how films can teach about the American dream

 I just read that the actor Topol just died. Remebered HERE.

So I dug out this film to watch (the family watches film or TV together every evening).

this film is a classic, and covers the story of both the importance of traditions that stablize families in times of poverty, but also confronts how people adjust in the face of change: not just the marriage of the daughters but when political oppression causes people to leave their homes.

  but somehow didn't win a lot of awards: it lost best picture at the Oscars to the French connection, a good film but not a classic.

yet in these days where everything is about America's sin and racism, one forgets that the reason many came to America was that they were fleeing oppression, ethnic cleansing (Russian Jews and from VietNam), famine (like the Irish) or extreme poverty (like Italians and eastern Europeans)  or maybe just lower class people who came for jobs (yes, Trumpieboy I'm talking about your mom) because they had no way to improve their lot in their homelands

Which is why the Jewish community and others fled to America, and sympathize with others who similarly want to come to the USA.

and it is the reason that, with the borders essentially being open, that there are a lot of people to help them in their trip (yes, this includes NGO's helping the drug gangs who know how to get people across the border.)

Myself, I think a bit of regulation is in order but that might mean compromise, not bluster (trumpieboy) or pretending the problem doesn't exist (Biden)

On top of this is the well funded manipulation of history about Americas racism, which is causing resentment and hatred to flare up, including crime and destruction of small businesses that often are run by recent immigrants. 

I am old enough to remember racism in the 1950s, but things have changed, and teaching history to inflame emotions and point guilt to "white people" (A term I first heard on NPR and wondered if this meant my Filipino/ethnic American/ Hispanic family or other hard working ethnics not considered oppressed by the elites who run this scam) 

This is different than teaching it in context of how things have changed, and how we can make things better (teach math and English skills).

Fine, teach black history. But don't forget the coffin ships, the pogroms, the ethnic cleansings, or those who fled the famines of Europe or the dire poverty where the peasants and workers had no opportunity to improve their lot so came to America. 

A bit if history might put things in perspective.

Kuya asked where did they go, and how did they pay for it? Good question. Some did sell their homes etc. and had money, some were helped by their relatives who had moved to other countries and sent money and would welcome them when they arrived, but others just went the best they could and relied on the kindness of strangers.

By remembering the extreme poverty of one's ancestors that brought them to America, one can sympathize with those trying to cross the border. And remembering their ancestors who fled oppression would cause them to sympahize with others who face the same thing today, both immigrants fleeing oppression or those facing racism in the USA.

But where are the stories of what happens when poor immigrants get to the USA? A lot of the annoyance is because the idea that they get welfare. Money is tight right now, and saying tax money has to go to support immigrants who don't want to work causes resentmen (as does competing with immigrants who do want to work for blue collar jobs).

the Catholic church  has outreaches to help these immigrants, but even the Catholic papers tend to talk about the help given, not about how the immigrants find jobs and raise families.

But there is a film abou that:

Post earthquake Recovery efforts in Turkey/Syria continue

 It's been a month since the severe earthquake in Turkey/Syria hit, and it hasn't been in the news much, so I thought I'd check in. 

Here is a BBC report:

Sigh.

Several things to notice: NPR report here.

Many have left for other areas, presumably to government shelters or to live with relatives.

But some have stayed: Some people don't want to leave because what is left of their possessions are being stolen by looters. 

And it's wintertime, so it's cold when you live in tents.. And simple things taken for granted in the modern world are lacking: not just electricity and gas for cooking, but clean water for drinking, bathing, and washing clothes/diapers.

Sigh.

Earthquakes in that area of Turkey/Syria are alas common, and often older homes are the ones that collapse, because they are not built up to standard.

But one of the backstory of these buildings collapsing is corruption.

From StrategyPage:

The big earthquake and its aftershocks killed over 46,000 people in Turkey and damaged over 200,000 buildings (one report said 215,000).,,.

The February 6 quake killed over 6,000 people in Syria. The Turkish government says around two million survivors are now living in temporary accommodations.

A second earthquake occurred on February 20. It did far less damage but seriously hindered relief operations. All Turkish media report the February 6 quake as the worst natural disaster in the history of modern Turkey. '

There are political consequences. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan is facing intense criticism for his slow response to the massively destructive February 6 earthquake

The earthquakes have also made governmental failure to enforce construction standards an election issue. What lies behind the failure? A substantial number of citizens think it was corruption by national and local officials.

italics mine.

Here in the Philippines, if you build, you have to have the city engineers approve the building. The concrete blocks must be reinforced by iron bars, and be able to support the upper floors (which is why we never put the second floor on our old house: it was built 40 years ago and the engineers said it wouldn't support it).

Poor quality construction  material is a problem. So often you pay extra to buy western or Japanese/Taiwan products (and hope it is not mislabled) since local and Chinese imports might not be up to standard.

So yes, corruption kills. And that could have election consequences in Turkey, and of course, what happens in Turkey (a NATO country) has implications not only for NATO but for the war in the Ukraine. 

I didn't live here in the Philippines after the big 1990 earthquake, or after Mt Pinatubo erupted, but since we get hit by typhoons every two to three years, some of the problems of recovery is similar.

There are a lot of people out there helping those displaced or hurt by the earthquake. The international groups get most of the publicity, but private help by relatives, friends, and from the large Turkish diaspora.

We saw this after the big typhoons. The private relief often is wasted because of logistical problems, but here, after typhoons, often famlies got a car and filled it with stuff for their relatives. And of course, families took in friends, relatives, and even strangers who needed shelter.

 Now, one thing we noticed when we were hit by a bad typhoon and had no water or electricity for a week, was that our neighbors all came here to charge their cellphones so they could get in touch with relatives.

yes, we have landlines here (which we use for business) but most countries now have cellphone towers and cheap cellphones. When I first came here, I had to go to internet cafes to go on line because the landline internet was slow. But now we have fast internet. When there is no electricity, we use a generator, and usually cellphone towers are working. so, we can check  our cellphones to get on line. 

