Instapundit has a lot of links, and the NewNeo has a list but the Instalache has caused the webpage to crash from too many requests
I am reminded about the quip: they came to do good, and they made out very well.
but the propaganda is big: Protests but all crying fascist, evil etc. but not discussing what is going on.
And the propaganda is strong: I ran across a foreign paper where they were complaining that the shutdown of aid led a hospital in Myamar for refugees to not have medicines. Uh, the aid was shut down a few days ago and you already ran out of medicine? Sorry, I worked overseas in mission hospitals and know several things: One, storing medicine means you have it for a few days. So why did they run out so quickly? Two: That a lot of supplies supposed to go to third world hospitals are stolen every step of the way, and three: the article admits other hospitals in the area were open to take the patients.
I am upset that PEPFAR might lose their HIV medicines, but as I pointed out, in recent years their aim has not been getting medicine to HIV patients but pushing population control, sex ed and the gender agenda, and removing laws that ban gay activity, laws that are used mainly to go after sexual predators and discourage sex tourism.
Remember all that M Pox kerfuffle? It came from sex tourism in Africa, then spread to gay raves with orgies in Europe and the USA. But no one wants to admit that gay tourism (both gay and hetero) exists, that poor young men and women (and street kids) are the victims because often they are poor and easy to exploit.
well, anyway, the HIV medicine scandal with Pepfar has been known for years; The Clintons were lauded for changing to a generic brand to save money, but the medicines were inferior.
IBDaily in 2016 has an article here about the corruption, and the link with donations to Hillary. POlifact tries to pooh pooh the story, but years back the medical journals showed that the medicines were inferior but insisted that these didn't harm the patients.
When Musk took over Twitter, he got some honest leftie journalists to check what was going on, and it was found a lot of the censorship about covid was just that: not the truth but censorship.
This upset me as a doc, since honesty is needed to figure out what works to help our patients. And to make things worse modern docs are pressured to follow guidelines to get paid (in the olden days, we had discretion on how to treat).
Well, anyway: Fast forward to DOGE.
Hmm...
anyway, the story that money was being used to get Trumpieboy into jail was well known by anyone with a brain, but the extent of corruption where an independent (sic) US government agency was pushing one political party was a bit of an eye opener.
Yes, I know: A long rant. But I try to limit my writing to things I actually know about from personal observation.
You mean that the US was promoting revolutions in other countries (and yes, by the way, trying to do the same thing in the USA? )
Well, we here in the Philippines know this: The US via the Omidyar network funded Rappler to take down Duterte, and our lovely ex-president Gloria was got out of jail via human rights organizations led by George Clooney's wife and a trial where there was a lack of evidence against her. Just don't ask how her bank account improved, and just ignore the ZTE scandal where the backstory is that this was how China tried to legally get permission to steal the petroleum under the West Philippine sea... and of course just ignore Hello Garci and the Manguindanao scandals.
this conservative Catholic commentator lists how this has corrupted the Catholic church on many levels.
At ten minutes he mentions the Anti Catholic push in Ireland: I can confirm this: My friend who lives there told me thirty years ago the plan was to get rid of the church which they saw as being in the way of their modern agenda.
Well,
He goes into more aspects of how the bureaucracy funded the Catholic social outreach. Well, the Bishop's organization has long been infiltrated with extreme lefties: Back in the 1970s the Bishops proposed unilateral nuclear disarmament. WTF? And the release of a pro gay document got lots of publicity without anyone mentioning that it was never approved by the bishops, but only by their office workers.
Oh well: No one in the US respects the bishops, with a few exceptions. I mean, it took 30 years to figure out McCarrick was corrupt, and they replaced him with Wuerl, who was in charge of Pittsburgh when everyone knew about the gay infiltration of the seminaries in several western PA diocese: indeed, anyone with gay friends knew about how a lot of priests openly cruised the gay bar scene in Pittsburgh.
I see nothing... nothing.
He is now replaced, but still influences the church. Sigh.
as for USAID: the infiltration means that the money instead of helping people is pushing an agenda, including abortion, gay rights, mass migration, and looking the other way at the drug smugglers.
the good things done are still being done, but often they are infiltrated by the agenda:
fast forward to 20 minutes to how PREPFAR is being subverted to push gay rights and birth control instead of just treating those with HIV who can't afford the expensive medicine.
Canceling USAID might stop this program that is life saving for many, and there is a lot of worry in African countries that it will cancel the program causing HIV patients not to get treatment.
here is the program in Zimbabwe. notice the part about non judgemental approach? Don't use shame to limit behavior. And often this is combined with sex education that normalizes premarital sex in high school girls: not premarriage sex, but promiscuity.
