hacking everything but the election

China is the backstory of how a corrupt government allowed the release of  Covid, and is now using the marketing of an partially tested covid vaccine in order to be able to pressure poorer countries to cooperate with them.

But the covid epidemic led to the shutdowns, (and an unstable world due to a world wide recession).

and China of course will offer them "aid" by giving them loans to help recover their economies (and if they can't pay the loan back, hey no problem: China will accept your natural resources instead of money).

But we Pinoys know about all of this.

But the US MSM seems a bit naive about China's motives.

Ah but where are the China stories when it comes to  the US election of a man whose son was bribed by China, (Place conspiracy theory here).

So when I read the latest hack of US Government one does wonder

that Houston Chron story points their fingers at China.

Ah, but the AFP story in the local PhilInquirer story has a different take: It was by Russian hackers "according to a spokesperson for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency".

So why don't I trust that story? Because the same story mentions these Russian hackers spied on US gov't sites during the Obama administration (which is probably true), but the story doesn't mention that it was China who hacked the OPM files of myself and a million other gov't and military employees, (italics mine)... so if they got this wrong, it makes me wonder if the reporter is just ignorant, or trying to "gaslight" their readers.

there is a cyber war out there, and it's not just government spies, but hackers seeking profit: other major black hat hackers are Russian gangsters, North Koreans ransom ware and Iranians.

The AFP story quotes an organization that is listed under Homeland security /HHS

and here is their Recent threat list

number one on that list: the

 Solar Wind corporation:

Solar Winds Security Advisory

FireEye Advisory: Highly Evasive Attacker Leverages SolarWinds Supply Chain to Compromise Multiple Global Victims With SUNBURST Backdoor 

FireEye GitHub page: Sunburst Countermeasures

No, I don't know what all this means.

  Gateway pundit article Dec 14 on the FBI raid against their headquarters.

aand more about Chinese spying: From John Bachelor:

U.S. Department of Justice among others announced 23 criminal charges (Financial Fraud, Money Laundering, Conspiracy to Defraud the United States, Theft of Trade Secret Technology and Sanctions Violations, etc.) against Huawei & its CFO Wanzhou Meng “The government of China is engaged in espionage overseas, directed through diverse methods via the Ministry of State Security, the United Front Work Department, and People's Liberation Army as well as their numerous front organizations and state-owned enterprises.”

Cleo Paskal, @CleoPaskal, non-resident senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and Gordon Chang, @GordonGChang,Daily Beast, in re:: People have looked at this list for months, consider it credible.

Brave Chinese men and women have risked their lives to release the 1.95 million names of mostly Shanghainese Communist Party names, out of 92 million total membership. We’ve never had anything else like this. Gobsmacked. Consistent and logical with what’s going on in China.

Most Chinese university students re invited to join the Party, which controls all your opportunities—who you can be. Published also in Australia: brave to do that.

We’re entering a new era. They believe they're in charge of the universe. List of well-known people. Stunning that someone actually released this. We see that there are CCP cells in major US corporations. What’s really news is that there are cells in consulates—Australia, UK, and US.

Bok: Political Warfareon how China has been doing this for ever so long, All the allies need to run a training program for our dips before they go to China; this is pervasive.

New Zealand thinks that when push comes to shove, US Marines will come and save them. Recall Anne-Marie Brady. Excellent people are being tormented at the behest of the CCP, jeopardizing our entire security architecture. https://www.foxnews.com/world/leaked-chinese-communist-party-records-show-ccp-members-employed

 

This Reuters article from  August discusses how China was targeting the 2020 US election. 

However, a closer look at the article shows it is gaslighting you, and repeats the lie that Russia interfered for Trumpieboy in the 2016 election and plans to interfere again, without mentioning that their interference in 2016 was ads for both sides and that the conspiracy theory about this interference was fake news: it was hatched by Hillary with Obama and the CIA's advice.

But did China interfere with the 2020 election?

Dept AG Rosen gave a speech about this worry back in August noting that outside interference in US elections is nothing new, but with cyberwar abilities that this threat has escalated. 