The report from the local telecom companies there is a month old, but apparently they did respond to help keep communications up.

State-owned Türk Telekom said that it has also dispatched base stations, and said that its 105-person Türk Telekom Search and Rescue Team had deployed in the area. Both telecoms companies said that they were making domestic mobile and landline calls free, as well as WiFi hotspots in affected regions. However, the operators called on citizens to only use the phone for emergency calls.`

and yes, Elon Musk offered to help, but was told Starlink wasn't needed. 

The Turkish government reportedly declined an offer for SpaceX's Starlink dishes, which are not licensed in the country, claiming they had sufficient satellite connectivity.

 We had satellite cable tv and satellite internet years ago when I worked in isolated areas with the IHS. So I presume this is what they are talking about.

Manipulating the news

 The slow release of the twitter files that show how the federal government and others (often NGO's claiming to be independent but who receive government funding) were censoring twitter (and probably other social media sites) is a "duh" moment for most of us who wondered about this.

Max Taibbi Thread here.

Lots of this is about US politics, but some is about censorship of the anti vax nuts, who hated vaccines long before the questions of the mRNA vaccine came up. 

Indeed, the fact that these crazies started the questioning was one reason pushed not to believe this stuff, at least until Joe Rogan blew up the narrative and some countries banned certain vaccines.

I got the AZ (british) vaccine, an adenovirus based shot, mainly because originally the DOH here in the Philippines refused to sign a liability waiver paper that would forbid anyone getting side effects from the vaccine to sue Pfizer. (so instead of having it available in January, it didn't arrive until October or so, and by then I guess the DOH figured it was safe since few reports of problems were resported). So we got all sorts of different vaccines from all sorts of countries, but here I got the AZ and our employees, who were lower risk, got the Chinese vaccine, which didn't help much but was better than nothing.

Right now, except for testing everyone before admission to the hospital, and wearing a mask in the bank, the Covid story is pretty well ignored: Latest statistics:

162 new cases and 12 new deaths in the Philippines 

When I got the AZ vaccine, I was aware of the risk of blood clots (that made a lot of countries not give it to the young) but since I am high risk, I figured the cost benefit ratio was okay for my age and comorbidity cohort.

But when it came to the mRNA vaccines, instead of admitting the problem and letting people chose, the story was censored even when experts, not paranoid crazies, tried to raise the question if we should be giving so many shots to low risk types.

Here is one tweet on the thread:

WTF? Censor "true posts which could fuel hesitancy".

If things weren't so polarized, maybe one could have a discussion of such things. 

Fat old ladies with asthma, yes get the shot. Thin male athletes who probably are immunie thanks to the omicron version probably not. And babies? Why?

Censorship is not just bad, but illegal in the USA.

And the hysteria about Trumpieboy and the protest complaining that voter fraud was not investigated was the story for the last two years, but now that Elon Musk is having known liberal reporters investigate Twitter's censorship problem, I suspect more folks will prefer the propaganda of Fox news over the propaganda of the elites who want to guide you in thinking.

One person, reading how the CIA and others manipulated stories to get the correct folks elected in effect quipped: Well, why not? The CIA manipulates elections all over the world, so why not in the USA?

Yes, and one reason that there is so much distrust of the Ukraine narrative is not just the Russian bots, but because the CIA funded the media years ago to overthow a pro Russia president there, and a lot of the money to do this was via Omidyar money.

and just because the Omidyar group funded Ressa and Rappler to oppose Duterte, it's no reason to believe that this was the CIA trying to manipulate the Philippine elections in the same way they did in the Ukraine.

It didn't work because Duterte had grass roots support because cleaned up Davao. 

The anti Duterte English language website Rappler was essentially started with money from the Omidyar group, the same ones behing the press manipulation in the Ukraine years ago... 

But they overlooked one thing: the funding was illegal.

Filipinos love Yanks but not when they are pushed around by outsiders, so Ressa had to pretend it was a gift, and then the gov't said ah and did you pay taxes on it?  And this was spun by the western press as if she was a heroine.

But anyway, on the long twitter thread, they discuss various government funded NGOs, and a disinformation specialist named Renee DiResta 

Matt Taibbi @mtaibbi · 13h 33. This is the Censorship-Industrial Complex at its essence: a bureaucracy willing to sacrifice factual truth in service of broader narrative objectives. It’s the opposite of what a free press does. Matt Taibbi @mtaibbi · 13h 34. Profiles portray DiResta as a warrior against Russian bots and misinformation, but reporters never inquire about work with DARPA, GEC, and other agencies.

In the video below from @MikeBenzCyber , Stamos introduces her as having "worked for the CIA": ...she has become the public face of the Censorship-Industrial Complex, a name promoted everywhere as an unquestioned authority on truth, fact, and Internet hygiene, even though her former firm, New Knowledge, has been embroiled in two major disinformation scandals.

and then up pops this photo: Okay folks nothing to see here. Just move along.

The Hands of Cormac Joyce

 I read the book many many years ago and the film is on TCM, which we don't get in the Philippines, but there is a fuzzy copy HERE with watermark for those of you who want to see this classic story about the Irish fishermen who had the choice to evacuate or stay when a storm hit their island.

It stars Stephen Boyd and Coleeen Dewhurst as the parents.

More about the film here. on the Stephen Boyd Blog.

Stephen plays the father, Cormac Joyce, who is the apple of his son’s eye. A storm is brewing off the coast, and as the islanders flee for the mainland, Cormac is determined to stay. When he injures his hand while trying to pull his curragh ashore, his son decides to stay with his father to protect their home from the storm. The wife also stays and the weather the huge waves of the Atlantic storm together.

