (without noting that President Obama doesn't allow the capture and torture of suspected terrorists: he merely kills the bad guys with drones instead). True pacifists know this, and complain.

How can you tell a true pacifist from a fake one? If they only bash the US and the west, they are fake.

War is hell, as one General said, and the dirty little secret is that often trying to make wars more humane merely leads to the next war because you didn't kill enough bad guys, so they regroup and attack again.

Threats continue even when they aren't in the news.

We are expecting the Pope to visit, meaning that Manila will shut down. It will be more of a crowd problem than the annual "Black Nazarene" procession or the frequent Iglesia NiCristo or ElShaddai rallies which attract one million plus members.

So will the terrorists strike?

So what does this have to do with torture?

Well, When JP2 visited the Philippines in the early 1990's, a hotplate blew up and caused a fire, and the local firemen and cops noted bomb making equipment. The main guy escaped, but one of his minions was caught and interrogated, and revealed two plans: One, to bomb the Pope when he traveled through the crowded Manila streets, and Two: early plans to hijack several airplanes and use them as bombs.

As a result of the "enhanced interrogation", the Pope was helicoptered to the venue to say mass, and he remained safe. The US however ignored the second "headsup" because it was obtained by torture and sounded too crazy to be true.

No, as a Christian, I don't support enhanced interrogation, but know that if I knew lives were at stake, I might do it.

 It's nice to claim one is a pacifist while living in a safe suburban enclave in the US, has never faced war or violence at first hand, so you can feel self righteous without facing the cost or seeing the casualties of your righteousness.

So go ahead and feel self righteous blocking traffic with your "die ins", but could I ask you, where are you on Friday night when the casualties of these thugs (both innocent and not so innocent) are brought into the emergency rooms?

The dirty little secret is that bad guys exist. And the latest meme by Obama's minions to destroy police morale by painting police as evil racists will lead to police being less willing to put their lives on the line protecting you, and thus more innocent people killed in the gang wars... and more ordinary Americans buying guns to defend themselves because the police will be seen as too timid and ineffective to do so.

What would Jesus do?

No, Jesus didn't have a weapon, but Peter did, a sword, presumably for safety when they traveled on the isolated parts of the Jericho road. And Peter obviously knew how to use it, taking off the ear of one who came to arrest Jesus, (who then said put it away because those arresting were authorities, not bandits).

Percy Jackson and the problem of PC novels

from FT: best literature/book review sites.

don't ask me. The last book I read was Percy Jackson (Ruby bought the series).

Actually, usually I find novels boring: when I peruse the latest stuff, they all seem to be "belly button gazing" stuff about the third sex's problems, or similar pc dilemmas by intelligent yuppies, who all think and act like NYCity elites (even if they are illiterate Mexican immigrants living in Great Bend).

Yes, people do act that way but my point is that the novels often assume that everyone acts that way: few give insight into the problem that people actually think and act differently, and that people from other times and culture really do make different assumptions about the very basic things of life.

So an elite can ask "what's wrong with Kansas" without recognizing that he is making basic cultural assumptions of people living as isolated individuals who rely on government in times of trouble, whereas in Kansas, if you need gas money or money to buy food until the end of the month, you ask your relative or neighbor to lend you money, or go to the church food pantry. They are enmeshed in a web of relationship" s to sustain them in times of troubles.

And I find it amusing that new data shows a lot of "20 somethings" are living with their parents now because there are no good jobs. Forget Obama's "julia" or the "girls" of MTV: think the Waltons.

Historical novels sometimes get these things right (and sometimes wrong: The Other Boleyn sister ignores that her brother was bisexual and Anne well versed in the pregnancy sparing sexual habits of the French courts, but that by the time she was supposed to commit incest, she had become a good protestant and would never have done such a thing. The kid she miscarried was probably from Henry's giving her syphillis, something that probably spared Elizabeth, but that's another story altogether).

You can learn a lot of stuff from historical novels, but when they think and act like yuppies, I am ready to scream. Yet how do we overcome the ability for modern readers to understand what's going on?

Well, one way is to be a very very good writer: Kristin Lavransdatter is an example.

Another way is to have a "mediating" character, who thinks like a modern but can explain and help you understand the other people who seem to be thinking a bit differently.

