and how are the ecology minded bishops helping the rice harvest?

The dirty little secret of farm work:

machines make work easier.

Here Kuya is out harvesting.

In the past, the rice was cut by hand and then taken in bundles to our jeep-thresher to separate the rice from the stem before it was put into sacks for removal to the area where it would be dried.

Now it is easier to rent a thresher harvester to do it.

This is not our farm but it shows an example of using a harvester/thresher in the fields.

and any Green back to nature types who want to make diesel expensive and go back to the good old days; Well, maybe they can spend a day bent over cutting the rice, or threshing it the old fashioned way by pounding it.

Of course we don't bundle the stalks/hay: We let it in the fields and plow it under the mud to rot to fertilize the next harvest. Yes, it produces methane, which is why there has been a move to a drier method of cultivating rice that doesn't require so much flooding. But that means using more fertilizer.

sigh

and we still dry the rice on the roadways or parking lots or tarps, unless it rains and then we need to dry it using a rice drier. Then you need to store it in a dry place until it's time to mill it. We mill it to brown rice, but the shelf life is not as long as white rice.

Farm expenses are skyrocketing, due to the increase in the price of fertilizer and diesel for farm equipment. And that means that six months from now, the price of rice in the big cities will also go up.

Can you say "food riots" children? I was in Liberia where the president raised the price of rice and there was a revolt by the military to remove him. (and this lead to a long nasty civil war). 

so excuse me when the Philippine bishops say they won't invest money into oil/petroleum.

I don't see them wearing a straw hat toiling in the fields in 90 degree weather cutting rice by hand.

Indeed, one of the reasons for mechanizing rice farms is that the land was distributed/bought by the small farmers years ago under land reform: but now these farmers are getting old, and their kids are educated and get jobs in the cities or as OFW often in the Middle East. So we hire workers from other parts of the Philippines to do the work on our fields. There is a limit to how much land you can own, but many returning OFW are buying up farm land and hiring workers too. But it is more cost effective to use machinery to grow rice, so in the last 20 years I have seen the increased mechanization of local farms.

But  what happens when the increase in expenses to grow rice leads to a higher price of rice being sold in the cities? 

There is a large urban poor population. They also are being hit by higher oil prices, not just because food and clothes etc are now more expensive, but because just going to work is becoming more expensive.

The increase in diesel and gasoline is hitting the poor in transportation, and hurting the tricycle and jeepney drivers, who often own their own vehicles and now are facing rising prices; to make things worse, the gov't is pressuring them to get rid of their older vehicles and buy types that are more fuel efficient, which of course they can't afford. .

the increase in LPG means that it is more expensive to cook food: the alternative is polluting wood fires: using wood to cook is a major cause of rural deforestation. 

Yesterday I had to pay 850 pesos for a bottle of LPG for cooking: usually it runs 650, and last month it was 750.

But the real problem is that fertilizer has increased 40 percent and this, plus the higher price of diesel to run both harvesters and the handplow to prepare the field for the next harvest, means we might not make a profit this year.

but that doesn't stop the virtue signaling bishops:

In one of the strongest declarations on climate change to date from the Catholic Church, the bishops of the Philippines have called for the local church to decline any donations with ties to the fossil fuel and extractive industries as part of a full-scale effort to disconnect church finances from the production of coal, oil and gas. The Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines delivered the directive, along with calling for church institutions to press their banks to phase out fossil fuel holdings

and what do they want to replace these things with? No answer of course. Go back walking to work, and using horse carts to deliver goods to the cities.I had to laugh: they illustrated a muddy street flooded by a typhoon in Manila to show the evil of climate change, but  the dirty little secret is that this means a lack of sewers/ drainage system. And parts of Manila were under sea level and not supposed to be built upon. All of this is infrastructure, and one wonders who is in charge: is the problem lack of money, ignorance of civil engineering, or is the money being diverted into someone's pockets?

I agree that the ecological damage has to be stopped, but they want stop entire industries (putting locals out of work and denying cheap local sources of energy to the poor). There is an alternative: Sustainable mining and forestry, and the use of clean LPG instead of polluting coal.

And there is a lot of natural gas under the West Philippine sea that could benefit the Philippine economy.

That last one is (or should be) one of the priorities of the bishops.

Apparently the bishops didn't notice that if they stop the Philippines from developing these resources, guess who will benefit?

From StrategyPage:

The Chinese strategy is to make it difficult for other nations to fish or search for oil and gas in the disputed waters. China will then offer to negotiate, and share the economic benefits. The other nations will probably be offered some fishing rights in waters of the EEZ of each nation neighboring the South China Sea, but China will keep all the oil and gas outside each nation’s territorial waters (22 kilometers from the coast). ... 

An example of this has been the Philippine efforts since 2005 to conduct oil and gas exploration in the Reed Bank area. Reed Bank is considered part of the Spratly Islands and is 230 kilometers off the coast of the Philippines's Palawan Island, which is well within the internationally recognized EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone)...

Filipino drilling was supposed to start in 2012 but China has blocked all Filipino attempts to exercise those drilling rights. The Chinese are very capitalistic communists and want all they can steal.

Now, if you want to see their heads explode, just mention that Duterte is looking into using nuclear power to supply energy for the Philippines. Even Leni sort of supports it. BongBong is trying to lie low in the discussion because his father built a plant in Bataan that was later mothballed for safety reason. (corruption? shoddy materials? or politics behind the shut down? Probably all three).

 But now South Korea is looking into rehabilitating the plant.

don't ask me. I am old enough to remember when Three Mile Island almost imploded, but didn't (luckily for us, since the Republican governor didn't want to evacuate folks when he was warned of the danger).