We have lived through five or six typhoons, including two bad ones, and the wind is horrific. Luckily we live inland and our house is built of concrete, and is on higher ground (three feet above the road), and not near the river, so the main danger is flying objects or the roof being blown off.  That last one is dangerous for the old wooden traditional homes, or the flimsy houses in our area (we live downtown, not in a gated community), and years ago our chicken houses were flattened in one severe typhoon. Luckily we had just harvested the chickens, so we didn't lose any poultry, but it cost too much to rebuild especially since the relative who ran the place decided to move to the UK and join his wife, a nurse.

Usually the people near the river or on low ground are evacuated: many go to relatives or friend's houses, but some go to the Gym which is the local evacuation center up the street, on higher ground. And yes it floods, so many homes near the river are destroyed, but we only had our house flooded once, with four inches of water. Our neighbors stayed home, but asked if they could move the cars into our meeting room so the engines wouldn't be flooded.

The flooding can be fast: Once Ruby was attending a concert in Manila, and the typhoon was mild and supposed to be south of Manila, but late in the afternoon it changed course, headed north, and got stronger. The flooding was so bad that they couldn't go across the high bridge (30 feet over the river) so took refuge in a gas station/shop. And then the waters got worse, and they had to take refuge on the roof of the shop, since the current was too strong to wade to the nearest two story house fifty feet away. So they spent the night in the wind and rain, and we were worried sick because we couldn't reach her phone. By morning the flood had gone down, the winds had passed, and they contacted us so we had a neighbor pick them up with his truck.

Often the deaths in typhoons are from storm surge, floods, etc. 

which is what happens in this film to the elderly neighbors who refused to leave their home. Sigh.

Ironically, the movie was filmed in Australia and played on the Hallmark Hall of Fame, which before it evolved into Romance central used to have films of classic stories as TV specials.

 

It is based on the short novel by Irish Writer Leonard Wibberley, who is best known for the satire The Mouse That Roared. 

a short preview from You tube. 

One reason I posted about this was not just that it was a good story, but because in these days when I read nonsense about living "simply" or having a carbon free lifestyle, I always shake my head in despair: Because I spent most of my life working in areas where outsiders might think were romantic happy happy indigenous types, but in reality were living a dirt poor existance where only the strong family ties and a moral system that emphasized the family before one's own desires managed to keep one alive in hard times.

and that is the theme of this short film.

lolo would have been 98 today

Crash landing on.... Bollywood?

 BBC has an article about how the popularity of K dramas has soared in India.

They fall in love but must cross several hurdles - including the line that divides their countries - before they can be together.

If you narrated this story to an Indian a few years ago, their first thought would probably have been the 2004 Bollywood film Veer-Zaara... as star-crossed lovers from India and Pakistan, neighbouring countries that share a tense relationship.

That is, until the 2019 Korean drama Crash Landing On You (CLOY) swept in with a similar premise - centred around neighbours South and North Korea - but with wildly different results.

Plot: a spoiled but unwanted step daughter in a rich family is hang gliding and a storm results in her landing in the DMZ, where she is rescued by a North Korean officer who hides her.

It's not just a contrast in politics as it is about the culture clash between affluent south Korea and the less prosperous north.

In contrast to the all too often boring sex scenes that seem to be put into Western movies to waste time so they don't have to write a plot, the K Dramas are usually PG... and unlike the ladies of the Hallmark Dramas, who never seem to worry about family or money, these films resonate with the up and coming middle classes, caught in dilemmas between tradition and modern freedom.

as the BBC notes:

Plot lines in Korean shows and Bollywood films frequently revolve around the impact (family and tradition) has on protagonists - from choosing who they can love, the careers they can pursue, the obligations women have to their husband's household and the social net provided by families.

 A lot of K dramas are now on Netflix, but here in the Philippines we can watch them on the Korean station, or "tagalized" (dubbed in Tagalog) on the local stations.

this is a list of some of the best dramas, and this video has short reviews of some of the best romances. 

Back to mass time

It's Sunday morning, and time to go to church.

Actually, since elders were banned from going inside the church for two years, and then I got Dengue and was too weak to attend, and then I got shingles and the pain medicine knocked me out, I haven't been to church a lot in the last three years.

And no, I don't consider on line services worth it: receiving God in the Eucharist is the center of the Catholic mass, and the rest is just prayers or boring sermons.

Well, anyway, I am now a lot better, so we went to the early mass here in Gapan. 

I go with Kuya, who is half Catholic and half Baptist, but like me not a true believer who just parrots stuff and obeys, but just one who wants to say hi to God.

The 5:30 am mass has a lot of men there, who attend the early service so they can go to work. And the church is full, but not packed like the later services. 

Every week, they have the statue of the week on the side of the altar. Usually I have to look up whose feast day it was, but today it was Jesus with someone kneeling or groveling at his feet. So I checked, and yup, the gospel is about the Transfiguration, where Jesus took a few apostles up a mountain and suddenly turned bright and started talking to two guys who Peter figured out was Moses and Elias, and as usual he started babbling to cover up his nervousness about building some shelters for them at which point they heard a voice and that really freaked them out and they fell on their faces. Then Jesus came up and told them not to be afraid, and everything was back to normal.

My aunt explained that such a miracle was for them to remember when the shit hit the fan and Jesus was killed. Didn't work for Peter and Andrew who fled, but John remembered...

Even though it was 5:30, we did have music and a small choir there. Hey, this is the Philippines. And it was ordinary Filipino style music, but not the loud happy happy praise music like I am hearing right now from the pentecostal church service held in our meeting hall, which is full of young folks who like that kind of thing.

 Garrison Keillor, of Prarie Home Companion, is still on line with a blog.

Last Sunday his essay was about attending mass: although it was at the local Episcopal Cathedral, one that supports peace and justice, and is nice enough to mention it's memorial healing service for the Red Lake school shooting on it's Wikipedia page. The church seems to be high church (aka similar to the Catholic services or that of many Lutheran churches). 