Frodo Baggins is one example of this, as is the main character in the Angelique series (of all places).

This goes too for Percy Jackson:  Percy thinks and acts like the nice Jewish boys in my neighborhood in the US (although the gods act like the ones portrayed by Homer, which pleased me, and not like New Yorkers).

Well, that's one way for kids to learn about the greek gods and heroes.

Random stuff below the fold plus rants

bookmarked for later reading


The Economic crisis for Dummies. BBC article here.

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Michael Martinez notes that Peter Jackson is making the Hobbit from the Dwarves point of view, and notes that they do indeed have "magic": i.e. technological ability. In Tolkien's world, magic is using one's powers to manipulate the environment...

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What was America's largest battle? No, not the Bulge but the Meuse Argonne....

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The gentle anchoress is worried about the Zeitgeist police, and calls Piers Morgan their Torquemada.

The same government that tried to dictate to the churches whom they must call “minister”, the same government that is trying to define for people the limits of their own religious consciences and their free exercise of religion, will — particularly through the courts, as time goes by and current seats are vacated — find in favor of plaintiff couples arguing that they have a “right” to a sacrament or that their marriages aren’t working because they have been denied blessings and counselings available to other couples. Or there will be another argument, but the attempts to intrude on the churches will be made, and past cases suggest that when they are made, sexual orientation and license trumps religious freedom:

the getreligion essay she refers to in her blogpost is here.

"get religion"blog gets it's name from the phrase: The MSM just doesn't get religion. Given the faux pas of the NYTimes reporter not understanding the basic dogma of Christianity celebrated in Easter, (and for layers of fact checkers and editors missing it too) one must agree they need more diversity in their staff..
 
I always supported gay marriage, when it was about helping people with same sex attraction normalizing their lifestyle...and encouraging them to stop the "gay lifestyle" that spreads disease on many levels.

but alas according to the press reports, it seems actually to be about pushing a gender free world where the sex has no moral meaning and prosecuting those who say otherwise. And those with this agenda know the real enemy: the church, who insists sex is holy in marriage, that children are a blessing not a burden, and that god didn't make a mistake when she made them "male and female"...

How bad is it? When I see progressives suggest that those opposing gay marriage should shut up, keep "religion" out of society, or even leave the country, it makes me shudder.
------------------------------

A similar meme is souring the gun control debate: 
white men are the big problem...Huh? , the National Science foundation is giving close to a million dollars of grant money to two women who can't do a simple google to find the CDC statistics.

But a few reporters dare to notice the real problem of too many guns in the hands of too many people who shouldn't have them, and that most of the victims and shooters are from minority families,.as this article from CNN discusses.

also not being discussed except on far right wing blogs: maybe they should start enforcing the gun laws that are already on the books before making new laws?
Criminals don't obey laws:  How many women have been killed despite restraining orders?

and I am wondering why only the white school shooter's vitims are usually mentioned: presumably my patients in Red Lake don't even deserve a mention either (and that shooter stole the rifle from his grandfather, a policeman, so a gun law wouldn't have prevented that)...

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a sixty year old pipeline bursts in Arkansas, and instead of calling for repairing the infrastructure and making sure inspections are being done properly, NatGeo uses the story to point out that the Keystone pipeline could also cause a major leak (presumably in 2073)

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another reason the end of the world is nigh: abort your kid, freeze her eggs so that you can have a biologically related baby when you are old and infertile.

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Hope he has a bullet proof vest
Pope to review Vatican bank and curia.

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Funerals of the future: Freeze Dried corpses.

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If you think the numerous genders of the PC are complicated, try being a microbe with seven genders.

headsup Davebarry who comments:

ITS FACEBOOK RELATIONSHIP STATUS IS 'COMPLICATED'

Spin Spin Spin *(plus rants). Ignore please

http://youtu.be/jQmc-eeNXCU

yup propaganda...

..I  suspect whatever caused the back pain was the cause of the sepsis: and have written about the differential diagnosis on my rant blog...however, one should note that the docs followed  the AAFP guidelines for PROM

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We are expecting similar propaganda here since the RH bill is now suddenly back in the news.It is about population control, not maternal child health, and will fine medical personnel and employers if they don't push the pill or dare to advise against it. THAT should improve the ability to recruit Catholic and Muslim midwives for isolate rural areas (not)...