And it says a lot about our Silicon valley Lords that when he tweeted a link to that speech recently, that Twitter said it wasn't true.

Yes, the same Twitter censors who removed the tweets of Chinese dissidents before the Tiannemen Square anniversary (NYTimes June 2019) and then claimed it was not Chinese government interference but they accidentally removed the tweets because it was identified as spam. 

SHANGHAI — Three days before the most sensitive political anniversary on the Chinese calendar, Twitter suspended the accounts of Chinese political commentators in what it said was an accident. The move showed starkly the global political ramifications of Silicon Valley slip-ups

but the censorship of stories before the election by the MSM and other social media sites who labled any claim about Biden's son's connections with China as untrue make one wonder...

especially when one finds out that the FBI had Hunter's computer for over a year, and that it showed links not just with China but with the Ukraine when Trumpieboy was impeached for asking the Ukraine to check out the story. Uh, why didn't the FBI say anything back then? Maybe the same reason we are just now hearing they have Seth  Rich's computer.

 and the gas lighting continues: And the silence about the "Fang Fang" story suggests it's not just Biden's scandals being kept quiet to get rid Trumpieboy, but a covert censorship of negative China stories by big media...

 reminds me of Chomsky's complaints about greedy capitalist media censoring stories, except in this case it is media with links to China that wants them as a market so is biasing news in their favor.

so fast forward to the election where Trumpieboy's objections via tweet are being called absurd and a lie.

Well, it's a long tried and true custom by corrupt city political machines of both parties to include  illegal voters (dead, underage,non citizen), stuffing the ballot box (and double voting), throwing out ballots to make sure your candidate wins, etc.

heck we see this in the Philippines all the time ("hello Garci") and we also know about CIA distortion of our elections by bribes and by manipulating or having their frontmen buy news organizations. 

but what has changed this time is that there is a lot of suspicion out there about computer shennanigans in the last US election that are "HUGE": but the MSM refuses to cover these allegations seriously, or denies them without evidence to the contrary.

Gateway Pundit article from Nov 12 lists questions about the election that any decent news organization should have started checking, but somehow did not.

So the next time you read the conspiracy theories by Trumpieboy that China rigged and helped Biden steal the election (i.e. maybe not Biden cooperating but because China knows Biden won't be as hostile against them as Trump), just ignore the story and move on, folks, nothing going on here.

uh oh: Gateway pundit reports that Solar wind has been raided by the FBI...

Last night the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a rare Emergency Directive 21-01, in response to a KNOWN COMPROMISE involving SolarWinds Orion products.

This was only the fifth Emergency Directive issued by CISA under the authorities granted by Congress in the Cybersecurity Act of 2015.

CISA reported a breach of the SolarWinds Orion products.

This Emergency Directive called on all federal civilian agencies to review their networks for indicators of compromise and disconnect or power down SolarWinds Orion products immediately.

00:2001:35

So guess who uses SolarWinds?

Dominion Voting Systems uses SolarWinds products.
It’s right there on their website.

 BREAKING BOMBSHELL: MI Judge Grants Attorney Matt DePerno Permission To RELEASE Results Of Forensic Examination On 16 Dominion Voting Machines In Antrim Co. 

that last story can also be found on the PJMedia site LINK: 

The Antrim County, Mich., forensics report undertaken by Allied Security Operations Group was released to the public on Monday by order of a Michigan judge. The report concluded that “the Dominion Voting System is intentionally and purposefully designed with inherent errors to create systemic fraud and influence election results” and “the results of the Antrim County 2020 election are not certifiable.”

 

h< 

Huh? You mean there might be something behind Trumpieboy's conspiracy theories? Who wudda thot?

 

I am sorry to find all this news on "conspiracy sites" but one problem is that the MSM not only hides a lot of stories but asks you to pay for the stories, so I have to find them on secondary sites.

?

update

ConservativeTreehouse explains the links between the SolarWind raid and huge hacking of government computers.

another summary at the Spectator.

======

Austin Bay discusses the newest concept of Robo ships (but doesn't discuss if they could be hacked by China).

