Kuya is busy harvesting the rice, and last night, he lamented on the difficulty of making a profit this harvest.
He knows that our profit will be eaten up by increased expenses (high diesel prices to run the farm equipment and higher fertilizer prices, even though we mainly use organic, that price has soared too).
Awhile back Huawei wanted to put 5G antennas on our land, and he refused. But now we are short of money (the check paying for the last harvest bounced, and the buyer fled the country so we are out of six months of income. Welcome to the third world).
So now he is being told that growing rice is going to be discouraged because it produces greenhouse gases.
I've discussed this in the past: When you flood the rice paddies, the weeds rot and produce methane, even with the newer dry method that irrigates a lot less produces less methane but produces more nitrous oxide, another greenhouse gas.
BAD RICE!
To complicate matters, thanks to land reform years ago, farmers now own their traditional plots. But their kids are moving to the cities, so don't want to farm, (which is why we subcontract and are using more machinery, whereas twenty years ago our farmers still harvested by hand Next step: machine planting. Not there yet, but maybe soon. And with more investment, we could get three crops a year instead of two.)
So if they discourage growing rice in the rice growing region of Luzon, what should we do?
In other words, instead of investing in more hydro electric plants, investing in geothermal energy (Like Iceland), or using local coal or using the natural gas in the west Philippine sea for electricity, the idea is to take rice land and put large solar panels out to get electricity for nearby Manila.
So anyway, Kuya is getting inquiries about selling some of our rice land to put solar panels on them instead of growing rice.
Well, this explains the thugs threatening our farmers and threatening our cook trying to find where we live, saying they want Kuya to sell our plots of land.
Sigh.
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Update: Even Martha Stewart is warning you about the upcoming shortage of rice. LINK
it blames the weather, but bad weather is common: What is going on now is a perfecgt storm of bad weather, sick farmers, and the high price of growing rice (diesel and fertilizer prices soaring).
not everything is glum: Joy is supervising a course in agriculture, teaching the kids of local farmers to manage the farm by teaching skills in accounting and business.
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another minor observation: Joy had a cold and had pink eye with it (conjunctival irritation). she wasn't very sick. Then our maid got the same symptoms. And several people came here asking for help to pay for eyedrops.
GetReligionblog reports that the Anglican bishops in Africa have rejected the leadership of the bishop of Canterbury, essentially saying the see of St Augustine is empty. (St Augustine of Canterbury evangelized the Anglo Saxons and reestablished Christianity in England. The See refers to the seat/location i.e. area governed by the bishop).
the push for modernists to take over mainline churches has pretty well done so in the USA, but not in these churches in Africa and Asia.
A similar fight will happen in the Catholic church of course: the Pope's political correctness in looking the other way on moral issues and heresy while pushing liberation theology and trendy green initiatives that will make poor people stay poor (read live their wonderful back breaking hunger filled traditional lifetsyle) has resulted in a deluge of Christians in Latin America and the Philippines becoming good Evangelical or Pentocostal Christians.
Lots of videos out there by people who make a living off of conspiracy theories pretending E.T.s built the pyramids,
One can just laugh them off.
But when professors insist that Africans did this, there is a very real fear of being canceled by the elite white Karens if you deny this.
well, the Egyptians aren't the only ones who get annoyed.
....
The Mayans and South Americans who built these pyramids are still around today, and include many immigrants to the USA who are lumped together as "Hispanic", which ignores that the culture is mixed Spanish/AmerIndian.
the history of Indians as seen by the average Yank often means the movies about the tribes of the plains, and that story ignores the civilized tribes of the Mound builders and in the southern USA, many of whom were forced off their land to resettle in Oklahoma.
PBS also has this history
a reminder: They were not killed deliberately by the Conquistadors, or by superior arms of the Europeans, but because they lacked immunity to European and African diseases like smallpox, influenza, TB, hepatitis, etc.
Could such a thing happen in today's world? Alas Yes.
and that is why the Johns Hopkins institutions hold scenerios of how should the world respond to infectious disease, be it a terrorist attack with smallpox or other pathogens such as the emergence of a new SARS like virus (e.g. Covid 2) or a more virulent influenza (e.g. bird flu).
These conferences are essentially the same as war games that my National Guard unit used to hold, or having the hospital or EMS system hold a drill to see if people are prepared for an emergency (tornado, airplane crash, oil refinery fire, etc).
One of the saddest stories of the Covid epidemic is that the conspiracy theorists have decided that because these drills were held, that they were not practice drills but plans to take over the world by the evil powers that run the world.
Given the plans of the globalists, one can suspect they saw the actual epidemic as an opportunity to grab power, but the conspiracy theory ignores that the good guys are behind these plans, and many good guys are making the vaccines that saved millions of lives, not just of covid but of yellow fever, cholera, dipheria, polio, typhoid etc...... and they are preparing for future epidemics, hoping that the mRNA, and other newer vaccine technologies that will enable vaccines to stop the next epidemic, that will surely occur...
I read Ann Althouse mainly to see what the inteligencia are doing. Usually I don't read the entire article because simply I don't care: it is not my society, and has little to do with the patients I cared for, and like many peasants who look askance at the elite for lamenting their troubles, I remember what my oldest adopted son said about one such book: Mom why is she complaining? She always had enough to eat.
And today, like in many days, some of the articles Ms Althouse links to have the underlying theme as freedom vs society.
Nearly three in five teenage girls reported feeling 'persistent sadness' in 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the highest ratio in a decade. Whichever susceptibilities they are born into and whatever pain they’re feeling in the world, girls clearly seem to be taking it out on themselves. We need to ask very seriously why."
a lot of them are depressed because their parents are messed up or divorced, or sometimes because the parents pressure them to be perfect, and anorexia (and suicide) is one way to retain that control.