But more modern technology has made nuclear power safer... as long as you don't have a 9.0 earthquake plus tsunami as happened in Fukushima.

by the way: If you are wondering why BongBong Marcos is leading in the next election here, the Manila Standard has an article explaining why.

It's the infrastructure stupid. And safety for the ordinary person. And because BongBong is not his father. And don't forget the Smarmatic voting machines, that stole his election to VP and gave it to Leni.

and now there are problems of printing ballots that make some people wondering what is going on.

Don't ask me...I am more worried about local elections: The two clans are running against each other in the elections and we hope no one will get shot this time around.

they signed a peace pact not to kill each other, so hey we're safe 

Sigh.

Musical interlude of the day

Tolkien: The undiscovered Christian

 C.S. Lewis is beloved by many "Christian" intellectuals for his wit and ability to peddle Christian beliefs to the masses. A lot of Protestants who would not touch a statue of Mama Mary with a ten foot pole now consider Lewis a "saint" and he got into Poet's corner for his writings.

Sort of a professional Christian.

I rarely can get thru his theological writings because they are... brittle.  The same could go for his fiction.

Lewis' fictional women are missing something: Perelandra's Eve is stupid, Jane is neurotic and don't get me started on Narnia.

But like most college age students in the 1960s, I got to read Tolkien and loved his books. If Lewis' books are harsh and simplistic, like a Marvel Comic, the Tolkien books remind me of filigree work, or a celtic knot: beautiful when you first look at it, and then even more beautiful as you look again and go into the design. 

That beauty struck me as Catholic, long before I ever heard of the Inklings or found out that Tolkien was Catholic because his world view was that of Catholicism. 

To quote Andrew Greeley:

Catholics live in an enchanted world: a world of statues and holy water, stained glass and votive candles, saints and religious medals, rosary beads and holy pictures. But these Catholic paraphernalia are merely hints of a deeper and more pervasive religious sensibility that inclines Catholics to see the Holy lurking in creation. The world of the Catholic is haunted by a sense that the objects, events, and persons of daily life are revelations of Grace.

One of the problems with Vatican II is that the literal minded liturgists and theologians tried to destroy these things, which enabled Catholics to see God in every little thing around them, and replaced it with bad translations, bad music, and the idea if what you do is not social work or "helping the poor" you are not a good Catholic. 

Well there goes the idea of St Therese (and Martin Luther) that even a housewife or factory worker could be holy if they did the duties of their daily life as a way to serve God.

Sigh.

But in Tolkien, the idea that people try to do the right thing but sometimes fail or get sidetracked (e.g. Saruman) is there, as is the idea of forgiveness (Galadriel and Boromir). The tale insists that there is a pattern behind what happens, and that small choices are important. (I told my grandson, who was puzzled about the destruction of the ring, that it was God who arranged Gollem to destroy it, rewarding the decisions of Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam, not to kill him when he was defenseless because they pitied him, even though they knew he might harm them later).

However,overt religion is missing from the LOTR because Tokien deliberatly removed any open theology in his work: maybe because as a Catholic working in an anti Catholic and even atheistic culture of Oxford, he decided to follow the example of the Beowulf poet, and make the Christian theme implicit in the story instead of open and preachy.

Anyway,  TeaAtTrianon, herself an author, links to an article discussing if the Catholic church should start the process to declare Tolkien a saint. Not because of his writings, but because of his quiet devotion and love of God that pervaded everything he did. 

Tolkien takes inspiration from the Old English Gospels, in which Jesus himself teaches his disciples (literally “learning knights”) that “ge synd middengeardes leoht,” which directly translates as “you are the light of Middle Earth.” In this way Tolkien embraced a sacramental vision in which the holiness of the Holy Spirit or the Secret Fire, as he puts it, could be seen to illuminate his heroes in their quests and journeys against the forces of Hell.

 But it is in his letters that his faith is more explicit. 

an excerpt) From letter 310 to Camilla Unwin

We ask HOW, perceive patterns and ask WHY, and this implies reasons and motives and a MIND. Only a Mind can have purposes. This introduces the question of a God, a Creator-Designer, a Mind that is partly intelligible to us. This leads to religion and its moral ideas, which are bound up in the bonds we have with others... 

If you do not believe in a personal God, "What is the purpose of life?" is unaskable and unanswerable, since there is no one to whom to direct the question. ...So it may be said that the chief purpose of life, for any one of us, is to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all the means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thanks.

 One reason Tolkien is so beloved by environmentalism is that he insists that nature is beautiful; but he insists nature is not a God, but that nature echoes the beauty of God. again from his letter:

To do as we say in the Gloria in Excelsis: Laudamus te, benedicamus te, adoramus te, glorificamus te, gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam. We praise you, we call you holy, we worship you, we proclaim your glory, we thank you for the greatness of your splendour. And in moments of exaltation we may call on all created things to join in our chorus, speaking on their behalf, as is done in Psalm 148, and in The Song of the Three Children in Daniel II. PRAISE THE LORD ... all mountains and hills, all orchards and forests, all things that creep and birds on the wing.

 Tolkien’s thought on mythology, fairy stories, and the Gospel are also expressed in poem he composed to explain to C. S. Lewis, who had previously struggled with the idea that myths could contain truth, that myths and stories show a fragment of the light of truth, so that we can find in classic pagan authors a glimpse of God.

 

.....

lots of nonsense about labs and biological warfare out there

 the lab issue going around the internet is nonsense, be it about Wuhan or the Ukraine's labs.

the Russians were claiming they were worried about labs sending anthrax, Bubonic plague, or Weils disease as a form of warfare.

Well, you can get anthrax from the soil all over the world,  since those spores last a long long time. But the spores are big, and to use them as a weapon, you have to grind up spores and keep them from clumping, so it can spread through the air to your lungs. This is hard to do without the proper equipment and training, but it has the advantage that it won't spread person to person and cause an epidemic.