4. Made significant gains toward tackling societal challenges that impede progress in achieving
the global 10-10-102
targets, including reducing the number of countries with punitive laws
that target key populations; reducing stigma and discrimination that undermine effective
responses; and fighting gender-based inequalities and gender-based violence that put
adolescent girls and young women at increased risk for HIV.
italics mine.
translation: don't use shame and negative feed back to those whose behavior threatens the family oriented culture of their country. In other words, impose the gay rights and gender agenda (e.g. in sex education in schools, or promoting birth control in high schools).
Notice they mix the good (decrease gender based inequalities) with this. But of course the details are left out.
5. Developed benchmarks supporting an HIV response that ensures enabling policies are
adopted and implemented, and that countries and communities can lead with the capacity to
deliver prevention and treatment services through domestic systems.
which policies? Hence the push for gay rights and promoting anti family policies, (billboards, social media. sex education in schools) that push the idea that children are a burden and marriage is bad.
when you read about the Gates programs, which push life saving vaccines and treatments, just remember that Melinda Gates decided to make birth control a priority for their money.
And this taints the life saving part of the Gates Foundation: Mixing evil with good allows it to continue since good people don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water. But it also leads to locals distrusting the program: hence the distrust of vaccines, which are being seen as a way for evil westerners to stop you from having children, or as a way to kill your children.
So Trumpieboy has a problem: the good things done by USAID is being used to cover using USAID to push political agenda of the international elites (and their lackies who now run the Democratic party in the USA and who have infiltrated a lot of the churches, including the Catholic church)
quick note: I worked with a lot of this when I worked in Africa, including pushing the spacing of children so that the moms could continue breast feeding for two years. Child spacing is consistent with African traditions. Teaching teenage girls with sex education in high school to use birth control and that promiscuity is okay goes against African tradition.
But I should also note that I am retired and not involved with this here in the Philippines.
Cultural note: here, gays and trans are accepted as just part of the extended family. And like second wives, they are tolerated as long as they keep their indiscretions quiet. This by the way is not true of the aggressive gay community (where a lot of foreigners cruise) in Makati. You see, the culture there is the US pushed modern gay agenda: is to flaunt it, ignore the health effects of gross promiscuity, push it as normal and insist no one tell them that certain actions are sins. (and note this agenda is not just about gays but pushing promiscuous sex as normal, never mind that many poor girls are pushed into it out of need to feed their families).
The Catholic church and most people here in the Philippines tended to look the other way at sexual sin, since the sins of corruption are a lot worse than a quiet gay having a friend or a man with a second wife who quietly pays for the upkeep of his children or a girl working as a hooker in a bar for tourists who does it to support her family.., or even when our city has a "Miss Gay Gapan" contest every year.
But things are getting worse: There is now an epidemic of children being sexually abused, especially the epidemic of on line sexual abuse by foreigners, is getting publicity too.
But what is changing this easy going approach is not just a quiet revulsion against the US pushing their gender agenda, but the huge increase in people joining Protestant churches.
----------------
update: EdwardPentin post on Professor Fonana's essay on globalism and the present day Catholic church,
The stuff going on in Washington is making me dizzy and on most of it I have no expertise.
Punishing Mexico and Canada with a huge tariff? Well, they started it. Fenanyl and people smuggling by the cartels who run Mexico, and the huge tariffs in Canada on American goods. That last part could hint that tariffs on the EU will come next, since they too put huge tariffs on Yankee goods.
How dare Trumpie boy push back.
But what is the smaller tariff on China about? It isn't big enough to harm them, so what's the deal.
Answer: this is about taxing small packages. E commerce. Both direct sales from China to the US and also when they send parts in small packages to get around the usual taxes.
Trump’s executive orders directing 25% levies on Canada and Mexico — plus a 10% duty on China — specify that the “de minimis” exemption for small packages no longer applies. Under the exemption, products below that dollar amount are able to enter the US without tariffs — a boon for China’s e-commerce retailers who ship often cheaper wares directly to consumers in the US....the impact of the change threatens to fall most squarely on China, affecting retailers including Alibaba, JD.com Inc., PDD Holdings Inc.’s Temu and fashion-focused Shein. American shoppers and companies imported about $48 billion worth of shipments from the world under that loophole in the first nine months of last year, according to US Customs and Border Protection estimates.
China dumping cheap goods on third world countries undermines local businesses, both manufacturing stuff and now the retail stores. I wonder if this works if more countries will do the same.
I mainly shop locally, except I have to buy my clothes in the used clothing outlets to find clothing to fit me.