This is not limited to American society of course: medieval virgins went bonkers, saw visions and starved themselves to death, and toward the end of the Tale of the Gengi, one of the characters starves herself to death to appease the gods so her father will be saved from Buddhist hell (her excuse, but inreality it is so she won't be forced into a loveless marriage).
And don't forget raging hormones of teenagers and the chemicals in the envoronment (lead, heavy metals, prozac, birth control pills, and of course phytoestrogens).
But again the idea behind the article seems to be bad society (we have to destroy all the rules and make it more inclusive etc. and then these girls will be okay)
His films are known for their eccentricity and unique visual and narrative styles. They often contain themes of grief, loss of innocence, and dysfunctional families. Cited by some critics as a modern-day example of the work of an auteur, three of Anderson's films have appeared in BBC Culture's 2016 poll of the greatest films since 2000.
You know, I've heard about most of his films but didn't watch any: They seem to be about the "Belly button gazing" narcissistic type films that I find boring but win oodles of awards. And if Wikipedia is to be believed, a lot of the audiences who didn't rush to see them agree with me.
then there is an article discussing if one works for meaning and creativity. Sounds interesting, but a lot of folks work because they are supporting their family.
(I) felt that was imposed on us, which, for me, never felt authentic. And I don’t think I’m the only one thinking that.... It’s just nice to explore something that exists in me but I had never explored on the ice before."
I am reminded of the line in Out of Africa, where Blixen finds her husband decided to grow coffee instead of what she had planned: The next time you decide to do something, do it with your own money.
She wants to express herself? Fine. Do it with your own money, and stop trying to destroy the beauty of dance on ice (where most ordinary folks love to watch dance, since classical dance is not found much in modern culture). Nor, of course, is her idea original: A couple films touted the same gender destroying ideas, but they were boring and I can't be bothered looking up their names.
Is she wanting to express herself, or is she looking for approval by the woke, or is she just want join the PC movement to ridicule those non bohemians in the audience who still believe male and females pair bond via courtship rituals like dancing, and the go on to marry and start families?
the phrase "go woke, get broke" is real.
And having another girl lift you up you are risking the broke part if she drops you... unless she is a he who decided he is a girl of course, then they still have muscles and the strength to do this.
Sorry: I am being snotty.
Then Althouse links to an article by Charles Blow, about creativity... All I know about Blow is that he is an intellectual and that he is a big shot in intellectual urban circles ...Blow writes:
I want freedom in all things: thinking, working, loving and living. That’s one reason I look forward to becoming one of those men with the quirky suspenders, bow ties and orange socks. I’ve often been delighted by how older men lean into sartorial whimsy.... They return to that magic that we all enjoyed as children.
and Althouse comments:
I don't really understand it. If you "want freedom in all things: thinking, working, loving and living," why wait to express yourself? It sounds as though you want the cover of age. What's the freedom in doing something only when you think other people will think that what you do doesn't matter?
Again, this assumes that destroying rules leads to freedom, but it also assumes that art if about destroying rules and destroying normality.
In most of the societies where I have worked, people are not seen as isolated individuals who should be free of all restraints, but as part of society and part of the family. And your actions are limited by internal rules: what in the Philippines is called Hiya, customs and rules that enable you to live together, because in poor countries, if you are alone, you will literally die of starvation.
Ironically, even our baclas and tomboys and sex workers are still part of the family if they follow these cultural rules, whereas if you add drugs into the stresses of a changing society, you get collapse, because drug seeking behavior becomes stronger than your conscience. Hence, the phrase Walan Hiya for those without shame.
Ironically, despite all the calls to destroy the rules because "multiculturalism", a lot of these rules (in various variations) are the norm all over the world, at least in areas where people live, not in those who pretend to speak for their own native culture while instead spouting cliches of leftist intellectuals.
In contrast to most cultures, where family is important and where denying your own wishes so that the family can survive, American culture stresses individual freedom over cooperation and traditional rules.
Uh, you need both, and one of the problems of cancel culture is that you no longer are allowed to say that.
Cancel culture posits a dualism that you either have to chose their rejection of the norm, i.e. anarchy/no rules or end up in a rigid society with no freedom and being called a nazi or racist or whatever.
Nonsense.
this film that questions that idea, which was what we were taught in college in the 1960s. Ironically, the film was made by Chuck Jones, whose film creations are part of culture and watched by a lot more people than Anderson who is touted above. (hint: BeepBeep).
,,,,
for a deeper intellectual discussion of this issue:
this all started 100 plus years ago with the pre WWI avant garde, who rejected the vocation of the artist was to show beauty, and changed to the idea that the vocation of the artist was to destroy normality.
It says a lot that Roger Scruton got canceled by the UK for his ideas, and his classic BBC special on why beauty matters is hard to find on the internet but you can still find it on Vimeo:
Dr. C has a short video summarizing the US Senate report on the origin of the Wuhan virus.
I'd say that the press will ignore this becaue Republicans, but the Senate is controlled by the Democrats, and of course, they finally have recognized a lot of Chinese aggression going on and are starting to gear up on anti Chinese propaganda in case the US has to go to war.
He mentions that maybe it wasn't released via a lab accident, but because an employee was taking the infected animals to resell for money instead of disposing them safely.
This is alas believable: in the Philippines we have to watch out for "double dead meat", where sick animals or animals that died of disease are sold to people instead of destroyed.
And that is the real worry about bird flu: because if you think all those millions of infected chickens/ducks/ quail are being destroyed without someone stealing a coupld to eat or to sell, you are naive.