Bubonic plague cases occur in the South West: The Navajo reservation gets a few cases each year, so we IHS docs know about it. It is spread by fleabites and is treatable with antibiotics. The Pulmonary form however is quickly fatal: but only would spread in close contact with a patient who developed pneumonia. Isolation and masks help.

Weils disease is something we see in the Philippines after typhoons and floods, where people are in contact with water that has rat feces. A nasty disease, but again one that can be treated with antibiotics if diagnosed quickly.

These labs were about investigating local diseases that could cause epidemics: you analyze the strain of the germ, if it is new or a well known variant. You then can figure out the treatment or make a vaccine to stop it.

Some of this research is risky: especially the reseach where they deliberately change the pathogen to see how it acts in humans, which is what was being done in the USA, until there were a few accidents in US labs so it was banned. But after Obama stopped the risky research in the USA it was funded in China, even though their labs didn't have a good safety record (heck, in 2004 they even accidentally released SARS from one lab).

The dirty little secret is that to be a weapon, a disease must be able to be contained or limited. That means no person to person spread, because once it spreads person to person it can kill everyone, even your own people aka blowback.A biological military threat could be biowarfare but it could also be because of insects, flooding, bad water, or a deliberate release of a pathogen.

There are diseases that have military implications, where you can see outbreaks as part of war. Trench fever (and typhus, both spread by lice) and influenza killed more soldiers than weapons in World War I, but those who did not die often were unable to return to combat quickly. And the malaria caused illness and deaths in the South Pacific region were a real danger to readiness.

and I won't even get into ordinary diseases like Diarrhea. The UN Peacekeepers from Nepal build their latrines in the wrong area, and the result was a cholera epidemic that killed thousands.

Download and read the book on biological threats in wartime LINK

more here

....... 

 the paranoia spead by the anti vaxers is contaminating the ability to discuss these things, and the misinformation by drug companies and the political hacks in the MSM have not helped things, as they censor the free discussion of problems mean that no one trusts them anymore.

the dirty little secret is that this is not an "all or nothing" problem.

all vaccines have side effects, but often are miniscule next to the danger of getting the actual disease.

and although most vaccines work, the dirty little secret is that they don't work all the time, and with time, your immunity goes down. This is what is happening with the various Covid vaccines, but even routine vaccines such as for measles or whooping cough or tetanus don't last forever, so you might need a booster. and vaccines that work 70 percent of the time are commonly used, and the use of "off lable" medicines is common. The biggest scandal might be the censorship of Ivermectin, (which has now been shown not to be a cure all but does cut the risks by half).

Sigh.

In the meanwhile, a doctor who approved of a law to send infectious patients still suffering from covid back to nursing homes, resulting in an estimated 20 thousand deaths in Pennsylvania, is getting another award, not for this but because of being transsexual means never having to say you are sorry. LINK LINK2 LINK3

musical interlude

 Happy St Patrick's day

Pope Francis is destroying Catholicism, and someone finally noticed it

SandroMagister, who writes about what is going on in the Vatican behind the scenes, posts a memorandum that is going around there, and they note a lot of the things that have disturbed ordinary believers (as opposed to cafeteria catholics and the trads). 

the main problem?

The Christo-centricity of teaching is being weakened; Christ is being moved from the centre....

And it notes not just dogmatic errors, which horrify us, but a lot of the financial shennanigans there, which of course have been going on for 2000 years, ever since Judas started diverting Jesus' funds to his own pocket. 

and it notes that the so called "synodality" stuff that he is pushing is nonsense. True, because it uses sociological gobblygook and meetings will be stacked against those of us who actually believe but are too busy serving God in the duties of our daily life to push an agenda at meetings where we know we will be ridiculed... 

headsup Father Z

Read the whole thing.

if Catholicism implodes, or joins with other liberal churches to make a faux church under the philosophy behind the NWO, this has geopolitical implications.

The New space race

 If you are following space exploration, you know that the new space race is not Russia vs NASA in the USA: It is China vs Elon Musk vs Russia, with Europe and NASA coming in last.

StrategyPage has an essay on Elon Musk who just rewrote the book.

and that has geopolitical implications

when Russia invaded Ukraine before dawn on February 24th and the Ukrainian minister of digital transformation contacted Musk for help in dealing with Russian efforts to cut Ukrainian access to the Internet. Starlink officials had already been negotiating with Ukraine to provide Starlink service locally. Musk agreed to help and within four days hundreds of Starlink satellites were moved into position to provide Ukraine with high-speed Internet service using hundreds of Starlink user kits Musk sent to Ukraine.

Russian hackers are trying to prevent this, China is complaining about Starlink satellites being a danger to their space station (not true) and the US environmentalists are doing their best to slow down approval of launch sites.

 For Russia and China, Starlink is but the latest irritation from SpaceX. China is trying to recreate the reusable boosters that make SpaceX launches so much cheaper without making their launch services even more unreliable than SpaceX. From a military point of view, Starlink is a major problem because Russia and China have been creating anti-satellite weapons that could cripple a conventional satellite communications and surveillance system. It would be much more expensive, time-consuming and uncertain to cripple an LEO network that is built around the concept of surviving major damage and continuing to operate,,,,

 

more here....

....

President Obama was first to encourage private space exploration, and this policy was also supported by the Trump administration. This might not be true in the present administration.

BehindTheBlack article about capitalism in space has more details.

Quiet kitty: You'll upset the dogs

I was watching cat videos and the dogs woke up and started looking for the cat:

 

...

all our cats (house cats, garage cats, feral cat visitors, and the neighborhood cats) disappeared about two months ago (?disease? Poison?) but we are now starting to see feral cats again and one yellow one is wandering around the garden trying to decide if she wants to move in.