But I see the staff here always buying cheap stuff on line and getting it delivered here. Yes, they could probably find it locally, but that would take time to find where they could get it and the prices would be higher than e commerce.
I am pro vax. I saw kids in Africa dying of whooping cough, typhoid, and measles, and becoming crippled with polio.
But does that mean not questioning the cost benefit ratio? One thinks of the problems of the Dengue vaccine debacle here in the Philippines, where not properly screening kids led to some getting hemorrhagic dengue and even dying: and as a result some people refused to get their kids shots to prevent other diseases and we ended up having dozens of kids dying of measles.
A similar problem was seen years ago, when the UK publicized the known but rare side effect of brain damage from whooping cough vaccine: LINK2:the parents read an expose of this known problem so stopped letting their kids get the shot, and voila, a whooping cough epidemic resulted, including some deaths. But the background of this boycott was that there was a newer vaccine that did not have this side effect that was being used in Japan but not in the UK etc. because it cost more.
Similarly, the idea that additives caused problems when a kid got half a dozen shots over a year time seemed to be exaggerated: But what about when the number of shots givven to children has soared?
so anyway, Senator Rand Paul, who is a physician, discusses the problem:
I love vaccines. But, no, you’re not an anti-vaxxer if you question the ingredients. You’re not an anti-vaxxer if you ask questions:
All, I think the discussion over vaccines is so oversimplified and dumbed down that we never really get to real truths, and it’s why people up here are so separated from real people at home.
So we talk about Hepatitis B. It’s a terrible disease. It could lead to liver failures, the chairman said. But the reason you have distrust from people at home and why they don’t believe anything you say, they don’t believe governed at all is you’re telling my kid to take a Hepatitis B vaccine when he’s one day old. You get it through drug use and sexually transmitted. That’s how you get Hepatitis b. But you’re telling me my kid has to take it at one day old. You’re not…that’s not science.
Today, at @RobertKennedyJr's HELP hearing, I made it clear that we need medical freedom.
There's such a belief in submission.
"Submit to the government. Do what you're told."
There is no discussion. There ought to be a debate.
hmm... sounds familiar. Michelle Obama tried to do this with her school lunch program 12 years ago (and was opposed by the Republicans).
as for diabetes: I worked with the IHS, and our tribe had a 30 percent diabetes rate so we did a lot of education on nutrition with our patients. The locals blamed the commodities (High fat high calorie food supplements that was first started because of the malnutrition and high rate of TB and infectious disease due to poor nutrition and lack of protein.
I learned that relying on the news about what is going on in the USA is not accurate... and this opinion is because I was working overseas when Reagan was president.
So excuse me if I don't comment too much on what is going on.
After working at a government clinic, I am well aware of the waste and inefficiency in government offices. So I sort of support a lot of the cut backs there.
But the bureaucrats know how to fight the cuts: the rule is: A cut back means getting rid of essential things (clinics, fire departments, WIC etc) then going to the press and crying: They are killing people! This is the "look squirrel" meme: it allows the press to be distracted by a shiny story that will get headlines while ignoring the real problem: need to get rid of the paperwork, unneeded regulations, and paper pushers, not to mention the grants for nonsense stuff.
the debt is going to implode, so cut backs are needed.
As for foreign aid: a lot of it is stolen, and that includes money gifted to the NGOs and churches. And the UN personnel helping terrorists and covering up the origin of the WUHAN virus is one reason that Trumpieboy is cutting ties and money to them.
right in time to make sure the US is not sucked into that UN health treaty that will let the UN take over the world during the next epidemic.
The Naive do gooders need to work in the third world and get rid of their rose coloured glasses. Heck, even Jesus warned them about this.
Duh. when you read someone buying expensive real estate (BLM, the Vatican in London) and luxury cars with money supposed to help the poor, you do wonder what is going on.
Similarly, I support immigration but opening the borders and letting naive NGOs to assist drug cartels to entice people to immigrate is a problem: (italics mine).
I mean, ten percent of Filipinos work or have immigrated overseas, and yes some are illegally in these countries. But most of them were carefully screened, and the jobs they applied to were also screened to stop abuse of the migrants. Indeed, Ruby was stopped at the airport because she hadn't done the paperwork to screen for her job at a prestigious school in Thailand, partly because Thailand is a major place for fake jobs to seduce women to become sex workers etc.
If the lowly Philippines can do this, why didn't the USA?
Until I start reading more stories that are not propaganda stories pushed by both sides about what is going on, I will have to rely on what I know: Which is that literally millions of poor people who cannot get a decent job will do anything to migrate to the US or Europe. These people will work harder than Americans because they have no other option (fear of being fired). And this will allow businesses to exploit them, and result in Americans not being offered these jobs.