But one reason I link is because the article also mentions China's aggression in the West Philippine sea: it's aim is not just the Philippines.

. Gaucher told the conference, "I want to be able to put an unmanned surface ship inside the adversary's denied areas." His word choice sent a message. China boasts that it can and will deny the U.S. military access to the South China Sea. That is China's operational intent. Its strategic intent is political control of the region and, I think, control of Singapore.

 

again I refer you to the map of the sea-lanes:

if the Chinese takeover of the West Philippine Sea means making shipping to Japan and Korea and Siberia more expensive because the ships would have to detour to the west of Luzon, the takeover of Singapore (which is often called the "fourth China" because of it's large Chinese population) would essentially cut off traffic, which would have to bypass through Indonesia.

 LINK.

Link 2:

The Malacca Strait is a narrow 550 miles and is the shortest route between the Pacific and Indian oceans. It links major Asian economies such as India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, China, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. The Strait of Malacca is the world’s second-busiest waterway, with more than 83,000 vessels traveling this route each year.

again, a lot of this is technical and outside my area of expertise. But a lot of modern shipping is via cargo ships, which need a deeper sea. I remember working in Liberia when our hospital would evacuate sailors off of huge tanker ships that had to go around the Horn of Africa because the Suez canal wasn't large enough for them... and because the (artificial) port of Monrovia was also too small, it meant that we had to take a tug boat out to the open ocean to do the evacuation. (but that's another story for another day).

.

Economic damage worse than Covid

Joy is upset because the quarantine and restrictions have been restarted here for Christmas season, and will be especially strict in some rural areas near here. It may affect our ability to deliver rice, and hinder farmers from working with the "second harvest" rice fields.

the only way it affects me is that I still can't go into a church or mall, but now I have to use both a mask and a face-shield when I walk the dogs outside. DUH.

This Inquirer editorial summarizes the economic damage, mainly due to the quarantine and lay off of many workers.

The World Bank has estimated that the health crisis will make 2.7 million more Filipinos poor this year as a result of a record decline in the Philippines’ economic output as measured by the gross domestic product (GDP). The multilateral agency expects Philippine GDP to shrink by 8.1 percent in 2020,

and this article notes 300 thousand OFW have returned home: Many work in service type jobs, i.e. restaurants, hotels, maids etc. Many of these OFW support extended families, so the damage is worse than the number suggests.

and this article notes what I am seeing; lots of people dying at home from various diseases, probably not covid but many were never tested because they can't afford a physician or are unwilling to risk seeing one. 

Indeed, when I was hit with a bad case of Bronchitis and wheezing a couple weeks ago, I didn't go to the hospital or get checked but merely went on Zithromax and prednisone and even used my inhaler. I wonder if that was covid or just a chest cold. But never mind: like Lolo I prefer to die at home if I get sick, and like most docs I don't want to be put on a respirator or get CPR. I have made my will out when the epidemic hit in February, so no problem.

This StrategyPage article is a bit sarcastic over the Covid hysteria in the USA, noting it is not much worse than the Asian flu epidemic of the 1950s (which was pretty bad.).

For example, the 1957/58 Asian Flu (H2N2) killed at least 116,000 Americans. Adjusted for larger current population, that comes to 223,000 in 2020 and a worldwide total over two million. Covid19 deaths so far are 1.6 million worldwide.

and they then compare it to the 1918 Spanish flu, which killed 100 times as many people, and killed mainly young healthy people, unlike Covid, which mainly kills the old and chronically ill. 

so why not merely quarantine the vulnerable and allow normal, low risk people to work: as was done in previous epidemics?

And the author sarcastically says the overreaction is because those in charge of the governments are over 60 and at risk:

Most of the politicians and senior officials worldwide are older than 60 and feared covid19 more than the general population...Despite that growing popular anger, elderly military and political leaders in many nations saw covid19 as a personal threat.

The younger population did not and that has been generating a lot of friction or, in many parts of the world, ignoring the quarantine demands in order to avoid starvation and sliding into extreme poverty..