I hope so: we now have to catch our own mice, who for some reason like to make nests in my wardrobe.

We catch about one a week with sticky traps. Yuck.

in the meanwhile, here is music to calm you and your cat:

Film reviews: What to watch while the world explodes

 the Oscar nominations are not a good guide to escapism or even popularity.

but unlike past years, this year's list includes two family friendly films: Belfast and King Richard. And one for you to explain to your kids who are no longer taught Shakespeare in school: Macbeth.

the film that will probably win a lot of awards for it's originality is the Power of the Dog, which I reviewed in the past. The reviews insist it was about "toxic masculinity" and hey, any film that bashes white guys must be praised.

But as I noted before: The reviews about toxic masculinity is a bit off: The hatred of the woman seems more to be due to his repressed homosexuality, which is not noticed until near the end of the film. 

As a physician, I have seen a lot of depressed women who were the target of similar abuse by such men, who married to get "cured". But in today's world one is not supposed to notice this, even though it is the best argument I can think of for gay marriage.

One wonders how the PC police let that plot get filmed. 

but I agree with Sam Eliott with it's main flaw: They didn't get the culture of Texas cowboys right, (a man who insulted a nice woman in public as was done in the film would have gotten his tush kicked in Texas).

Dune, as I said in a previous blogpost, had beautiful cinematography, but without having read the books, I couldn't understand what was going on. For fans only.

Belfast was a nice quiet film about growing up in a neighborhood where violence was slowly increasing, and it explored the question if one should stay or go if one was in a similar situation. Civil war type situations mean neighbors against neighbors and tears families apart. It could be enjoyable even if one did not know the history of the "Troubles" or the background of the religious hatred there. But the film was about families, not violence or politics, so it is a satisfying film.

King Richard is another family friendly film: About Venus and Serena Williams training for success in tennis with the help of their father. Showing women can succeed, and minorities can break into a white professional sports, was good, in the same happy genre of Rudy, where the underdogs win due to their hard work.

 

Don't look up was stupid. With a capital S. It's an anti American film, where everyone is stupid. Yes, I know it is a satire but it isn't a good satire. It's not funny.
Satire has to be based on reality,  but as I said in my review: it has little to do with today's reality (what, no internet?). One suspects that even if things are that bad in the USA, the asteroid would get zapped by China, or maybe Elon Musk. And I hate films that are unrealistic,

I thought I would enjoy West Side Story, but it began with 12 minutes of discordant music, ugly slum background, and gang members improbably dancing, but no plot to be seen....at which point I turned it off. I'll watch it later for free on HBO. Or maybe just watch the old version. 

One film that surprised me for being good was Nightmare Alley. A noir film and a remake of the classic film from 1947, this film has both plot and characters keep your attention. It should have been promoted more than the more PC films in the list.

Macbeth was an interesting remake of the classic play and altough black and white the cinematography emphasized the black mood of the film and was great. I would love to do an essay comparing it's cinematography to Kurasawa's Throne of Blood.

So that is a summary of most of the films that are available here in Asia.

On the other hand, what everyone will actually watch (and in a theatre) is the lastest Spiderman: With not one, not two, but three Spidies plus Dr. Strange.

Because plot, characters, and special effects are combined into a classic story. But hey, it's Spiderman, so don't expect it to win a prize.

China decimates the Ocean's fish, the Greens stay silent.

China uses intimidation and physical threats to scare our fishermen from their traditional fishing areas in the West Philippine sea. 

I have written about their aggression here in past blogposts, noting that it was Obama who pressured PNoy into not trying to stop them with our miniscule Navy (miniscule compared to China) because if an incident happened, it could have resulted in the mutual defense treaty with the US being invoked, involving the US in a war against China.

Sound familiar? lots of parallels to what is happening in the Ukraine.

But China's decimation of the sea's resources is not only here.

USNavalInstitute Blog has a summary of their economic aggression against small countries by overfishing.

the PRC has already solidified control and is building islands and military installations in areas such as the Spratly and Paracel Islands, and Scarborough Shoals. Outside of the South China Seas, the Chinese fishing fleets have encroached on the exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of countries from Africa to South America, such as Argentina and Djibouti, who have very little in the way of individual diplomatic power to protect their territorial integrity and fisheries.

 

..........

There goes Siberia?

 Strategy page has an analysis on China's position on the Ukraine Russian war, and it points out that Russia's military didn't fight as well as expected. Read the whole thing.

But this is the interesting part for those of us in Asia: that Russian military weakness encourages and speeds up China's long term plans to take over Siberia (which is being populated with Chinese and Chinese businesses) and also the influence over the stans that used to belong to Russia but before then were on the silk road.

so what happens when someone asks locals in Siberia if they want to become independent? 

But the economic push back against Russia also warned China of what might happen to them if they invaded Taiwan or expanded their aggression in the West Philippine sea.

the Ukraine debacle and Chinese association with it also weakens Chinese efforts to deal with increasing foreign efforts to make China behave in its dealings with trade partners and curb the Chinese theft of foreign trade secrets and IP (patented Intellectual property).

The United States took the lead in this area back in 2018 with an unprecedented trade war that cost China over half a trillion dollars and forced compliance. This encouraged other victims of the predatory Chinese trade practices.

as Bill Clinton once said: It's the economy stupid.

as the essay discusses, China considers trading partners as "client states", and although actual invasion is rare, the immigrants from China, seeking economic opportunities, has been going on for  hundreds of years.

China is trying to use these immigrants as a way to promote their power in todays world, but as Singapore suggests, it might not work in all areas. (in the Philippines, traditional laws that stop foreigners from owning businessese resulted in intermarriage, hence most of the oligarchy that runs the country are partially Chinese ancestry).