So go and read it with pleasure.

an excerpt:

I remembered as I came into the cathedral that there is no music at the 8 a.m., no chipper Bach chorale to brighten the mood, no rousing opening hymn, just this scattering of folks in the vastness, like the Church in apostolic times, a few believers hiding out in the catacombs, hoping men in heavy armor don’t break in and bust our heads.

I knelt and prayed for my loved ones, that they be spared my anxiety.

..... What I found inspiring were two Scripture readings, one from the prophet Micah, where the reader faced the line, “O my people, remember what happened from Shittim to Gilgal that you may know the saving acts of the Lord,” and she slowed down when she saw “Shittim” and got traction and very carefully pronounced it “shi-team.” I was the only one in the sanctuary immature enough to enjoy this moment. There were no 13-year-old boys there, just me. I could tell from her voice that the reader had been dreading this for an hour, trying to decide between “shy-tim” and “shi-team” and fearing that she’d slip and pronounce it phonetically and a marble angel would fall and crash and red lights would flash and people would require treatment for post-traumatic stress.

And then moments later she read from First Corinthians that we do not find God through wisdom. No, God chose what is foolish to shame the wise, for God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom.

The thought of God’s foolishness is a radical one, seldom mentioned in church, and near me were some highly educated people, including a man who got his Ph.D. in classic philosophy from Harvard and here I sat, a writer of limericks and a lover of juvenile jokes (Knock-knock. “Who’s there?” Eskimo Christians. “Eskimo Christians who?” Eskimo Christians, I’ll tell you no lies.) and when I went forward for Communion I felt foolishly happy.

.....The world is a mess but dread gets us nowhere so cheer up and then go do what you were put here to do. I was put here to cheer you up. So smile.

Duck stamps

 Ann Althouse reminds us that this year is the 80th anniversary of the Duck Stamp.

WTF you might ask? These stamps:

no, duck stamps are not used for postage, but required for hunting permits.

But like a lot of stamps, stamp collectors buy them, and some people buy them because the money used to buy the stamps is used to buy land for wildlife habitat:

Friends of the Stamp webpage discusses the history of the stamp

They explain: because of overhunting, diversion of wetlands to farming, etc. migratory birds were being threatened, so the government decided to step in and preserve some land for them. The problem? How to fund these purchases.

Voila: Make hunters pay for it by requiring a stamp on their hunting permits.

More about the stamps here.

they are not merely stamps: They have become a collectors item and there is competition to get your design on the stamp.

for movie trivia buffs, you might have run across duck stamps in the movie Fargo:

,,,(in) the 1996 crime-film classic Fargo, you may have noticed a minor stamp-related subplot: Norm Gunderson, husband of main character Marge Gunderson, is hard at work on a painting that he’ll enter into a stamp design competition (he comes in second place). 

there is even a movie about the contest: The Million Dollars Duck Film : available on Amazon Prime:

Animal planet version here:

Here is a short interview with the three brothers who have had their art chosen for the famous stamp:

 

Philippine history

 

the history of these atrocities is often minimized (a lot of articles insist the deaths were from shelling, while minimizing the deliberate killing of civilians out of anger by the Japanese soldiers).

Similarly, the fact that most of those dying in the Bataan Death march were Philippine scouts, not Americans, is often overlooked in the US version of history.

During the Japanese occupation, some politicians and businessmen tried to cooperate, hoping for independence, but found they were just being used.

Many young men including my husband's brother and cousin, joined local guerilla units and hid in the nearby mountains. 

Those caught, or suspected of hiding or withholding information, were often tortured and killed. Our cousin was captured and tortured to death in the notorious Red House. which I was shown when I moved here. The family of that cousin had a shrine to him that included a thank you letter from President Truman.

Luckily, Lolo's brother who fought with the Guerillas throughout the war, got away and survived the war.

At the end of the war, when Mac Arthur encouraged Philippinos to join in the fight, my husband, a teenager, joined his brother but he claims that by then the only think he did was patrol the streets.

The killing did not end after the Manila atrocities: The film mentions the Japanese who fled into the mountains north of here. What is not mentioned was that the soldiers continued to fight and many became isolated from their units and starved. Many of these soldiers would kill villagers to get food, and so often when they attempted to surrender, the locals did not believe them and killed them.

One trivia fact: The Mexican airforce who had expertise in mountain flying were used in this battle. This article gives some idea about this little known part of the war.

History of Hospice care

Back in the 1950s, My mother used to sew incontinence pads for the local cancer home run by the Hawthorne sisters: soft cloth on the outside but layers of newspapers within. We now use blue pads of course, which is a godsend for people with incontinence.

Another difference: back then, people were not told they had cancer, and often died in the hospital, mainly because they required IV or IM narcotics which could not be given at home. On the other hand, keeping people alive with tubes wasn't done then either.

 The Cancer home was run by a group of Dominican sisters in an order founded by the daughter of writer Hawthorne: So they are known as the Hawthorn Dominicans.

Plough Magazine has an article on their work in hospice care for cancer patients.

in Hawthorne, New York, the Dominican congregation of St. Rose of Lima lives a quieter charism. The sisters nurse terminal cancer patients. Their community was founded in 1900 by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop (the daughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne). Lathrop converted to Catholicism and took the religious name Mother Mary Alphonsa. She began by caring for incurable cancer patients on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and the congregation carries on that work today, outside the city.

Hospice is often run by people of faith, who don't see death as the ultimate evil but as something we all have to face before being taken to our reward. Hence the emphasis by the sisters in the article, who not only are experts on comfort care but people of deep faith who care for people and prepare them for their death.