That could be called "ageism" bias, but since the writing style of the article suggests that the writer is the sardonic Jim Dunnigan, who last time I looked was over age 70, I suspect what he writes is true.

the latest miracle drug is Ivermectin, used to treat parasites in dogs.

Hmm...maybe when I got sick I should have self dosed myself with Papadog's mange medicine.

Oh well, Give them a week and they'll find problems with it, but never mind. But here is the latest news.

and the state of the bad science and panic about minor side effects can be seen in this article about UV light: cautions against it's use because of sunburn damage? Lack of information? But there are studies showing it works...Give me a break: the studies could have been done and certified by now.

In the meanwhile, here in the Philippines, the gov't is busy borrowing lots of money to buy vaccines: and is buying a lot of the Chinese made vaccine because it is available, even though many are skeptical about China whose products are notorious for being shoddy, and skeptical about the drug companies who have bribed officials in the past to get their products used.

the government is trying to discourage Christmas family get togethers and stop people from traveling home from the cities, which have a lot of viral cases, to rural areas that are not as badly hit.

 They also are trying to discourage attendance at the Simbang Gabi masses, nine days of early morning mass before Christmas. Usually families attend, and lots of young folks go too: And afterward folks often get food from restaurants or kiosks, reinforcing the family ties in this season (and the young folks all congregate in the plaza together to socialize) all forbidden now, but never mind.

Simbang Gabi: a commercial from a few years ago;

...

and today:

vaccine news

Covid Trivia

 the allergy to the British vaccine has gotten a lot of press: but the DOH here reminds folks that that can happen with any vaccine. 

But the part about the Sputnik vaccine is new to me: Reuters:

has details. it seems to be saying don't over do the alcohol so your immune system works. as for the Chinese vaccine, the DOH says they are willing to buy it, but the comments suggest folks might not go along with that plan.

China: using covid vaccine in their war vs ocean ecology

Living here in the Philippines, we are aware of how the ecosystem of the West Philippine sea was harmed by China digging up the seabed to build artificial islands, threatening local fishermen, overfishing and stealing rare endangered species, and of course potentially blocking the main sea route to Korea and Japan (and threatening Luzon and Palawan which are nearby). 

And now they are pushing in the area of Benham rise, LINK2 on the other side of Luzon, which which would let them block another sea route, even to be able to stop or harass trade and fishing by the local Filipinos there.

But it's not just the Philippines whose fishermen are being harassed and fishing grounds being destroyed by unregulated fishing.

There were also news reports of Chinese fishermen poaching off the coast of Indonesia, and even the coast of South America, and the resulting push back by these countries.

Well, well, well.

None of these stories got a lot of publicity in the US MSM of course.

To them, China is good and it's sins must be overlooked, mainly because they hate Trump, 

Obama pressured the Philippines not to stop China's construction destruction in building their islands nearby, but Trumpieboy dared to throw down the gauntlet and encourage local countries to join in opposing Chinese aggression in the area.

StrategyPage has a long essay on China's policy to overfish and destroy the ocean ecosystem all over the place... SE Asia, and also South America... Lots of information for those interested in ecological problems so read the whole thing.

China has revealed that it plans to have nearly 3,000 ocean-going fishing trawlers operational by 2021. China does not officially reveal much about its growing fishing fleet but more and more foreign countries, as far away as South America, report hundreds of Chinese trawlers showing up just outside, or are caught inside, the local EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone).

the Indonesians are very angry at this and have actually fired on some of these ships.

But China has ways to push back on those who oppose their aggressive moves, as Australia has discovered . And smaller countries are more vulnerable to these threats of trade boycotts and pressure to ignore their aggression in the name of getting trade deals.

Enter Covid; from AsiaNews.it: The (partially tested) Chinese vaccine is being offered to Indonesia. 

A million doses of the vaccine have already been delivered to Indonesia. Here, the Chinese vaccine is manufactured by state-owned PT Bio Farma at its plant in Bandung (West Java). The company has already received enough material to make 45 million doses of Sinovac.