Today, China's diaspora tends to run the economies on SEAsia, (and in more recent years maybe parts of Africa and the silk road states) They send in cheap goods that undermine local industries, they send in developmental projects, and when the poor countries can't pay them back, they steal resources. And often their projects which were seen as providing local jobs were actually staffed by Chinese personnel. (example; the casinos here in the Philippines). 

This is going on in a lot of places that are peaceful thanks to the Pax Americana: so what happens as "big brother" America says it's your problem? Hence all the "wolf warrior"propaganda films coming out of China in recent years...

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

and at the end of the article they discuss the covid coverups: Chinese attempt to blame others for the epidemic is not believed, and that some suspect up to two million in China died of Covid...

Let's go fly a kite

It is already "tag init", the hot season before the monsoon comes in June. Not too hot yet, and there are a lot of nice breezes to keep you cool if you stay under the shade.

And yesterday, while out walking the dog I saw that the kids had started flying their kites.

Lolo showed me how to make a kite similar to what is flown here, but nowadays we have all sorts of kites being flown by the kids: plain kites, box kites, decorative kites etc.

here is a video of kids flying their home made kites:

so who invented kites? The Chinese of course, over 2000 years ago.

 from national kite month webapge:

 

The exact date and origin of the kite is not known but it is believed that they were flown in China more than two thousand years ago. One legend suggests that when a Chinese farmer tied a string to his hat to keep it from blowing away in a strong wind, the first kite was born....

it then spread all over, including down the trade routes to the west. The earliest record of kite use was in China 200 BC when it was used in war.  Full history at the link.

wikipedia however notes that a cave painting from 9000 BC found in Indonesia depicted a kite similar in design to kites still used in that area, LINK2  and is still made from leaves and bamboo in that area. Before Islam, locals used kites to carry messages to heaven, but now use them recreationally.

so maybe the Chinese borrowed the idea from them.

Video on Benjamin Franklin's kite experiment. 

his invention of the lightning rod probably saved many lives.

altogether now:

SNAFU: being paranoid is now normal

 Canadian humorist Mark Steyn comments on the Four Horsemen of the apocolypse.

.

...headsup from TeaAtTrianon.

Yesterday I linked to an article on the PhilInquirer about how the increase in the price of fertilizer will make food costs high and that the increase in costs of fertilizer and fuel etc might make some farmers decide to just not plant this year.

Kuya agreed: He said he is barely making enough to cover his costs, and even though most of our rice is grown with organic fertilizer, we still have some fields that use regular fertilizer, and the price of that has almost doubled, and now the price of fuel/diesel to run the farm machinery is soaring.

the increase in the price of fuel and electricity (which is also going up) will affect the second harvest the most because the second/winter or dry season harvest requires irrigation, which uses either diesel or electricity, and usually this harvest is smaller than the main (summer) harvest.

now, multiply this by thousands of smaller farmers, and you can see that maybe the price of food will go up high so the urban poor won't be able to afford it, and that if farmers don't grow food, there will be less food for people to buy,

In the meanwhile, China if hoarding food, and with war, the Ukraine wheat might not be available. What about US Farmers? They also are discouraged due to Biden's policies that make diesel and fertilzer more expensive, so will we also see some just saying forget about it and not plant, but just take a government hand out?

My Youtube channel just sent this one to my "recommended" list. It is from the University of Chicago, not a right wing fundamentalist site, and it is from 2015, so it predated Trumpieboy.

,,,,

I post this because it echoes a lot of what was discussed in the letter by Cardinal Vigano that I linked to yesterday. Western forces were pushing democracy, with the best of intentions of course.

So where does the Philippines come into this? 

we have an election, and the CIA media who has been anti Duterte for the last few years is now busy supporting Leni, as is the social media and the Catholic bishops, because the alternative is BongBong Marcos with Duterte's daughter as VP.

Now add to this the Chinese pressure and the leftist bots who automatically oppose the USA, and you see the problem

The saying is: When the elephants fight, the grass suffers.

China supplies a lot of our manufactured goods, and a lot of our medicines and even some of our food. So what happens to the Philippines when Taiwan is invaded? There goes our internet, sea routes, fishing, and maybe even a couple hundred thousand refugees landing in northern Luzon.

Sigh.

the paranoid worry about how the elites of the NWO are using these emergencies to push a long planned agenda.

I'd think that was paranoid, except that back in the late 1990s I read Robert Reich's book Work of Nations  (1992)that posited an elite that identified as citizens of the world, and that the hoi polloi of the US would have to be retrained because their low level jobs would go elsewhere. From a book review by Scott London:

"We are living through a transformation that will rearrange the politics and economics of the coming century," says Robert Reich. As we move into the borderless economy, the notion of national products, national technologies, and national corporations will become increasingly meaningless. The only thing that will remain rooted within national borders are the people who make up a nation. This shift has enormous political implications, according to Reich. It means that the traditional idea of national solidarity and purpose can no longer be defined in purely economic terms. It also leads to fragmentation, Reich argues, as "those citizens best positioned to thrive in the world market are tempted to slip the bonds of national allegiance, and by so doing disengage themselves from their less favored fellows."

So what about those left behind? Reich says the 1990s equivalent of "learn to code". 

 from the early 2000s we also have The Pentagon's new Map, LINK2 that posits a similar tranformation (he sees the Philippines as a cheap source of trained labor. Duh). from a 2013 video

from 2016: the "Great Reset" plan has been around for awhile.

,..

start at 25 minutes...let them eat cake (on the dole it's no problem). and fuck the middle class who now lost their jobs. And they ridicule Brexit as being a Luddite populism.

Sigh.

I am old enough to remember when it was the left who held these points of view, about the evils of big business exploiting the world (Chomsky anyone?). But my opinion was that if they were correct, they also didn't consider the alternative: Poverty and stagnation.  