Here is the video.
...
a lot of this coverup is blamed on China's need to "save face", but of course, if you watched the miniseries Chernobyl, you might recognize that it was because living in communism where lies were all around you and the "story" was more important than the facts, then you might recognize the pattern.
and given the US coverup of the big pharm covid stuff, including gain of function funding via Dr. Fauci, there is enough blame to go around.
Luckily we got the big generator going, since both of my small generators need to be fixed.
Why do I have two small generators? Well I bought one for when the large generator is on the blink, or when it was being used at the farm, mainly to run our airconditioner in the afternoon.
But then when the big generator went on the blink and they needed electricity for the farm, they "borrowed" it for so long I just went out and bought a back up one.
I will have to get them fixed, but I budget for extras, and last week the extras was to pay for the dog's vet bill, and this week it is to pay for the diesel for the large generator, plus pay for extras I didnt buy last week, such as Frontline to keep fleas and ticks off our dogs. Yes it is a chemical and expensive, but it is the only thing that works.
Because no electricity for welding, they couldn't fix the harvester/thresher machine (dubbed "the beast" by the farmers). So today they plan to go to do another rice harvest. it is clear so nearly every day they are harvesting or drying the rice. Usually they dry rice on a flat surface, either concrete (such as roads, parking lots or tarps on flat dirt) but we have an area to dry it on the high farm plot that can't be irrigated. That used to be used for raising pigs, and then we built chicken coops to raise chickens under contract, until a typhoon flattened them about eight years ago and we decided to use the area for fruit trees and rice storage. Ditto for the organic vegetable green houses (you raise them in green houses so you don't need to spray for bugs. The green houses were plastic on a frame, so alas don't stand up to 90 mph winds).
the annual US/Philippine military exercizes are going on this week, and so we are hearing helicopters going over, usually early in the morning or early evening.
We live a couple miles from a major military/airbase where the Philippine special forces usually trains the US soldiers in jungle warfare, and they practic working together for disasters or war, just in case China wants to include Luzon in their lost territory grab
During WWII, when the Japanese invaded, Lolo's older brother went off to hide in Mt Arayat with other anti Japanese guerillas, but Lolo and his mom and cousin walked to the farm to be safe.
So Lolo assured me that in case of war etc. I would be safe, and since we grow rice, we'd always have rice to eat.
But would this be true with modern warfare? And if a million refugees from Manila thought the same thing and started walking north to safety?
Oh well...
in case of war, we will all move to Florida to stay with relatives there.
My son reports they have floods in Florida now. But hey, like the Philippines, hurricanes, thunderstorms, floods, etc. are just something that goes along with living in a tropical paradise.
Hope that Russia doesn't decide to nuke Disneyworld...
A medical clinic is where it all happens. I see old people facing their mortality with good grace, I see to my amazement that guys can master the art of nursing, the delicacy, the empathy, the soulfulness of caregiving, something I never thought possible.
And I sit with my doctor who’s looking at the chemical analysis of my blood and urine tests, and he reports that my cholesterol level is a small fraction of what’s normal, my level, me, a man who lives on bacon cheeseburgers and onion rings.
There is injustice in the world and some of it is in our favor.
Yes, gratitude is the prevailing attitude at my age, far ahead of confusion or dread. I haven’t been angry for years. Mortality is all around us, which makes each day beautiful.
Google blogger censors managed to pick up a 15 year old reference to the local terrorist group who cannot be named because they have the same initials as a reference to sexy old ladies.
So I mentioned that if they thought that was bad, they needed to check my medical blog.
I discuss Dr. Malone's essay on the social hysteria behind the trans craze, with lots of links to articles with links.
This is crazy, and although no one wants to say it out loud, it is one reason that the US is becoming unpopular in the third world, because they are pushing the gender war ideas idea aggressively on countries that see the family as important.
Next article is on Monkey pox. Not only is the behavior behind this ignored, but the real scandal is that the CDC didn't fight it. NYTimes article praises the affluent white urban gay community for doing it themselves but ignore the racism behind the huge number of black men dying. (the CDC, rather than warn them, merely seems to condemn the black community for not being gay friendly). An earlier post about this failure to address the problem in the black and minority communities was posted here.
Lancet goes woke and equates humans to animals. They use the favorite myth of the indigenous societies to argue this, as if all indigenous people were the same (since I have worked with a dozen indigenous societies in the USA and in Africa, I despise this type of fallacy).
Essentially it is telling you to eat bugs, which are eaten by some people but not as a major protein or major calories source, another little fact that they never bring up. And they never mention things like the fact that some people are allergic to the bugs they think we should eat, or the "YUCK" factor.
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The (pre Islamic) female circumsion as done in Africa is horrible and causes problems with sex, sexual pleasure, and childbirth. I saw these problems when I worked in Liberia.
And no don't blame Islam: it predates that religion, and is done by some pagan tribes in Africa....heck, even the Prophet urged to "just cut a little" when asked about it.
But what about this done as a simple ritual in SEAsia, in the world's largest Muslim country Indonesia (and in the southern Philippines) where it is essentially just a minor snip, not a full mutilation? Discussed here.
By the way: Did you know that vaccines stopped the Ebola outbreak in Central Africa? \More here.....Anti Vaxers didn't notice because they hate all vaccines, and the MSM didn't care because they are just Africans, and all Africans look alike and the place is a mess. (note to censors: This is sarcasm).