However, the two companies have failed so far to reach the same evaluation of the vaccine’s effectiveness. Bio Farma claims the vaccine is 97 per cent effective whilst Sinovac has not yet made public the vaccine’s level of effectiveness.

Unlike vaccines manufacturers in the West, no Chinese company has so far made public the effectiveness of their phase 3 vaccines. This makes it hard to compare vaccines and estimate how soon they will be able to receive approval for mass vaccination.

Despite this, in view of the emergency, the Chinese vaccine has already been distributed to hundreds of thousands of people. In addition to the million doses received in early December, Indonesia expects another 1.8 million Sinovac doses in January 2021.

 

and it's not just Indonesia: From CNBC:

Malaysia, the Philippines and countries in Africa have been promised priority access to China’s coronavirus vaccines. Experts say that may be part of Beijing’s attempt to expand its soft power and influence. “I think it’s inevitable that the vaccine will be leveraged,” said Jacob Mardell of the Mercator Institute for China Studies. Whether China is able to gain political advantage from its vaccines depends on the safety of its candidates and the affordability of alternatives, experts said.

so you can understand my anger against the Democrats politicizing the well tested US vaccine to stop it's release before the election in case Trump might get votes from this.

Because gaining power is more important than opposing China.

Indeed, given the bribery of Biden's family (and other Democrats) by China, stories well covered in the alternative media but censored and ignored by the MSM before the election, this does not bode well for those who see China's moves eerily similar to Germany's piece by piece aggression in the mid 1930s.

Right now, China is making noise to take over Taiwan. Since the west didn't complain much about their illegal takeover of Hong Kong, they figure the west won't be willing to go to war over this island.

and notice: Taiwan is not far off the coast of northern Luzon. A Taiwan take over would be another block of the sealanes.

==============

update: AustinBay relates how China used a photoshop of Australian troops (falsely showing an "atrocity" in Afghanistan). A good lesson on how propaganda works.

philippine covid news

Alas mainly links since my computer is being used elsewhere.

Strategy page has a good summary here about the covid epidemic and China using it to push people around. Make nice or no vaccine for you.

https://www.strategypage.com/qnd/phillip/articles/20201209.aspx

They also have a nice article on the geopolitical implications of the epidemic.

https://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htmurph/articles/20201209.aspx

The data from the cruise ship Diamond Princess and the aircraft carrier USS Roosevelt give a good idea of spread and infection rate.

Worse than influenza, but not that much worse.

The main problem is it hits all at once so overwhelms care givers, hence the shutdowns to slow the spread...

The FDA finally managed to get around to approve the Pfizer vaccine, something they could have logically done in Sept since the stage 3 data was so good. (the Chinese and Russian vaccines were released after stage 2 showed they worked...if this criteria was used in the US, the vaccine could have been approved by March and released in early summer as China did with their partly tested vaccine).

BUT the antivax hyateria encouraged by Russian and Chinese fake news posters, not to mention the hysteria flamed by anti trump media and even people like Andrew Cuomo who knew better, will result in blowback...a lot of healthy people will refuse to take any vaccine, and not just in the US ...

One suspects some of this, especially on Cuomo's part, was to smear Trump who might have gotten votes if the vaccine was released in October...the press prefers not to notice his good job getting several vaccines made so quickly. 

So how many died from the delay? 

The  latest fake news by ant vaxers is that the vaccine will make you sterile, a variarion on the "HCG in tetanus/measles/ etc vaccine are sterilizing poor people" story thar has been around since at least the early 1990s.

And some other of their arguments sound scientific until you think about it.

So as one scientific sounding argument insists,   that since China refused to release information about the entire viral genome, therefore any vaccine night not work due to lack of data.

But the argument assumes no western lab can get the virus and do their own sequencing. 

Strangely they don't argue that the virus has mutated into several different strains, so the vaccine might not work on all of them. Luckily this does't seem to be true.

https://www.businessinsider.in/science/news/pfizers-and-modernas-vaccines-likely-work-for-all-existing-coronavirus-strains-dont-worry-about-mutations-for-now-scientists-say-/articleshow/79284779.cms

The other part of the "we need China's genome because without a complete genome information we can't make a vaccine" that is absurd? 