,,,Sr. Stella Mary was nervous when she began working with patients, but older sisters gave her two pieces of advice. “Remember, you are first a religious.” She would be trained in basic medical care, but her first work would always be to pray and love the patients. Nursing was a way to express that love.

The other piece of advice was more practical – all the patients are terminal. She wouldn’t be a surgeon whose smallest gesture could save a life or end it. Everyone came to the sisters to prepare to die, and hopefully to die well.

Rose Lathrop was not only the daughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne, but an author herself. Her sad marriage and death of her child influenced her to convert to Catholicism and become interested in social causes of the poor in NYC

And she was also influenced by the suffering and death from cancer of her fellow poet Emma Lazerus, whose poem graces the Statue of Liberty.

From TheWorkingNurse: 

Becoming an oncology nurse was a brave decision because cancer was a highly stigmatized disease, associated with “bad heredity,” poor hygiene and immoral behavior. There was also a popular belief, including among some scientists of the time, that cancer was cotagious.

She set up a small hospital in the slums and gradually her and her helpers took vows, first as lay women but then the group evolved to a congragation of nuns.

Howevere, the modern hospice movement owes it's origin to a pious Anglican British woman, Cicely Saunders:

 

While working at St Joseph’s, Cicely devoted herself to establishing a new kind of hospice that combined compassionate care with medical care. In 1967, her vision became a reality when St Christopher’s Hospice in Sydenham, London, opened. St Christopher’s became widely recognised as the first modern hospice because it was the first to combine teaching and clinical research, pain and symptom control with compassionate care.

With all the news of President Jimmy Carter going into hospice care, Hospice is again in the news.

NYTimes article here (behind paywall) gives a good description of how hospices work. 

Hospice teams provide crucial emotional and logistical support, as well. Social workers might assist in setting up a will, power of attorney or funeral arrangements. Spiritual care providers — religious or nondenominational — can help a person come to terms with the end of life through prayer or facilitating conversations with loved ones.

Modern hospice care often stresses home care. The problem? Often the care is overwhelming to caregivers, but hiring full time caregivers and inpatient hospice care is expensive. And with the increased number of people without family, more will need this option.

Sigh. 

another problem: Many people no longer have a religious outlook on life and death, and want to control it and are vulnerable to those who have another agenda, that of killing the aged and inconvenient.

Think I'm wrong? Look at Canada, where so called aid in dying went from killing those terminally ill to killing the handicapped and even poor people who can't get help within a a few years.

or look at the numerous popular films, tv shows, and books that have pushed the idea that killing a person, often one who has other options to live long with proper help, as the only and best way to care for them.

These people alas not only manipulate the media, but alas this mindset has long been pushed by teachers at major medical schools and in both ethical and mainstream medical journals for at least 30 years.

and the coming danger: The infiltration of the hospice movement, which traditionally was run by religious minded folk,  by the cynical and stealthy pro death euthanasia types, who push aid in dying as the best way to go (and never mind noticing that it saves money for the insurance companies/government who are too cheap to offer the more expensive alternative of inpatient hospice). 

Again, you might think I am being paranoid, but anyone who was familiar with the so called bioethics jounals know this is true.Thirty years ago,  when I helped coauthor an article in a medical journal about this, I did some research and I saw how a lot of journals were quietly pushing both medical rationing for the old  and the idea of compassionate killing as part of a doctor's job.

 Indeed, many medical schools today do not use the Hippocratic oath, that forbids the taking of life, but instead use more modern versions, such as the Oath of Dr Lasagna (written in 1964) that includes this line: 

Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty.  

arrogant prick. Oh my, sorry...

At the same time, Soros' Open Society was funding  programs to "discuss" end of life care in public meetings, and they included people who had written pro euthanasia articles in ethical journals (something that was rarely noticed by the MSM articles about these programs).

And yes, political correctness was alive and well back then: One of my friends, a teacher of bioethics at a prominent Boston Medical school who opposed such things was essentially marginalized and ridiculed. 

I shudder at what might be going on now in the good old USA (I live in the Philippines). 

When I read this stuff I remember what one of my Objibwe patients took their beloved aunt to a specialist. Instead of examining her and recommending medicine for her behavior problems. Instead, he spent an hour trying to persuade her family to remove her feeding tube. When the family left the office, one told the doctor: That's the difference between you white folks and us: We don't kill our old people.

These pro death folks are not religious believers, but the problem is that most ordinary people are. So ordinary people need to be reeducated: which is why you see so many sentimental scenerios of killing the sick and handicapped in the MSM, films and best selling novels. 

Then they spread confusion:  they pretend the idea that refraining from extraordinary treatment is the same as killing someone. 

And ordinary people who don''t see this as manpulation so believe them. 

Worse, it leads the very pious and minorities who distrust doctors/the medical establishment to condemn anyone who says it's okay to refrain from extra-ordinary treatment.

Catholic ethicists know the idea that it is ethical to refrain from extraordinary treatment has a long history: for example, they often cite a Spanish admiral who refused leg amputation, pointing to the fact that refusing amputation, especially in the days before antibiotics, could save a life but leave somone crippled.

Nowadays, extraordinary treatment might be dialysis for the very elderly, using a respirator after a stroke or head injury, or tube feeding.

Food and water via a tube used to be considered extraordinary treatment, and still is for people dying where the bodily functions have shut down or where there is a severe stroke.

But in these days when tube feeding is often started for convenience of the nursing home, and then stopped for the convenience of the family or as stealth euthanasia, the line has blurred: Hence JP2 insisted removing the feeding tubes may now no longer be considered ethical in these cases.

Sigh.

Oh NO: Bad Bullwinkle

 From PhysOrg:

Moose could play a big role in global warming

why? Because Moose in Norway eat sapling trees. So after the area is clear cut for timber, the regrowth of the forest doesn't happen because the moose eat the saplings.

and so the saplings don't grow up to be trees, which bind up carbon dioxide.

but the moose eat mostly hardwood type trees, so the pine etc. can grow, which of course helps the forest industry (one can almost hear the autistic high school drop out cry HOW DARE YOU).

so maybe that part about binding up carbon dioxide is wrong, because it ignores that maybe pine also bind up Carbon. 