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I am old enough to remember when we used horse serum antibodies against diseases. Well, the modern version of this is monoclonal antibodies: And here I link to an article on using them for yellow fever.
the use of vaccine to stop the yellow fever epidemic in Angola a couple of years ago never hit the news, except in China, because a couple of Chinese workers brought the disease back to China, but luckily they didn't spread it to local mosquitoes.
apparantly the google censors must be a computer that has a dirty mind and thinks our pious Moro terrorists are into pornography.
and since I was ordered to change that post, and cannot appeal, (because if I appeal, they might have to apologize) I think I'll leave it that way since I doubt that any of my half dozen readers will bother to view a 15 year old post that is mainly about volcanoes and other local problems.
If every blogger is being examined in minute detail for minor stuff like that, then one worries about the freedom of speech on blogger.
kuya harvested the rice yesterday, but it needs to be dried and if it is rainy today that means either waiting for the sun to dry it, or finding someone to dry it using a drier. A third option is to sell the rice to a dealer who will do the drying and sacking/storing, but it means a lower price.
in town, we only had a little rain, and the sun is shining but local rain is a problem. so they might have to wait til tomorrow to dry it
Generally, when a journalist is preparing for an encounter of that importance, you really do your homework. Young Clayton thought it was sufficient to turn up with a bunch of lazy, Leftist assumptions which probably quite accurately represent the groupthink in the BBC newsroom. Elon Musk had other ideas.
Generally, when a journalist is preparing for an encounter of that importance, you really do your homework. Young Clayton thought it was sufficient to turn up with a bunch of lazy, Leftist assumptions which probably quite accurately represent the groupthink in the BBC newsroom. Elon Musk had other ideas.
In the meanwhile, Instapundit links to an Unherd article about the scientist who funded Wuhan and persuaded the Lancet to publish an artlce to condemn conspiracy theoriests. ....
Why did Peter Daszak change his mind? New documents reveal he warned against risky research,,,Peter Daszak spent many years hunting down bat viruses with Chinese scientists, helped fund their cutting-edge research in Wuhan, and then vociferously led opposition to any suggestions that the pandemic might have been linked to a laboratory in the city. A pugnacious character, the British zoologist would pop up regularly in the media to fiercely dismiss “conspiracy theories”, playing a key role in efforts to stifle debate over the origins of Covid-19.
So how strange to discover that this same man had previously warned that risky research was “intensifying” threats from “lab-enhanced viruses”. In fact, two years before the pandemic erupted, Daszak was involved in drafting a presentation about the dangers of engineered viruses being accidentally or even deliberately released into the world.....
another video discussing influence in the media that I post here to watch later since it is long and nuanced.
My opinion has been stated many times: Early in the epidemic, the mRNA and other vaccines saved millions of lives, especially in high risk folks.
The irony is that thanks to people like Dr Levine (who is above criticism because trans) allowed a dangerous policy that caused thousands of deaths by allowing infectious covid patients to be readmitted into nursing homes, and justified this because of an out of date Medicare rule that was written before covid.
the censorship of vaccine side effects was because an active anti vax conspiracy types caused epidemics because they frightened people from having their children vaccinated for all sorts of diseases after people mistook a problem with one vaccine as a problem with all vaccines (this happened after the Dengue vaccine kerfuffle here in the Philippines).
mRNA vaccines were a new technology, so there should have been close examination of the pros and cons of using this, when older methods of making vaccines was available.
But of course, one also has to remember that older methods of making vaccines had problems: AZ vaccine worked but caused Strokes/blood clots, and the older technology such as used by China's Sinovax essentially didn't work well... Indeed, one reason for China's recent outbreak of Covid was because they used an inferior vaccine.
the dirty little secret is that once Omicron hit, the risk benefit ratio changed, so the health authorities should have changed their plans to fight the epidemic to one similar to how they fight influenza: vaccine for the elderly etc. not those with little risk of death. But not shutdown except temporary and limited shutdowns in areas with a high rate of disease.
yet the governments kept stressing that you needed one booster after another, even in low risk young people, where the risk outweighed the benefit.
So early on, most of us elders and caregivers got the vaccine, but now not so much. The main problem is that students who wanted face to face class also agreed to get it (probably not a good idea).
Here, people don't obey the government when the law seems stupid.
actually, according to the Urban Dictionary, that quote about Voldemort is being pushed to cancel Harry Potter's mom.
how pervasive is this censorship? Well, Spiked notes:
The queen’s Jubilee book list – featuring 70 titles from across the Commonwealth to celebrate Her Maj’s 70 years on the throne – has one glaring omission. JK Rowling, Britain’s most successful living author, did not make the cut...Any eight-year-old Harry Potter reader could tell you it is not her books that have been judged unworthy – it is Rowling herself, for holding the ‘wrong’ views.
the Economist (10 2021) says now one is not allowed to use the word "woman" including how medical journals, which have pushed political stuff in the past, are now behind censoring that word in their scientific articles.
Bodies with vaginas” is an odd way to refer to half the human race. Yet it was the quote that the Lancet, a medical journal, chose to feature on the cover of its latest issue, telling readers that “historically, the anatomy and physiology” of such bodies had been neglected. After complaints about dehumanising language, the Lancet apologised. But it is not alone. A growing number of officials and organisations are finding themselves tongue-tied when it comes to using the word “woman”.
She is not the only one being censored of course.
GetReligion blog, a blog that reports on how reporters don't "get religion" in their articles, actually names a reporter for repeatedly posting biased articles on religion, where the religious point of view of the conflict is downplayed or ignored.
are there articles out there on how the US is pushing gender ideology on conservative nations in Africa and Asia? Often doing so by threatening to withdraw aid money? HeritageFoundation article notes this.
But this resentment is real.
and you might not pick it up by reading the often liberally oriented English language press.