Well, they have been making vaccines against viruses for 200 years, a century before anyone knew what a virus was. They used observation.(Jenner noted milkmaids had immunity against smallpoc and figured out it was because the had been infected with cowpox) or logic (Pasteur weakening the virus to induce immuity for rabies).

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/jenner-tests-smallpox-vaccine

https://clickamericana.com/topics/health-medicine/how-louis-pasteur-created-the-first-rabies-vaccine-1885

In other news, you tube facebook and google are removing those who question the American election.

And it is censorship like that that results in ordinary folks not trusting experts on the vaccine...often the same experts who applauded left wing riots peaceful protests but won't allow churches to open.

My take?lots of good reports on churches causing outbreaks due to closed air circulation.

So hold outdoor services or find if UV lights with airfilters could lower the spread.

Here the rules about church and family gatherings here...limit numbets inside churches and distance outdoors.

https://www.msn.com/en-ph/news/national/churches-to-hold-multiple-dawn-masses/ar-BB1bDBlf

https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2020/11/22/2058568/church-faithful-dont-let-covid-19-lock-down-christmas

But the really bad news....no whistles for new year.

https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1370469/dont-use-trumpets-whistles-to-welcome-2021-doh-warns-public

Guess the kids will have to just use old fashioned fire crackers.

Covid Vaccine? Moi?

 I have been in bed with the stomach flu for the last two days (probably food poisoning, since the dog was also vomiting). I wasn't too sick but the anti nausea and anti diarrhea medicine makes me sleep all day.

Today I am better.

In other news: The church that meets in our meeting room has again been given permission to use the room, as long as they notify Kuya for when they plan meetings outside of the Sunday schedule.

Joy and Kuya continue to be busy with the rice harvest/selling rice business.

We are again in strict shutdown: most of the province is covid free but we had a few cases so back to the masks etc.

the politization of the vaccine is not good: (so Pfizer won't attend the WH summit trying to publicize the plan to vaccinate and maybe get the very politicized CDC to actually bother to review the results in a timely matter, because exactly why? And don't get me started on the political shennanigans behind the delayed stimulus package, which came down to give money to leftist causes or no money for ordinary folks, and anyway, delaying the help will harm Trumpieboy).

the problem of course is that a lot of this fake antivax scepticism translates to being seen as facts> so only one third of Pinoys plan to get the vaccine, and another one third might get it, according to the Inquirer. WTF?

but it might not be just the political stuff: Lots of rumors in the anti vax internet about the mRNA vaccine might cause infertility. (they argue Bill Gates wants to lower the population and hey, why not use a vaccine to do this?). 

This is, of course, a variation of the "tetanus/measles/ etc vaccines contain HCG to make you miscarry" hoax that has been going on at least since the early 1990s.

Ah, but not all the vaccines are mRNA based. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccine use this new technology, whereas the Oxford and Russian vaccine just put the antigen on cold viruses (the Oxford vaccine onto a Chimpanzee virus, the Russian vaccine used a human cold virus) to make the vaccine the old fashioned way.

so do you chose the fancy new technology that might have long term side effects from a new way to invoke immunity, or do you want to risk the old fashioned way and risk the mutation of an cold virus?

and since the mRNA vaccine requires very very cold storage, one could argue that for poorer countries the old fashioned vaccines should be used.

but it gets more complicated than that: China has 3 vaccines, including one that uses mRNA technology. I'll have to google when I have more time about more information on their program, which has already given the vaccine to one million people (because as I have noted before, the hysteria of side effects is less in poorer countries: hey, a few dead from vaccine is better than dead from the disease or from hunger related deaths due to shutting the economy)

The Chinese are seeking to sell their vaccine to the Philippines, but as this article notes: the company pushing the vaccine has used bribery in the past to push their products or to influence officials to approve of their stuff.

Given the suspicion that the Dengue Vaccine debacle was partly due to gifting people to allow this (then) unproven vaccine be given out here, the suspicion of any new vaccine is high, especially one from China, whose reputation in selling fake and low potency counterfeit drugs is notorious.