So they changed the subject: instead we will condemn the moose for harming biodiversity.

so what is the plan?

"We don't only regulate the amount of animals, we very carefully regulate the proportion of females, males and calves. So there's a stronger management for moose than for most livestock in Norway," he said. That means it should be possible to find the right balance between moose numbers and how forested lands are managed.

translation: KILL THE MOOSE.

Sorry Bullwinkle.

Bullwinkle of course is an American moose, and one wonders about the forest land of northern Minnesota or Maine, where moose still exist in the wild.

While one hears about the Amazon forest being cut down, one does not hear about another story: the reforestation of NE USA. As (poorly productive) farms were abandoned during the depression in the NE USA , they have now gone back to forest. Indeed, when hiking, one often finds apple trees, chimneys, and other evidence that it was once farmland.

So now the Moose are finding more areas to thrive. I remember years ago when I worked in a remote Pennyslvania town, and we had tourists for two reasons: One, a lax divorce law(long story) and two: Moose gazing visitors because the moose had moved back south into these forested areas.

I should explain to Non Yanks: the original Bullwinkle J Moose was a TV character:

Covid conspiracy theories now being confirmed

 the claim that that Covid came from a lab leak was believed by ordinary folk (and Trumpieboy) since the start of the epidemic, but any discussion of this was censored in the social media.

But now that MSM and government sites are saying the same thing, does this mean we can discuss this?

and what is the implications to ordinary folk trusting institutions?

....

as the discussion notes: everyone knew it, but it was not allowed to be discussed.

part of the problem was how the government tried to censor everything., not just the wuhan lab leak but how society should respond to it shutdown full or partial?

The pesky first amendment stopped them from doing it officially but now we are finding out how government agencies used twitter to do this, making one suspect that other social media sites were also pressured to censor badthink by government agencies.

Questions about the response to the epidemic that was not done but should have been discussed:

 Should we balance the problem of being infected with the need of the elderly to have family visiting? 

Should we allow the use of a medicine with few side effects like HCQ or Ivermectin  or Vitamin D or herbal medicines, or should we remove the medical license of doctors who advise for such use? 

What about the shutdown of society: we face economic depression that  will probably kill people, so should that be limited and how should that be done?  

V

the main problem? The federal government worked with the social media to censor alternative theories being discussed. And now that this is being exposed in the twitterfile investigation, the twitter file expose is being ignored by the MSM.

what needs to be discussed now that the pandora's box of silence is being shattered:

One: the coverup of the Wuhan lab leak, and if the US funding of the Wuhan lab was the reason the government health officials went along with the lies.

Two: The implications of the Wuhan lab leak coverup by the WHO. 

Three: The fact that Trumpieboy closed the borders to try to stop it from coming to the USA and was demonized because the WHO and CHina at the time insisted it was not infectious. Were the facts here (racism charges) politicized to destroy Trump?... heck, even now the fact Chna won't let the lab be investigated is blamed on the fact that Trump did this, and made them mad, not because they want to deny they had a lab accident and covered it up to save face. this has geopolitical implications with a China that is becoming more aggressive against East Asian countries. Eight part podcast on this starts here:

p>

Four: the shut down of society which only now is being recognized as causing more deaths (from other diseases that were not diagnosed or treated properly, from being unemployed, from depression and other social results of isolation). Question: is the despair from social isolation have anything to do with the 100 thousand Fentanyl deaths?

So why wasn't these risks from the shutdown of society allowed to be discussed i.e. the cost benefit ratio, especially as those at high risk received the vaccine (which worked and saved lives), meaning that the risk had gone down? This was especially true as the milder Omicron version started to go around, and probably induced herd immunity.

Five": the suspicion now being pushed that the economic shutdown shows that the public will obey the changes that are needed for the Great Reset. Is there truth in this conspiray theory?

Six: the implications of freedom of speech that can be extended to other matters, such as the censorship of Harry Potter because the author dared to say men and women exists, or the censorship of books (the latest: James Bond, who they just noticed is a male chauvenist pig, duh ). 

Seven: What happens when AI becomes politicized?

...

What I worry is that the mistrust of science and government because of the lies, censorship and over reaction will make people sceptical of a really dangerous epidemic: and the worry that Bird flu or a similar disease will break out into a really dangerous epidemic, (probably not says Dr. C):

 

But if bird flu or a similar virus pops up that could  cause an epidemic, the problem is that no one will obey.

and it could have other political implications if those who didn't kowtow to the science or woke push back.

LINK

Not good news for the Democrats. Sigh.

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

Update:

History behind Jewel in the Palace

 if you watched the Korean series Jewel in the Palace, it is a fictional version about a woman who became a female physician to the king. here is her real story of Jang Geum:

now available on Amazon prime, but we watched it years ago via a local streaming service. 

She starts out as a cook, so a lot of the stories have food preparation as part of the story, and they stress the link behind diet and health.

but the last third of the very long drama series is about her desire to practice medicine, and how her skills resulted in her becoming one of the physicians who treated the king.

Big Bang Goes Bust?

There are stories out there that galaxies seen by the Webb Telescope mean that the big bang theory may not be true. PhysOrg explains

All of Erica's galaxies look like saucers, except one. I stare at the little red dot on the screen. That is no UFO. And then it hits me: This is something very different. Much more important.

 Read the whole thing.

Summary here: 

scientists are going back to the drawing board to figure out if the observations are true, or if they just have to reconfigure their theories.

..