For example, the full court press against Duterte by the MSM and international organizations didn't stop him from being very popular, because ordinary people didn't form their opinions on the MSM... many based their support of him because they felt safer on the street, and more knew someone killed by drugs or by a druggie in a crime than killed by crooked or overly zealous cops.
Similarly, when the US pushes various policies that stress gay rights, divorce, abortion, etc. as human righst and ties their financial aid to countries only if they obey and change their laws, it causes resentment.
And then people wonder why the US is unpopular and some countries are turning to China for financial and economic help that isn't linked to accepting ideas seen as immoral or destructive of local cuture.
I should note that here in the Philippines, baclas, cross dressers, tomboys and trans are seen as part of the family and accepted as such, but this has nothing to do with what seems to be behind the western craziness whose aim is destroying the family. It might be trendy to push it to students in the USA or universities in other countries, but many who are aware of the importance of the family might not worry about the rights of Baclas to quietly do their thing, but they might think that is it wrong to push perversion as a way to destroy normality in the name of freedom.
But there is a phrase for pushing such ideas as normal to destroy the family: Walan Hiya: Without shame.
In his oft-cited 1964 article "Hiya", psychologist Jaime C. Bulatao defines Walang hiya as "recklessness regarding the social expectations of society, an inconsideration for the feelings of others, and an absence of sensitivity to the censures of authority or society."
a lot of the culture war in the USA is just this: being insensitive to the ideas of nomality outside the bubble of the elites.
Oppose them, and you are censored and called a hater, and because few deplorables are violent, it's okay.
But I am reminded of an African proverb: Even a small snake has a tooth.
we are in the Tag Init season, when it is hot and dry. And thewinter rice harvest is going on: Kuya harvested one small field last week and is due to harvest a larger field on Friday. But now a tropical depression is due to hit: Not quite a typhoon but heavy rain and wind that could destroy the second harvest, and make it hard to dry the recently dried rice. LINK
Track of Tropical Depression Amang. Image from Pagasa’s website
we are signal one, not bad except that it could affect the harvesting of rice, not just for us but for eastern Luzon and parts of the Visayas...and of course the danger of flooding as the rains hit the mountains north of us and flow downstream.
In other family news, Joy is supervising an agriculture course in Bulacan so is busy.
As for me: My big dog was very sick but is now back from the vet. Hopefully he will not relapse, and will start to eat more. Right now, he won't touch either dry or canned dog food, and even didn't eat the usual rice mixture from our cook that we feed the dogs. But he is willing to eat chicken. So the cook bought some chicken just for him.
He is our bigest dog, and the only one scary enough to keep us safe, so this is good news.
I have been blogging on blogger since we moved to the Philippines and I had to stop my AOL account.
No problem, until now.
I am receiving oodles of emails saying that some of my blogposts have been flagged for review because they contain bad stuff.
italics mine.
Since I don't sell stuff, I presume that either A: I posted something graphic when discussing a medical matter, or maybe I posted a conspiracy theory even though I usually lable these conspiracy theories.
Much of what I blog is a personal diary of what I am doing and what I think, started as a way to communicate with my brother in the USA.
But some of my blogging is about things that should be considered as reporting, such as the many pro Duterte posts I have written, explaining why he is popular among working class Filipinos in the area.(hint: Crime is down).
Then there might be stuff that is too graphic for snowflakes to read.
I am a physician, so blogposts about infectious disease, trauma, FGM, various epidemics, including covid are based on 45 years of clinical experience, working in Africa and the poorer areas of the USA.
This includes my observations abut the epidemics of drugs, violence including school shootings, child abuse, sex abuse of children of by relatives, teachers, clergy, or by sex tourism... my observations on acceptance or non acceptance of gay people in various cultures is also based on my clinical observations...and then I sometimes report on STDs related to promiscuity... not to menion maybe not being PC about covid.
One post flagged was about a movie review I posted on the film Ender's Game (2014), ( the author of the book, who is LDS, was being banned because his church, like Catholics, were supporting a pro marriage movement years ago.)..
But why was was one 2009 post about volcanoes in the Philippines flagged? I think it was because I linked to a local news article stating that bras could be used as a mask to protect the lungs from fine lava dust. (this is Filipino humor by the way).
But the reason I wonder about this: Some of the blog posts are as early as 2007.
So the blog post from 15 years ago is now found to upset snowflakes? No one complained about it until now?
italics mine.
So are all posts on all blogger accounts being censored? Or did some snowflake report me and then the experts at google decided to post warning flags on every post that is not politically correct?
And why? I mean, it's not like I have a lot of readers: I used to get about 50 a day, until I posted something not politically correct a year or two ago, and then voila, it quickly dropped to an average of 10 a day. Which means someone spiked my blog from Google Search.
Oh well: it's not like I need the income (/s).
But Kuya just laughed (he does believe in NWO conspiracies) and said I told you so...
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hmmm... maybe Blogger is doing searches for illegal word and found some on my blog:
maybe they found I am a Catholic: Nat Catholic Reporter notes they are infiltrating the radical trads and even getting sources in the liberal Catholic groups to spy on them. (didn't they do this to mosques? But I guess someone found out that Guy Fawkes and John Wilkes Booth were Catholics, so they aren't taking a chance).
and how are they finding out who to censor? Was the FBI hinting they needed to do this?
StrategyPage discusses the control of information to the Russian occupied provinces of the Ukraine, and in the middle mentions this:
over a million Ukrainians have been exiled to Russia and over 50,000 children sent to Russia, some to be adopted by Russian couples.