My solution? Give the vaccine to us who are at high risk: i.e. elders, the chronically ill, and the high risk professions e.g. health care and food workers.

Yes I'd take it: as for side effects? Well, I got severe side effects from other vaccines (especially typhoid vaccine, which put me in bed for 48 hours) so yes I figure I'd get side effects: but as a doc, I have seen the actual diseases (and seen people die of measles, typhoid, whooping cough, tetanus and influenza) and figure it's worth the risk.

If young women fearing infertility don't want to take it, no problem. Ditto for kids.

And indeed, that will probably be the plan here, since there isn't enough money or available vaccine for everyone.

Prayer of the Gulag

 GetReligionBlog posts about an Orthodox prayer service of Thanksgiving... 

This Akathist, also called the "Akathist of Thanksgiving," was found among the effects of Protopresbyter Gregory Petrov upon his death in a prison camp in 1940. The title is from the words of Saint John Chrysostom as he was dying in exile. It is a song of praise from amidst the most terrible sufferings attributed to Metropolitan Tryphon of Turkestan.

.....The service offers thanksgiving for many kinds of gifts and events in life, from the moonlight in which "nightingales sing" to valleys and hills that "lieth like wedding garments, white as snow." Worshippers offer thanksgiving for the "humbleness of the animals which serve me," as well as "artists, poets and scientists," because the "power of Thy supreme knowledge maketh them prophets and interpreters of Thy laws."

But near the end, a priest chants the crucial theme: "How near Thou art in the day of sickness. Thou Thyself visitest the sick; Thou Thyself bendest over the sufferer's bed. His heart speaks to Thee. In the throes of sorrow and suffering Thou bringest peace and unexpected consolation."

The congregation response includes: "Glory to Thee, curing affliction and emptiness with the healing flow of time. … Glory to Thee, promising us the longed-for meeting with our loved ones who have died. Glory to Thee, O God, from age to age!"

full prayer HERE. 

spoken version here:....

there are also various chanted versions of the hymn at you tube LINK

Chess: staging a come back?

 for those of you who have Netflix, you might be aware that the latest "hot" series there is about.... chess.

Chess? As in:

....

based on a novel (i.e. not a true story) that was a coming of age novel, with the chess part inspired by the life of Bobby Fisher, but interesting nevertheless.

no I don't play chess: It requires you to think about patterns and predict which way to move to be successful...

And in medicine one is doing that all the time (finding a pattern in symptoms to diagnose a disease and then planning treatment that will fit in with the patient's lifestyle).

in other words, chess is not relaxing for me because you have to think...

I prefer playing piano or doing crochet or cooking to relax, because these things allow the subconscious mind to work and think while your body is kept busy.

but I suspect that the film/miniseries will increase an interest in playing the game, which in the long run will be good, since it requires you to actually think logically (something the snowflakes and PC who insist teaching that 2+2=4 is racist will hate).

Chess, of course, is a variation of board games that date back into ancient days and in many societies including India and China.

,,,,

there is now a meme that Trumpieboy plays 3D chess, ( a game invented in the original Star Trek series) because he plans complicated moves to overcome his opposition... 

but as this article points out, he is really playing poker (another Startrek meme)

well, anyway, thanks to the Netflix miniseries, expect an upsurge in kids learning how to play chess, including (maybe) the 3 d version of the game

Social distancing instructions

 

Rice, we have it

 some videos about local rice production.

these two are about the coop that Joy runs in Bulacan.

.......

family news...christmas decorations are up

Both Joy and Kuya have been busy with the end of the rice harvest (drying and storing the rice, and then  processing as needed the rice into brown or white rice and packing the rice for sale into 1 to 5 kg packages, then doing deliveries).

So lots of trips to Manila and Pampanga wher it is sold in upscale malls and supermarkets.

Joy got an award fot her work with the coop she supervises in nearby Bulacan...if I get my computer back from the secretary I will post a photo...my tablet wont't let me do this.