Things are complicated.

The introduction of robots to replace workers mean a lot of people with no meaningful work. The sexual revolution means no meaningful relationship with your family. The feminist revolution means making women into men, ignoring that they have babies and do this the best when supported by family. Heck, I remember when Betty Frieden who started the feminist revolution, was thrown out of the feminist movement because she insisted that she and most women didn't hate men or want to destroy the family, but only wanted a way to have a family but also use their skills outside the home.

But what do you do with all those out of work? I am reminded of the stories of the Irish Potato famine, that noted that afterward the inefficient small farms were replaced with more efficient methods of farming... the problem was: so where did those who were forced to leave? The Malthusian ideas were around already, and the plans to make the farmlands more efficient were already known, but it took the potato fungus to implement the plans.

Is it paranoia if you just quote them?

The Tolkien comment that maybe communism was Mordor, but that the west was Saruman, willing to use the ring of power to impose a benevolent dictatorship.

all they want to do is to Serve Man...

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

update; GetReligion blog has had several posts on the Ukraine, from the religion and history point of view, LINK  LINK2 LINK3 and today notes about the fairly large Jewish population there.

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

update: well well well: was there a coverup of Vaccine injuries?

Waiting for Dr. C to be cancaled in 1....2...3

concerning War, disease, and... why is fertilizer so expensive?

 things must be getting bad in the Ukraine, because the Philippine gov't told all our OFW there to come home.

one doesn't have to be cynical to see the MSM pushing the war war war meme: We saw this before both Gulf wars, by the way. And noting that propaganda is being pushed doesn't mean that behind all the propaganda there isn't a reason to think the Russians are the "bad guys" here.

Cardinal Vigano notes the backstory here.

summary: He gives a long background on the geopolitical history of the area. But he also notes, like the covid epidemic, the evil guys behind the scenes didn't cause the problem but they are taking an advantage of this. Mainly linked for later reading.

The real problem? Vigano is not an Alex Jones conspiracy theorist: he was a member of the Vatican diplomatic corps, and that groups is known for their knowlege of the story behind the story. 

And he includes notes about how this foreign war might affect you:

The current Ukrainian crisis entails secondary, but no less serious, consequences on the geopolitical balance between China and Taiwan. Russia and Ukraine are the only producers of palladium and neon, which are indispensable for the production of microchips.

so where does Russia come into this?

“If it is true that a Chinese invasion of Formosa would put the global technology supply chain at risk, it is also true that a sudden shortage of raw materials from Russia could stop production, so as to make the island lose the “microchip shield” and induce Beijing to attempt the annexation of Taipei.”

add to this that China is licking their chops to invade or destroy Taiwan, who makes most of the good computer chips, and you see the problem.

All of this is pushing Russia to join with China, which is not good news.

and then there is stuff about crypto currancy, which Biden now wants to regulate... and of course China is trying to oust the USDollar as the main world currancy.

Vigano has a lot of history and diplomatic background on the Ukraine invasion, and here is StrategyPage's take on the war:

Above my paygrade: I'm a doctor, not an expert on geopolitical strategy or even conspiracy theories.

 ---------

Election time here. Background article in the (liberal) Inquirer notes that Leni isn't liked by politicians but has a lot of "volunteers" backing her (read young folks inspired by the social media), but one mayor pointed out Duterte had few politicians (or social media rich kids) support him and he won anyway.

there have been a few pep rallies locally in the city plaza which is near us. Covid restrictions have been pretty well lifted, so no problem. Businesses are opening up, and presumably a lot of OFW will be able to return to their jobs soon...and in our area it is time to start preparing the rice fields for the next harvest, so a lot of folks are busy.

Here, votes are bought, and a lot of folks take the money figuring that hey, they are all crooks, so at least I should get a few dollars. However, the problem is that when people feel strongly about an issue they can't be bribed...so Duterte won, despite all the money poured into other campaigns and the CIA funded press and social media, because he promised to push against drugs and crimes, and his time as mayor in Davao proved he was mean enough to do it...so now crime is down, a lot of folks had justice (or paid for a hit man to get justice), and I can walk the streets again without worrying we will be kidnapped...all elections are local, you know.

Before Duterete, the cartels who were trying to make the Philippines as a narco state so they could easily send drugs via OFW all over the world. 

Duterte is now being criticized because he made pals with Putin, but the back story of this is that the US stopped a shipment of small arms to the Philippines to punish him for "human rights" violations, i.e. shooting druggies and pushers for resisting arrest (/s) and as a result the Islamicists took over a city in the south, and the Philippines lacked weapons, which were then promised to us by Russia. 

but since ballot box stuffing and outright fraud in voting machines is suspected to play a part in the next election, it is uncertain who will win the next election.

Our area backs BongBong Marcos, because Leni is seen as a snobbish upper class lady whose main claim to fame is that her popularist husband died in a plane crash a couple years back. Which is why the Smartmatic voting machine fraud may come up again if things go to her.

but it is the local elections that could turn murderous: our maid attended a political meeting this morning but won't talk about it because "it is dangerous". 

Dr. Ito call your office. Things are still dangerous here.

Sigh.

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

in other news: Yes, rabies continues to be a problem.

often they hold clinics for free rabies shots for dogs, but the virus has messed everything up, so I suspect a lot of dogs never had their rabies shot. And there are stray dogs thrown because their owner's can't afford to feed them: Although after two years of covid related poverty, most of the strays have disappeared.

Sigh.

One of our farmer's wives needed help to pay for rabies  vaccine. The dog is a neighbor's dog, and he was too poor to get him a rabies shot. True, one could wait and see if the dog died, but rabies is fatal so no one wants to take the chance. We get one or two requests for help to pay for rabies shots each week.