I had assumed the number to be much lower, and that these were kids who needed to be cared for, and indeed the numbers involved are very vague and differ widely. And of course, there is so much propaganda out there about the war that I simply stopped reading stories. However, since SP gets the story correct about countries I personally know about, I would trust their story.
The alleged abductees include children taken from Ukrainian state institutions in the occupied areas, children whose parents had sent them to Russian-run “summer camps” from which they never returned, children whose parents were arrested by the Russian occupying authorities, and children who were orphaned by the fighting...Russia has admitted to holding at least 1,400 Ukrainian children it describes as orphans
this WaPo article from last June quotes a Ukrainian official saying
According to Ukrainian Permanent Representative to the U.N. Sergiy Kyslytsya, more than 234,000 children had been transferred to Russia by early June.
this article compares it to the stealing of children from executed political prisoners in Argentina. Of course because it was a "right wing"regime.
but of course, Russia has done this in the past: Wikipedia page on the children kidnapped from Spain during that Civil war, and the abduction of children (or was it the rescue of orphans) by all sides during and after World War II.
Were the children rescued from a bad situation, or from a war torn area, so they could be safe? Were they in orphanages so could be considered without families (although often they had parents who simply couldn't afford to care for them, or who were injured or imprisoned for crime or as political prisoners)?
It is one thing to condemn Russia for ''kidnapping" these children: it is another thing to put it into perspective of what was the alternative for these children?
(and defending Russia here is not the same as not condeming their expansion of the war to get more territory than the Crimea which historically was never Ukrainian).
So were these children adopted by families who wished to care for them? Were they adopted to be used as cheap labor? or was it a political ploy, to retrain and trained as sleeper spies in their native country?
So was this kidnapping of children from orphanages or whose parents were absent (humanitarian) or a form of ethnic cleansing?
as for anecdotal stories of mistreatment by the survivors: Take this with a grain of salt because often the children resented the new parents, in the way that older adopted chidren hate the adoptee parents and blame them for all sorts and sundry things.(not the birth parent, who are dead or worse drug addicted and incapable of caring for them). In psychiatry this is called projection.
In summary, the story is unclear, and maybe it is a cynical way for Russia to increase the number of ethnic Slavs into a Russia that has a low birth rate, but what was the alternative for these children?
Uh, maybe stop the war and compromise with Russia? SunTsu points out that never block an enemy, but give him a way to get out to flee... but if you read the US MSM cheering section, they want total loss by Russia, and the heck with those suffering from the war.
And wars cause refugees and orphans. So do physical disasters, disease (HIV and Covid), population displacement from internal unrest, and poverty. There are also a lot of children cared for by relatives, some of whom end up on the street because the granparents/relatives get sick, die, or just don't care.
This is the side effect of a world economy that encourages the imporation of cheap labor to affluent countries, or the economic pressures that encourage parents to migrate to work in far away cities or overseas to support their children.
In rural areas, the children have the protection of extended family, but in large towns and cities, often the children end up on the street, becoming drug addicts (to forget their misery) or criminals or both.
Street children are especially vulnerable to sexual predators including many from affluent countries who travel to poorer countries to prey on these children. (one of the reasons that independent African countries pass laws against homosexuals by the way: a legacy of both slave traders and of colonialism where the troubled sons were shipped off to another country to prey on locals).
When I adopted my sons, our parent support group was warned that many of our children had been sexually abused, even those who were young children. Indeed, I know my sons had suffered physical abuse, but my older son was so full of anger I wonder if he had been sexually abused too.
There are millions of street children in the world: of families in the slums where the father is absent and the mother's new husband doesn't want them, or maybe of kids who are wanted and loved but the parents can't feed them, so the kids beg, steal or go through garbage to eat, or submit to sexual predators to make money to eat. Often when they are older, they join criminal gangs and often get addicted to drugs as a way to cope.
It's the hot dry season, but now that Covid lockdowns are gone, the churches are up and back to doing their thing.
Joy just spent two days in Manila for a Protestant woman's prayer meeting/revival at one of the local stadiums. It was large, but I can't find a photo or video.
she also has been busy teaching a course in agriculture at her Bulacan coop, and is now teaching at her church as a pastor assistant.
She converted after marrying Kuya, and attends a Pentecostal church near our farm, but Kuya usually goes to the local Baptist church, although for the past year he has been driving me to the early mass since I have been too weak to walk there as I have in the past.
The staff is Catholic, so they took off Good Friday afternoon for the procession around town to commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus. I can't find video from our town but this is from a nearby town. No, we don't have crucifixions in our area: that is done in Pampanga, a very poor area west of us.
I have been weak/exhausted, partly due to the heat, and I have been this way since I had Dengue six months ago. I was recovering, but then relapsed after I got shingles. And the heat makes me tire easily. So no long walks, no shopping at the mall, and no church for the last two weeks.
In the meanwhile, our white dog Barry got sick on Thursday, and of course the vet is closed all weekend (heck, everything is closed from Wednesday to next Tuesday).
The maid however found a vet that was open and we took him there Saturday morning for IVs etc. and he has improved. I thought he was dying, but the vet thinks there is a good chance for him to recover, and today he is eating and drinking a bit.
But the cost of the tests emptied my cash reserve I keep here in the house, and it is a long holiday weekend.
I tried to get money from my ATM, but all the local ATMs were empty.
So this morning early I went to one bank about a mile away, near the mall and got some money to pay the vet bill and have cash for expenses.
The weather is clear, but for some reason asthma is bad. I am wheezing, as is the cook, and one local lady came several times for medicine for her inhaler (machine). She usually comes weekly, one of our regulars. And there have been several old people having strokes or going to the hospital from the heat. We don't live in a gated community, but in the middle class area downtown, and nearby are the less affluent areas, so we do get asked for help with medicine etc.