.....,more here:

those dangerous Catholics

 

The PC ruin everything

 

Musical Interlude of the day

 

...headsup from Garrison Keillor

Forget the zombies: iRobot is coming

Here in the Philippines we aren't too worried about the modern world, although I must confess we have paying via our phones at the mall and the local McDonalds has a kiosk to order stuff.

So should we worry?

I wonder if this might be behind Musk threatening to remove starlink from the drones attacking Russia.

Now that I am almost over my long Dengue mindcloudiness it looks like I might have to look into this.

Along with a lot of other things on my list.

Musical ilnterlude of the day

 

Heh. the anti war left still lives

 

.....

of course the censorship of the story is Trumpieboy's fault because he made them mad or something.

Covid origin coverup? You mean China Lies?

Nature Magazine discusses the coverup of the origin of the Covid epidemic.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has quietly shelved the second phase of its much-anticipated scientific investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, citing ongoing challenges over attempts to conduct crucial studies in China, Nature has learned....

But without access to China, there is little that the WHO can do to advance the studies, says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada. “Their hands are really tied.”

the Nature article then goes on to blame Trumpieboy for saying in early 2020 that it came from the Wuhan lab, which they say increased tension between the west and China and that was why China refused or interfered with scientific investigation

The original investigation said it probably wasn't a lab leak without mentioning that China was stonewalling the investigation so that they really didn't investigate it's origin. So the follow up investigation never really happened because China refused to let them investigate.

Gerald Keusch, associate director of the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory Institute at Boston University in Massachusetts, says the origins investigation was “poorly handled by the global community. It was poorly handled by China. It was poorly handled by the WHO.” The WHO should have been relentless in creating a positive working relationship with the Chinese authorities, says Keusch; if it was being stonewalled, it should have been honest about that.

Translation:  it was Trump's fault for making them mad by saying it was probably a lab leak: something that everyone but the experts figured out by then, and Trump was essentially the boy who dared to say the Emperor has no clothes.

 The problem about the wet market origin has a problem because the virus hasn't been found in wild animals, which is what you would see if it was a natural outbreak that originated in animals. And China stopping the investigation made it impossible to prove it came from the lab.

 Dr C comments:

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

Now they came for the BFG

 someone in a podcast was saying that one needs to collect paper books, not ebooks, to preserve the book before the censors destroy them.

I thought that sounded a bit paranoid but now I am reading that someone decided to censor Ronald Dahl's children's books to make them politically correct and not hurt the feelings of the kids.

AnnAlthouse has examples... 

'I’d knock her flat' becomes the much more diplomatic 'I’d give her a right talking to,' for instance." "'You saucy beast!' becomes 'You trickster!'

 Best comment to her blogpost:

J L Oliver said...

The queen has declared, “Let them read about sex acts and gender unicorns! But save them from the saucy beast!”

This is on top of censoring Dr. Seuss for racism.

so wait till they come for Shakespeare. Oh someone already has.

Mr Bowdler, as in Bowdlerism:

verb (used with object),

to expurgate (a written work) by removing or modifying passages considered vulgar or objectionable.

So even in those days, there were Karens willing to censor stuff they did not approve of.

Or maybe I should say Henriettas. From the ChapelHillBookBlog:

in his book, Dr. Bowdler’s Legacy: A History of Expurgated Books in England and America, Noel Perrin convincingly argues that the 1807 edition was actually edited by Thomas’s sister, Henrietta Bowdler (1750-1830), whose name was omitted from the title page.

By the time the first edition of The Family Shakespeare appeared, Henrietta was already a published author and a well-known bluestocking. Perrin estimates that Henrietta excised about ten percent of Shakespeare’s words, taking special care to eliminate any hint of religious irreverence.

yes. the more things change the more they stay the same.

cartoon by Dahl 

 -----------------------------

Update: it's worse in the UK where an anti terrorism taxpayer funded group has a list of bad books:

From the

UKMail:

Yes Minister and The Thick of It were among the satire programmes flagged by beleaguered counter-terror Prevent scheme for 'encouraging far-right sympathies'

And now they came for comedies like Yes Minister, and classics like Shakespeare, the Lord of the Rings, 1984,Chaucer, Milton, Tennyson, Kipling and Edmund Burke. 

 The report even highlighted the BBC’s 1990s political thriller House Of Cards, John le Carre’s seminal spy trilogy Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and Sharpe, the ITV drama set in the Napoleonic wars.

Other books, shows and films on list Beowulf The Canterbury Tales The Complete Works Of William Shakespeare Paradise Lost The Four Feathers Lady Hamilton The Dam Busters The Bridge On The River Kwai The Great Escape Zulu Civilisation Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy House Of Cards Trilogy Sharpe Ray Mears’ Bushcraft Survival David Starkey’s Monarchy.

It said the works of fiction were ‘key texts’ for ‘white nationalists/supremacists’.

Like these two:

 

 headsup Instapundit.

Puppies

 three months old and here, people take them home as soon as they are weaned, so two have been taken and another two will go later this week.

Alas, one seems to have partial paralysis of his hind legs, but can scoot across our tile floors okay, but we will probably have to keep him. 

Now JFK is a bigoted enemy of the state

 As I wrote in an earlier post: Christians have indeed started rebellions against the state when the state persecuted them and shut down their churches.

Which is why the FBI memo against Trad Catholics is so worrisome. Yes, there are a few out there who are crazy, but hey, don't we all have crazy uncles who believe such stuff? And calling everyone in the family, or who follow a certain religious tradition, similarly conspiracy theorists/enemies of the state is worse than wrong: It is stupid, because it makes one think that maybe crazy Uncle Joe might be a bit right.

Another problem? The FBI could infiltrate these groups and try to inspire violence, again to discredit the group.

Indeed, already the Catholic bishops defended the FBI 

“Let me first be clear: anyone who espouses racism or promotes violence is rejecting Catholic teaching on the inherent dignity of each and every person.