Note: 30 percent give birth without a trained attendant,...and folks die here all the time because they can't afford antibiotics or high blood pressure medicine...

 My solution? Village Pill ladies, which worked for us in Zimbabwe and worked wonders in Bangladesh...and if the Catholics wants NFP to be used, they can teach it at every parish...

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And the schools here are now pushing promiscuity under the guise of "sex ed", using the "huge increase in the rate of HIV" to justify it...

The Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS or UNAIDS has noted that while elsewhere HIV/AIDS growth rates have declined, the Philippines and Bangladesh have posted at least 25% increase from 2001 to 2009 (UNAIDS 2011).

25% growth? Gasp! Except...they are lying with statistics.

Wikipedia reports that the Philippines had 10,600 cases...since many cases are unreported, it's probably double that...yet Thailand has a  million cases of HIV and is cited as a "success story"...:( is it the culture or the Tuli?  check map to see differences..)

The absolute numbers remain low, and the increase is mainly in our OFW and local gays who cruise in Manila...

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Speaking of hate: The pope now has a twitter account, but the haters have already gotten busy filling it with the usual hate.

and GetReligion notes the cheerleading by the press to push gay marriage, but that they never bother to discuss what marriage, gender, or sexuality means, and how imposing a new morality could affect society.

The press pretends it's only about gays, but it's really about Julia, a single isolated woman who gets through life with government supplying her every need, not relying on family or spouse. For when you destroy all intermediate institutions such as family and churches, your only hope is the Leviathan..

And it will result in churches that support self control as being seen as hate speech, never mind that Confucius said the same thing.
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WMD? What WMD? If Hillary says it, it must be true.

You mean some of those trucks seen carrying supplies from Saddam to Syria before the Iraq war might have been carrying WMD's?

And is the US secretly arming the rebels?  Fox asked that six weeks ago, but never  mind, only racists raise such questions that go against this official claim:

Up to now, the United States has opposed military intervention or providing arms support to Syria's rebels for fear of further militarizing a conflict...

 As StrategyPage points out: 700 thousand refugees and counting, and if Assad goes, the next civil war will be the locals vs the radicals, whose ranks include many who are al queda linked foreigners experienced in war.

and I had to laugh: Only Ralph Nader is honest enough to notice that Obama is just as bad as Bush when it comes to war.

No, I don't agree with him, but at least he is honest about being anti war: The rest of those who made a frenzy against Bush were merely posturing for political reasons....
 
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The UK Mail has had a few articles about the overuse of the Liverpool pathway, (which was originally devised to be used for patients in pain with terminal cancer) and the UKMail notes they are now using the "protocol" to kill handicapped infants..

The usual sardonic Dustbury says:

Medical practitioners being fond of cutesy acronyms and such, I suggest something like Seems Nearly Unhealthy: Finalize (SNUF).

Well, why not? The medical rationing board/death panel in the UK is named (I kid you not) NICE...

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a little less dismal news is in the papers too:

Guess who is pregnant?

Best wishes to her and the family.

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some watching the hobbit complained of dizzy spells.

I felt the same way the first time I watched an IMax movie...it felt like I was in a car moving with the camera...so I wonder: Is it the increase frame rate to blame, or because it was IMax?

So take a Meclizine before viewing if you are prone to motion sickness.
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Ranting about Stuff below the fold

You might be reading warm and fuzzy stories of this Jailed liberal and attractive American woman who was pardoned and allowed to visit home.

Ghost in the story:

Her parole sparked anger in Peru, still reeling from its 20-year conflict which ended in 2000 after some 70,000 lives were lost. Headlines across the country labeled her a “terrorist.”

Nah, most of those massacred horribly were merely defenseless Peruvian peasants and don't count, whereas the woman was a liberal who believed in the revolution, (so she is a heroine?)

as this BBC podcast notes: the term is not heroine but "useful idiot"

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In contrast: Speaking truth to power: Vaclav Havel's revolution.