The church that meets in our meeting rooom (for free) held a food giveaway for local tricycle drivers for Christmas. The problem? Kuya was in Manila so they got permission from Joy, but Joy and Kuya are squabbling again, so when he came back he told them they can't hold church there anymore. SIGH. When they came back the next day to get their chairs and speaker, they found all the doors to the meeting room locked...luckily I remembered a little used entrance and unlocked the doors for them to get their stuff.

In other news, last night we heard fireworks...sure enough all the lights were on in the plaza and the food kiosks were open.

we always had a lot of locals visiting our city for it's Christmas celebration, but with the virus it will be subdued, but the lights are up.

..next question, is if the city will allow Simbang Gabi, the 9 days of early morning mass before Christmas...usually the families and kids attend and then the kids go to the plaza and celebrate with friends.

Not a lot of virus here, but no kids or elders allowed in malls and no elders in church.

Latest is that the govt is trying to get vaccine from 4 different companies/countries. That should help reopen the economy.

Gaslighting the election

 

transcript: LINK.........

update: Why what seems to be stealing votes is probably fake news:

Turkeys feathers

 Ah, the lowly turkey.

Eaten traditionally on Thanksgiving by Americans, because the species was domesticated by AmerIndians.

Thought Company has an article on the history of their domestication.

The wild turkey (M. gallopavo) is indigenous to much of the eastern and southwestern US, northern Mexico, and southeastern Canada. ...The ocellated turkey (Agriocharis ocellata or Meleagris ocellata) is considerably different in size and coloration ... is native to the Yucatán peninsula of Mexico and into northern Belize and Guatemala and is... more resistant to domestication but was among the turkeys kept in pens by the Aztecs as described by the Spanish. 

Modern turkeys however are related to the wild turkeys still found in the woods of the eastern USA, but by breeding they are domesticated....article on wild turkey vs domesticated turkey.

in contrast the ocellated turkey lives mainly in the forests of Central America. Photo and information from Animal spot.

more on the ocellated turkey here.

and yes, although domestic turkeys don't fly, the wild turkeys can fly short distances.

so how were these various turkeys used?

 Turkeys were used by Precolumbian North American societies for a number of things: meat and eggs for food, and feathers for decorative objects and clothing. 

italics mine.

I always assumed the feathers were used as decorations, but actually it gets more complicated than that.

From Phys.org:

scientists examined an 800 year old turkey blanket and the scientist remarks:

"Blankets or robes made with turkey feathers as the insulating medium were widely used by Ancestral Pueblo people in what is now the Upland Southwest, but little is known about how they were made because so few such textiles have survived due to their perishable nature,"

here is a video about turkeys and turkey feather use, and tells us how the blanket was made. Hmm...maybe the scientist should have asked one of the locals before making that statement.

 

Conspiracy theory of the day

 

By design, tens of millions of votes are cast across America on machines that cannot be audited, where the votes cannot be verified, and there is no meaningful paper trail to catch problems – such as a major error or a hack. For almost 17 years, states and counties around the country have conducted elections on machines that have been repeatedly shown to be vulnerable to hacking, errors and breakdowns, and that leave behind no proof that the votes counted actually match the votes that were cast...

Hanging over all of this is a question that scares many: what if voters did find problems with their ballots? And what would election officials do if it was found that ballots were cast on hacked machines? There may not be a better way to sow chaos in American democracy than to force dozens of jurisdictions across the country to redo elections.

that was from the UKGuardian in 2019/

who notes that the old machines with problems were replaced with new machines from the same folks that also were open to voting irregularities. A two part series.

I remember the problem with touch screen voting when I lived in New Mexico: the touch screen refused to take my choice and put a different choice,...after four retries i mananged to get it put in correctly but of course not everyone would notice.

And of course, Philadelphia has a long history of voting machines that wouldn't click. And remember the "hanging chads" of Florida in 2000? 

Paper ballots are being pushed by some, but the ballots in the back room being added is a routine problem here in the Philippines.
Which is why, a couple years back, the gov't switched to machine voting...

and as a result, the voter's private information was hacked 49 million people, one of the largest hacks in history.

Musical interlude of the week