This in itself if troubling, because Racism and the promotion of (physical) violence is almost absent from the Trad sites I view.

 There are websites who oppose the NWO and use anti Semetic language to criticize ethnic non believing Jews pushing the NWO's ideas. This needs to be criticized, but racism per se is absent.

However, in a time when JKRowling has been accused of bigotry and inspiring violnce for saying women are women and men are men, it is easly to pretend that saying the modern equivalent of "but it does move" when traditional Catholics write about the Christian ideas of sexuality and family: something that the PC insists is a form of violence that needs to be censored.

It has been said that Catholic law is strict, but God's mercy is larger, so there is a toleration for sinful behavior in Catholicism, since we are all sinners who need to repent. 

Take the Philippines, where I live. Filipinos are often called "gay friendly", meaning that hey if a person is gay, or trans, or likes to cross dress, or has a second wife on the side, well, no big problem. 

Just like Americans accepting our crazy Uncle Joes who think Roosevelt was Jewish or that UFO lizard people run the world, they are accepted as part of the family and we love them even when we don't agree with their views or lifestyle.

That is what being a Catholic means.

But this doesn't mean staying quiet when groups funded by people planning to destroy the family pushing the gender stuff on our kids in school, and letting boys claiming to be trans rape one's daughter in the restroom, and then having the FBI sicced on you for daring to say this.

In the USA, anti Catholic bigotry is the norm, because too many read the anti Catholic screeds of the reformation pushers and believe them.

Which is why JFK openly confronted this prejudice in his speech to a group of ministers in Texas:

>

because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected President, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured--perhaps deliberately, in some quarters less responsible than this. So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again--not what kind of church I believe in, for that should be important only to me--but what kind of America I believe in. 

 I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute--where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom to vote...

and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him. 

....For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew--or a Quaker--or a Unitarian--or a Baptist. 

It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim- -but tomorrow it may be you--until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.

Ordinary Americans would say that this idea of separation of church and state should be the norm, and his words should be remembered.

However, in these days that is not true:

Politico in 2020 lamented the speech. 

After telling the story of how JFK had to face open bigotry and lies against the Catholic church and Catholic believers, the magazine didn't stop there.

The article goes on to lament that this speech "marginalized" religion and led to the Christian right movement in the Republican party.

This completely misunderstand Catholicism and how Catholics show their beliefs.

When JFK had his brother quietly arrange Martin Luther King be left out of a jail where his life was in danger, he did not give a "Jesus" speech to show off his piety: He just quietly did this.

And his Catholicism inspired his compassion for the coalminers of West Virginia, the need for decent schools in the slums of the large cities, and the need for a social welfare policy to prevent severe poverty that was a major problem in cities and rural areas alike.

Catholicism was behind both his distrust of communism and communist propaganda, but also inspired his non violent response to the Cuban missile crisis, and behind his reaching out to Russia to make peace afterward.

That is how Catholics (and many other Christians) do it. 

 They don't quote the bible like the Religious right, and they don't demonstrate and show off their piety as a SJW on the left. 

They just quietly work to fix things: sending a neighbor in need food when they are sick, offering to work at the food bank on their day off from work, homeschooling their kids and the kids of their neighbors.

Picketing abortion mills is done by such people, because they want to show there mothers that there is an alternative to the decision that many chose from family pressure or from despair. 

But what doesn't get publicity is the many taking into their homes a teenage girl who wants to keep her baby but needs a place to stay and someone to help her learn how to care for an infant.

The problem is that nowadays, any believer who openly claims they follow the beliefs of their religion and dare to publish it on the social media, are not just going to be called Hitler by the twitersphere mob, but could be in real trouble of losing their job for not bowing to the woke.

and that is the implications behind this notorious memo.

War opposition means give peace a chance.

 Many years ago, as a kid I read an interview with JFK that included a question about the Women strike for Peace which was essentially a pro communist group.

I was astonished to read JFK said he was happy that this group was out there, because it helped counter the pressure on him by the warmongers in the Pentagon who pressured him to make war.

Which is why, although I don't believe the JFK conspiracy theories, sometimes I do wonder.... so why are the documents released a couple months ago still have redacted areas?

Similarly, I supported the War in VietNam because as a Catholic we were aware of the massacres by the communists in North VietNam, and believed that a corrupt government that was a bit of a tyranny a bit better than a murderous totalitarian one, which is what happened after the US left. But the lies on both sides resulted in the debacle that led to the Chinese ethnics fleeing on boats and a lot of people dead in retraining camps, and even a man made famine that made the Vietnamese leaders decide communism might not work.

So here we have Jordan Peterson and Tulsi Gabbard discussing the war in the Ukraine. 

.....

then we have Elon Musk, who gave them Starlink to defend themselve against the Russian invasion (at a time when most of the western countries figured that Ukraine would fall in a week, so dithered about helping them).

Musk says he plans to stop Starlink from being available to send drones to be aggressive against the Russians. The news reports are vague, and the twittersphere is going nuts calling him Hitler, but I suspect his is trying to stop escalation of the war with drones that could attack the Russian mainland.

as a result, the twittersphrere is full of talking parrots calling him Hitler because he won't toe the line.

'

But Musk is on record at stopping the war and making peace by letting Russian keep the areas of the Ukraine that are full of Russians, or the Crimea, which actually used to belong to the Ottoman empire, and long has supplied grain to the Middle East.

So Turkey, a member of NATO, also would like to make peace, but never mind.

and now with the earthquake destroying part of Turkey and Syria, spending money to continue a war that is spending money on destruction when money for emergency help is needed.

There is going to be a man made famine in the next year: because of the war on fossil fuel will make food more expensive, and the war on the Russians in the Ukraine is making potash and natural gas more expensive, not to mention slowing the export of grain to the middle East.

So who is saying give peace a chance?

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they catch hell from both sides.