People are poor, but the cost of medicine and especially the cost of hospitalization is high: Even if you get free public hospital care, there are expenses.
I say the cost of hospitalization is high, but that is because the minimum wage is about 7 dollars a day, and right now it is the hunger season for farmers: Waiting for the winter harvest and out of money and sometimes low on food from the last harvest.
Sigh.
I am again being warned not to open the door early in the morning, since an old lady was shot recently. The druggies are back robbing people. This is the part the so called human rights folk who hated Duterte's drug campaign never noticed: the crime against normal people that went down when the druggies were pressured to go sober and there was shooting of the criminal gangs (and their innocent patsies who helped them because they were poor). And now with Marcos making nice with the USA, to counteract the pressure from China, he is cutting back on the hit squads, so I suspect crime will go up again.
But to make things worse, Kuya is getting threats to pressure him to sell our rice land: thugs have gone to the farm and threatened our tenant farmer there, and they approached our cook asking if Kuya is home, and how many people live here.
Here, rice land is valuable, and with the improved roads, and the improvements in the city, we are also becoming an area for second homes for the affluent in Manila...
And we also have fields near a main road, where rice land could be diverted into plots for large luxurious houses, businesses, etc.
Of course, we don't own much of this land: there is a limit on how much land any person can own, and only citizens are allowed to own property. But he farms the fields owned by relatives living in Manila or living overseas, and of course he subcontracts land owned by the local farmers, so apparently some shady person thinks he can threaten kuya and buy the land cheap and make a profit. Not true, but in the meanwhile, we have to keep safe.
Sigh.
Kuya lives upstairs, but I am on the ground floor, so it means locking the doors at night. We only have dogs for protection: After Lolo had a stroke, Kuya gave away his (illegal) guns, because as a Christian kuya would not break the law. (Lolo was a good Catholic and only obeyed laws that made sense... even in the USA he always carried a gun because theft and robbery of doctor's houses and offices are common).
Me? I can shoot a small rifle, but not a handgun. I even had a waiver not to carry a gun when I was a doc in the USArmy Nat Guard. My grandfather, a cop, taught my father not to have guns in the house if there were children, so we never learned to use them. Ironically, my mother, who had five brothers, learned to shoot and got a sharpshooter medal in her high school rifle club. And my sons had various rifles because where I raised them in rural Pennsylvania, hunting was a religion and the place shuts down for the first day of deer season. But they had to learn to shoot from a neighbor who took them hunting.
So with no guns on site, that leaves me with only the dogs for protection: and it is my large dog that is sick, so only medium sized terriors are here to protect me: noisy but not much protection.
We just heard the six year old daughter of one of our ex employees drowned in a river. Sad. Her mom became an OFW to support the family, and the father and grandparents didn't know she was playing near the river.
Sigh.
Since it is Easter, here is a film about a crippled street kid who spread peace and joy, and is thought by many locals to be a saint.
I no longer practice, and maybe because so few Filipinos got boosters for covid, and many got various vaccines, the problem of side effects after covid shots has not gotten a lot of publicity, except on conspiracy websites, although enough athletes have died from cardiomyopathy in the USA for that problem to be noted.
But I was not aware of the neurological problems that could be vaccine related.
I know about the myocarditis problem (was the teenager down the street who was found dead die of covid myocarditis or Bangungot, a common cause of sudden death in young men here? Who know?) Ditto for strokes (blood clots) which are common here.
but now should we worry about neurological disease?
yes, docs know covid can cause neurological problems, but what about the vaccine? how common is this side effect? and which problem?
now we are getting into the nexus of infection/ immune response problems.
Covid can infect the brain, but both covid and the vaccine could cause an immune response that causes neurological syndromes. this CDC article notes " J&J/Janssen COVID-19 might be associated with a slight increase in the number of GB cases, but not the other vaccines." But not a lot of reports on other neurologic symptoms associated with the vaccine (athough long covid etc is seen with the disease itself).
And faced with what was thought to be a very fatal disease they kept quiet because the cost/benefit ratio suggested it was worth it. You have to remember that the original covid killed not only the old, but young and middle age people. It was terrible, not just like the flu, but a major pneumonia.
but when omicron came, it did not cause the typical pneumonia that killed people (the high risk still died, but deaths similar to those from colds and flu).
But two problems here: One, the death rate from omicron varients is low and now there is herd immunity, and two, there is a push to give it to low risk folks even after the omicron varient caused immunity.
Giving shots to those who probably won't die of the disease means you pay more attention to side effects.
Now I am old enough to remember that there were a few cases of Guillan Barre syndrome after the swine flu vaccine back in the 1970s resulted in that campaign being stopped, and probably led to the loss of the election for President Ford. The scandal was because the expected epidemic of swine flu never happened, so the people receiving the shot essentially didn't need it.
the numbers came to estimating one person out of 100 thousand getting the vaccine got GB syndrome (but remember 45 million got this shot).
But the covid vaccine problem discussed in the video reminds me of women with Chronic fatigue syndrome, post viral pneumonia symptomes, fibromyalgia, etc.
A lot of these problems make one think: Neurotic females. which is why a lot of them ended up in my office: I gave them sympathy.
But is it all in their heads? I ache all the time, and have for years. A lot of these women had a mildly positive lupus test, but not high enough to diagnose lupus, but makes one wonder about a mild autoimmune problem... so are these post vaccine problem a similar syndrome? And is it more common after the shots?
But the film suggests otherwise: the symptoms are not aches and pains but actual weakness. Again it suggests and autoimmune problem, so makes one wonder about the vaccine. Ditto for those cases of Bell's palsy, another common neurological problem.