The mayor had a program for free rabies shots, but apparantly they ran out of money. The treatment is three shots and each costs 7 dollars (or more? The farmer's wife said it cost her 13 dollars but that might have been for the antibody shot that you get first, and then you get the slower vaccine that takes a couple weeks to work)... this is not a lot of money for Yanks, but here it the minimum wage is 7 dollars a day, and farmers, who sell their crop, often run out of money about this time, because they need all their money to plant the next crop. 

It is also considered hunger season, because this is about the time the farmers run out of their rice stores.

so employees will be asking for loans. And there are expenses to fix the farm machines, buy fertilzer , get good quality seedlings, etc.

There is a huge increase in the price of fertilizer right now

To harvest 100 cavans, up to 8 bags of urea fertilizer should be applied. This amounts to P20,000 per hectare in costs on urea alone. But farmers should also apply phosphorus and potassium containing fertilizer. The farmer will spend about P30,000 per hectare on fertilizer alone. At P15 per kg per unmilled rice, this translates to about 2,000 kg or about 40 percent of the value of a one- hectare yield at 5.0 tons per hectare. That is for fertilizer alone. What about land preparation, seeds, labor and harvesting costs? This simple calculation suggests practical action by the farmer—cut down on fertilizer use or not plant at all, as some farmers had done. inquirerdotnet on Twitter | inquirerdotnet on Facebook

Blame the European Union, the cut back of petroleum production by Biden's anti fracking/drilling policies, and the dirty little secret is that the Russian Ukrainian war won't help because Russia, Belarus and China are major sources of fertilizer.

The dirty little secret is that most famines in today's world are not caused by lack of food but by wars, or because the price is so high that the poor can't afford to buy enough to stay healthy. 

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

in family news:

I just cashed in another long term investment, but alas most of it is gone to help with the farm expenses, (the lady who buys Kuya's rice every year without any problems in paying is now sending us bad checks, so I have had to lend him money for the next crop.) I also had to pay to fix up the shop/apartment we have in Manila, which is getting a new tenant. The cheap pipes and the electric wires and the roof need replacement. 

Sigh.

Oh well. God will provide. 

So hey, move to a tropical paradise and you won't have to worry, except for earthquakes, typhoons, floods, covid, and Dengue fever, add the worry that war (or shortages from war) might make things worse for us.

A pinch of salt can change history

 History is full of wars and big shots who start them. 

But I am working my way through books about the history of food, and commerce, and spices/condiments.

most folks have a vague idea of how the spice trade inspired western expansion/imperialism into South and East Asia, but that was not the only condiment that could inspire wars and revolutions.

Salt not only added flavor to your meal, but let you dry/preserve your food so it didn't rot so fast.

so one of today's podcasts from medievalist.net is about a Chinese salt rebellion in 870 AD began in a response to the Chinese government establishing a salt monopoly so they could tax salt to replentish their empty treasury. The rebellion failed but caused so much economic damage that the Tang dynasty fell soon afterward.

More links from that blog about salt:

Salt trade and warfare in early medieval Transylvania

Evidence for medieval salt-making by burning Eel-grass (Zostera marina L.) in the Netherlands

Organization and modus operandi of the Byzantine salt monopoly

,,,,,cue to more modern times, when Gandhi's salt march against the British monopoly on salt led to the establishment of an independent India. 

....

An easy to read book on the history of salt throughout the ages is Mark Kurlansky's book Salt...

LINK2

here in Asia, salt and salty condiments like Patis/fish sauce etc. are used lavishly. Which is why there is so much high blood pressure here in East Asia.

Universal ID? We haz that

The Biblical conspiracy theories are that there will be a mark of the beast, where everyone will be forced to use it to buy or sell anything. In effect, it allows the government/banks to control you under the threat of financial ruin.

In the USA this is believed by a lot of people, and it's not just the fundamentalist types: Privacy groups are worried too. Because if you post the wrong thing, not only can you be censored from the social media, but in the near future this could mean your bank account will be frozen. And with a universal ID card, it is easy to find who you are and where your money is. 

Pushing digital currancy should be no problem: after all we use credit cards, don't we? And they are safe, aren't they? What could go wrong?

UhOh: Justin Trudeau just had the banks close the accounts  of the Bouncy castle protesters showing how easily this could be done. True, he reversed it in a few days, but it showed what could be done.

In the USA, they never had a universal ID card and in the past they even forbade using the Social Security number for identification for this reason (not true now: every other form of ID asks for either the SSN or part of the SSN to confirm who you are).

So how does one prove one's identity in the US for something like cashing a check or getting on an airplane? Ironically, to get on an airplane most people use their drivers license which are issued by states, not the federal government, since few have passports. 

And the refusal to use a universal ID is not limited to the rabid Republican right: Indeed, worrying that someone will figure out who you are is one reason that the Democrats, who represent the poorer classes in the USA, have opposed requiring ID cards to vote in elections. 

Of course, getting a fake ID is easy, but that's another story. But if it is easy in the fairly honest country like the USA, just think of what will be going on in more corrupt countries.

which brings us to this article that I found in today's Inquirer:

PH must step up digital shift for better cash aid system – WB....

 

The World Bank (WB) has urged the Philippine government to ramp up digital government-to-person (G2P) payments, mainly by tapping other financial services providers like e-wallets, to speed up and ensure the efficient distribution of “ayuda” (cash assistance) during a crisis. 

... “The lack of identification documents is one of the reasons for being unbanked in the country where only 29 percent of adults have a bank or mobile money account...

but what about rural folks, when the ATM or bank is 20 km down a dirt road?

To address these financial inclusion gaps, especially in remote communities, it urged the government to partner with financial service providers other than banks, like mobile wallets.