“Living within the truth,” according to Havel, is an inherently moral enterprise. It requires sacrifice, which presupposes a “sense of responsibility” for others — a belief in love, friendship and compassion. In the company of John Paul II and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Havel believed that political renewal starts in moral and personal renewal. In one letter from prison he wrote, “But who should begin? Who should break this vicious circle? The only possible place to begin is with myself. . . . Whether all is really lost or not depends entirely on whether or not I am lost.”

Ghost in the article: Havel was secular, and the revolution didn't start in his country, but in Poland, spurred on by a pesky bishop who built a church in the Marxist paradise of Nowo Huta and backed Solidarity...which is why the story tends to be ignored.
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Should scientist publish a "how to make Captain Trips" type articles in scientific journals?

The NYTimes says no.

Ghost in the story: A lot of folks already know how to do it.
Second ghost in the story: Anyone using birdflu or other infectious disease to kill their enemies would end up dead themselves. That's why anthrax, which is not spread person to person, is a better candidate for bioterror...

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NGO's pushing social changes in the third world: ignore the real problems of poor countries and let's push for gay rights and aborting babies.

Yup. sounds like the Philippines. and Obama is linking these PC items with foreign aid...

No trained birth attendents for one third of the births, but never mind...

The decrease in the birth rate here suggests that the wholistic approach (using prolonged breast feeding, NFP (used by 20 percent of the population), and including using the pill or Depo, which are already used by one third of the population, and used by Catholics for medical reasons) is working...the average number of children is now 3, not 6 as in the 1960's....and falling...

You need a wholistic approach, where the object is not population control but healthy moms and healthy children. This means midwives in rural areas (who don't ask for extra "gifts" to deliver your baby), well child clinics, protein supplements, and encouraging prolonged breast feeding...there are a lot of poor kids in this area with the reddish hair of mild protein malnutrition...

For example, the huge decrease in maternal deaths in Afghanistan is a result of this multipronged approach...

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Feminists are angry they feel compelled to care for their mothers.

Why did we fight so hard for sexual liberation, birth control and abortion rights, new models of childbirth, respect in the workplace and child care — only to become demure good girls in middle and old age?

Yeah, they want the government to do it all so they aren't burdened...If you don't see where this is going, you haven't been paying attention.

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Rants of the day

It's housecleaning day, so bookmarked for later reading:

To paraphrase HOTWp1

It's good to be the king....

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Remember Blazing Saddles?

Bart: [low voice] Hold it! Next man makes a move, the n...... gets it!
Olson Johnson: Hold it, men. He's not bluffing.
Dr. Sam Johnson: Listen to him, men. He's just crazy enough to do it!

well in this case, it's :"Don't attack the dictator or Israel gets it...
never mind that a major war would be suicidal...
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"I am woman hear me roar.
Or maybe hear me meow;
Hillary's stuck in the puffy pink world of women's issues.

and with war breaking out in North Africa, the Middle East, Pakistan, and the China sea, where is our Sec't of State taking care of business? She's visiting the hotspot of the world,( Hungary !)

and gets a lecture from their president.

“Indebtedness, whether of households or entire countries, clearly limits freedoms,” Orban said. He borrowed the words of President John Adams, who said there are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation — by the sword and by debt.

when asked about the real news, she has to parrot the party line: telling us how "the Obama administration" is making nice with terrorists.
notice the rest of the article quotes other folks...

Earth To Hillary:

QUIT and run against Obama. He's got you sidelined doing scut work while he's screwing up the world.

Rant stuff

Links to my rants at Bloggernews:

• First the lipstick, now mocking the disabled., 13 Sep 2008

• Chinese Babies dying from contaminated formula (Same “contamination” that was in the dogfood last year)., 12 Sep 2008

• The Military and Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, Part II, 12 Sep 2008

• The Military and Suicides, Part One: Spinning statistics, 10 Sep 2008

• Lipstick on a Pig? Excuse me?, 10 Sep 2008

• Mom! They Banned Kenny!, 09 Sep 2008

• Questions raised about that “cancer vaccine”, 08 Sep 2008

• I Was Sick and You Visited Me, 07 Sep 2008

• Cholera stalks Harare, 06 Sep 2008

• The Problem with Plastics, 04 Sep 2008

• Eskimos, Pinoys, Palin, and Energy, 04 Sep 2008

• Mugabe “allows” NGO’s to feed his people—maybe, 02 Sep 2008