So could one have an epidemic of hundreds of thousands of people sick that is ignored by the medical community? Remember: When you don't read about it in the medical literature, doctors figure it might be coincidence or a rare problem.
But the neurological symptoms reminded me of another huge epidemic that got little publicity: That of Gulf War Syndrome that disabled possibly a quarter million soldiers who served there... A lot of these guys ended up not able to work and were so disgusted by the VA medical system that told them it was all in their head that they simply grit their teeth and lived with the problem.
there was a worry that it might have been associated with the vaccines given to soldiers, heavy metal toxins, or the medicine used to stop you from dying from nerve gas.
But essentially it was government policy to ignore the problem. Because they might be libable? Because compensating those injured results in more attention to the symptoms (rewarding the sick) than stressing recovery (if you recover, you don't get rewarded).
We see this all the time, and call it the green poultice syndrome: So docs often won't do back surgery until the lawsuit (the green poultice) is settled, knowing that people just won't get better until this is done.
Yes, I am cynical. It's not fraud by the way: it's a coping mechanism. often subconscious, not deliberate fraud.
But it harms those with real medical problems that could be helped, and the over cynical approach to those who are sick results in loss of confidence in the medical system.
Military.com report on that the Guld War Syndrome epidemic, only recently has been shown to be from exposure to Sadam Hussein's nerve gas.
After nearly 30 years of trying to prove a theory -- that an environmental toxin was responsible for sickening roughly 250,000 U.S. troops who served in the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War -- Dr. Robert Haley says new research confirms that sarin nerve gas caused Gulf War Illness.
Following the Gulf War, nearly one-third of all who deployed reported unexplained chronic symptoms such as rashes, fatigue, gastrointestinal and digestive issues, brain "fog," neuropathy, and muscle and joint pain.
Federal agencies spent years broadly dismissing the idea that troops may have been suffering from exposure to chemical agents, with many veterans experiencing symptoms sent to mental health providers.
italics mine.
Friends who served there noted that the poison gas alarms went off all the time, but few took the prevention medicine or put on protective gear because no one seemed to be affected.
Sarin is usually deadly, but lead researcher Dr Robert Haley said the gas that soldiers were exposed to in Iraq was diluted, and so not fatal.
"But it was enough to make people ill if they were genetically predisposed to illness from it."
Dr Haley said the key to whether somebody fell ill was a gene known as PON1, which plays an important role in breaking down toxic chemicals in the body.
His team found veterans with a less effective version of the PON1 gene were more likely to become sick.
The scandal in this is not that such things happen: it was war, after all... but that the government (US and UK) kept pushing the idea that all of these problems were PTSS or similar psychiatric problems, so essentially the victims were not helped.
similar problems of course are seen after every war, but the neurological problems of GWS were not. Agent Orange problems after VietNam were also pretty well ignored, and in post GWII and Afghanistan, and even in 911 responders, there are also those who have similar problems, often caused by burn pits, toxic exposure, traumatic brain injuries from IEDs etc.
which is why even Dr. C, whose reports on covid and the success of using the vaccine early in the epidemic made him a popular Youtube expert, has now turned on the medical establishment for their betrayal of science.
they still use cash, of course, but even here we have e commerce so we can buy stuff on line and have it delivered. And in the malls, you can use credit card or e cash apps on your cell phone.
Joy and Kuya have cellphones of various types to use for business. They are connected and use the cellphones for photos, memos, on line discussions etc.
Well anyway, last year the government decided to demand registration of your SIM card for your cellphone.
I keep asking how to do this, but no one seems to know how to do this.
Why worry?
because excuse me but I suspect that hackers will be able to steal our identity. I mean, if my US Federal OPM file was hacked a couple years ago by Chinese hackers, why should I trust having my personal information on a database here in the Philippines?
And the video notes that some folk worry this will let the government punish those who oppose it.
Yes, the left is worrying about this too. They pointed out how this could be used to target those who might demonstrate or protest government policies
Sort of like how the Canadian government punished the truckers protesting a ridiculous law about covid by closing their bank accounts.
and of course it makes one wonder if this will be part of the way to implement e money in the near future, which means the next step will be to implement ways to gauarantee you are who you say you are... mark of the beast anyone?
Curbing tax evasion is part of the agenda for the "aadhaar" scheme, a giant digital database designed to give hundreds of millions of Indians a unique ID, and of the new Goods and Services tax.
And reducing tax evasion can only be good for India. The more money it raises in tax, the more it has to spend on useful stuff like roads, hospitals and schools.
But some are not so happy with it noting that the rich just hid their money in gold, real estate, or overseas banks. (I should note that gold confiscation was done a year or two earlier but hey, that law was mostly ignored).
India’s black money problem has not gone away. The economy has taken a beating, huge financial losses have been incurred, and the marginalized poor, least able to withstand adversity, have been negatively affected.
italics mine.
unlike most official news sources, MarketSlant summarizes what really was going on, in detail Summary: it won't work completely because"crime will find a way".
and an article in today's IndiaExpress notes: it will not stop there, since big economies like China are pushing digital currancy.
Last month the Chinese Central Bank rolled out pilot testing for its home grown digital currency. The tests, slated to take place in the cities of Shenzhen, Suzhou, Chengdu and Xiong’an, will involve transferring salaries to government workers in the form of the new Digital Currency (internally referred to as DC/EP) and tying up with a set of designated merchants to facilitate transactions using the currency.
UKGuardian in a 2021 article discusses e currancy by a governemt central bank vs e currancies by ordinary banks and notes the threats of bit coin to this.