Now they have me lost. I have used credit cards for years, but I rarely use them here because I distrust them, and they are easily stolen. So I would also distrust a digital wallet linked to a cellphone that is easily stolen. This is not true of the younger generation: Kuya and his daughter use them all the time, just as they buy stuff via e-commerce, wheras I usually go to the Palenke or mall and pay cash to get what I need.

My suspicion of e commerce is a generational thing: Lolo didn't even use credit cards, but would pull out a couple of $100 dollar bills to pay for groceries etc. in Walmart. And don't get me started on crypto currancy and bit coin, which some countries like India and the Philippines are looking into right now. Some say a crypto currancy backed by gold will replace the dollar in the near future, and this may explain why gold based currancy is being pushed by China who is buying a lot of gold.

Something to remember if China decides to regain their long lost province of Luzon...

 --------------

update: another reason I am skeptical of the internet control of everything is that the internet infrastructure here was affected by earthquakes that wiped out a major cable, and because we have had typhoon related floods cause no electricity etc..

So what could go wrong?

using entertainers to push cultural understanding

 I am old enough to remember during the cold war when the US and the USSR sent entertainers to each other to help increase understanding between countries as a way of softening the hatred of each other. Yes, propaganda, but in a good way.

Article about sending Porgie and Bess to Europe and the story is in Maya Angelou's book LINK

however, sending artists and entertainers as a way of promoting cultural understanding is not new:

while reading up on the Manga version of Isabella Bird's travels in Japan, they discuss Japanese street artists and mention a famous Japanese juggler who toured Europe and the USA.

Japan was closed to much of the world until the US forced them to open ports to western interests in 1853

if you scroll down the blogpost on Matthew Wittman's blog, he discusses  the American circus performers who went to Japan (1864) and how the Japanese decided to send their own jugglers to the world to improve cultural understanding (1867).

and he includes and Edison film from 1904

Youtube has this video showing traditonal Japanese juggling.

this is being posted under my "Factoid of the day" topic, since it is something I know nothing about but am trying to increase my own knowledge.

And you thought Covid was bad

 TeaAtTrianon has a link to an article on the Sweating Sickness, an epidemic during the early Tudor era in England, that might have killed Prince Arthur, and almost killed Ann Boleyn.

it killed people within 24 hours.

There are only a few known diseases that will do this: Among them cholera, Meningococcal meningitis, and the pneumonic form of bubonic plague.

More here.

unlike other epidemic disease, the historians still haven't identified the cause, but it may have been a virus related to the Picardy Sweat (a similar outbreak 100 years later in France).. Some historians think the outbreak, which hit mainly young adults, might have been a form of Hanta virus. However, the actual cause has never been found.

estimates of deaths might be exaggerated, since the article notes that unlike the Black Death/bubonic plague, there was no drop in the population.

I am familiar with the Hanta virus only because when I was working in the IHS, there was an outbreak in the nearby Navajo reservation. The medical epidemiologists found that native healers remembered previous outbreaks.

the preventive measures to stop outbreaks was about getting rid of rodent droppings (and using a mask when you clean up the house) since the way you get the disease from rodents is by inhaling or injesting the droppings of the vector. 

We had posters and pamphlets on how to do this correctly,

the article notes 

The earliest description of hantavirus infection dates back to China, around the year 900 AD.

although various forms of Hanta Virus have been found on all continents, it also is a public health problem in China: LINK 

From Wikipedia: 

It is estimated that about 1.5 million cases and 46,000 deaths occurred in China from 1950 to 2007. The number of cases is estimated at 32,000 in Finland from 2005 to 2010 and 90,000 in Russia from 1996 to 2006.

and then the big question: Were the Cocoliztli epidemics in the 1500s that depopulated Mexico a variation of the Hanta virus?

Although the major way to stop the spread is control of the vector (usually a rodent) there is a vaccine that has been developed for some strains of the virus, including the strain found in China and Korea.

This article (2019) goes into the complications of making a vaccine for this virus, and also has a technical discussion of various anti viral drugs and monoclonal antibodies being used to treat cases. 

 However, so far there are no anti viral medicines that seem to work definitely (i.e. there are studies that say they worked, but no good double blind study. See my earlier blogpost with Dr. C's video on placebo and double blind studies).

Hanta virus is serious, but since it is a vector spread disease, and not person to person as in Covid, there are various ways to stop the spread once the cause is identified.

My worry is that, with the huge increase in rodent population among the homeless, especially in California, that rodent spread disease might cause outbreaks in the near future. LINK2 

In some ways the world is lucky that the covid epidemic was so mild: yes it killed millions but mainly high risk folks.

What will kill more people in the next few years is hunger. The price of fertilizer is going up, the price of growing food is up due to increase in oil prices, and the danger of war is very real here in Asia.

________________

update: From Instapudit:

LIFE IN THE BLUE ZONES: The rat problem in D.C. is so bad, two people got hantavirus.

ArsTechnica article here.

Luckily it is the weaker Seole strain.

Audiobook of the week

 no video but a fan read audiobook.

More here...

and it can be found at Internet archives 

link2

This was one of the books that I was told to read to learn how people in different cultures actually think and believe differently than Americans (something I sort of knew, since I grew up in a multi ethnic multiracial neighborhood).

the passivity, the idea you are not in charge of your own life, the belief in the supernatural as part of life: this is true even if you don't live in a religious country like India or the Philippines, or in Africa, but even in atheistic countries like China and Japan where customs and folk beliefs are still strong.

Ah, but the literary types prefer "passage to India" which is actually about rich white Brits and teaches you little about India. Or The God of Small Things, which my granddaughter was given in literature class in high school: Where it depicts many cultures in India but you don't really learn about the nuances: it could be set in American suburbia because they all seem to belong to the same culture and have the same way of thinking.

===========

update: The internet archives includes scans from the Library of India, where a lot of modern classic books can be found.