For years this has been going on, with a wink wink. But Biden and Covid shutdowns have exploded the problem so that an overblown pushback is what is going to happen.
Sigh.
Already a few hundred deportees, most of them with criminal records, have caused hysteria in the press you wonder what will happen.
So far the public supports it, but I suspect if they start raiding normal people living and working without papers, locals will hide them. Not so much the criminal linked gangsters.
So once the border is closed, the criminals are deported, and the NGOs getting rich cooperating with the drug cartel/people smugglers are defunded, I will bet Trumpie boy will take a cue from Reagan and offer amnesty.
Finally, as a Democrat, I notice RFK Jr and Tulsi Gabbard, whose positions are mainstream Democratic policies against big Pharma, Big Agri, and the Military industrial complex. But Democrats who essentially chased them out of the party will now paint them as bad people supporting bad policies. Huh?
Watching the interviews in Congress, I haven't seen much discussion of the issues. So Tulsi did a factfinding tour a decade ago and talked to a bad guy? Uh, so did Senator McCain. That is part of the job.
No we don't celebrate it here in our rural town, but it's a big celebration in Manila.
from Smithsonian: so what is the year of the Wood Snake?
The Chinese Lunar New Year begins January 29, 2025, and starts the Spring Festival season that ends fifteen days later on the evening of the Lantern Festival. The Chinese zodiac rotates through a 12-year cycle of animals and the traditional five elements: wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. 2025 is the Year of the Wood Snake.
One of the reasons that a lot of people are cynical about the woke casting in Hollywood is that they are casting people who lacked talent, or were not as experienced and hadn't paid their dues in the acting business (e.g. the woke lady casted as Snow White...neither beautiful nor luminous on screen, making lots of folks quip they'd prefer the evil queen played by the luminious Gal Gadot)
That is why a lot of folk who think giving an Oscar nomination to a man who is a trans woman in a role in a film that no one ever saw is something big.
not answered: Is he a good actor, or is it a woke nomination that lets him steal an Oscar from more deserving actual women?
35 years ago, when Peter Weir embraced the spirit of the title The Year of Living Dangerously and hired an American woman to play a Chinese-Australian man in that political drama, his gamble paid off: Linda Hunt became the only person to win an Academy Award for playing a cisgender character of the opposite sex.
It wasn’t an easy decision. The filmmaker had asked a fellow Australian David Atkins to take the role of dwarf Billy Kwan in the drama about expats in Indonesia during the 1965 coup attempt. But Atkins didn’t click with the movie’s star, Mel Gibson, during rehearsals. “Sets were being constructed in Manila, and the clock was ticking,” Weir recalled in a recent email. “The casting agent said he had a possible Billy Kwan called L Hunt. He then revealed he was a she. We were desperate and gave her a try, and she was great.”
Linda Hunt in ‘The Year of Living Dangerously’ in 1983 (Rex)
an excerpt from the film:
of course, in today's world, casting a person of European ancestry as an Asian would be a no no.
the coup portrayed in the film was in response to an attempted communist take over, or maybe instigated by the CIA, or maybe just Indonesians killing the prosperous Chinese living there, or maybe the Muslims killing the pagan or Christian Chinese community under the name of killing communists.
or read Wikipedia, who of course would never be biased (/sarcasm):
Deaths 500,000 : 3 –1,500,000+
Perpetrators Indonesian Army and various death squads, supported by the United States, the United Kingdom and other Western governments
Motive Anti-communism, Indonesian nationalism, revenge for the 30 September movement, Sinophobia, Islamic extremism
Lots of fog of war.
Backstory: the Chinese diaspora are the Jews of SEAsia: They run the stores and much of the economy and didn't intermarry with locals or follow the same religion (being pagan or Christian in a Muslim majority country). So they were ethnically cleansed by Muslim Nationalists in the Indonesia coup, not just by the government but spontaneous pogroms.
this ethnic hatred is because they run the economies and so locals can't get ahead.
This hatred of the ethnic Chinese merchant class was not just in Indonesia of course: many of the second wave boat people in VietNam were Chinese ethnics purged by the new communist government.
In the Philippines, a law makes it impossible for foreigners to own things, so in the past, many of the Chinese merchants married local ladies, and their descendants run the government. But there is still a lot of prejudice against the local Chinese community here.
Something to remember when you read about the Chinese merchants behind the expansion of Chinese influence all over the world.
there is a new movie out about Bob Dylan (haven't seen it yet: not streaming yet in our area)
But these lyrics described the revolution against the culture in the sixties.
however, given the latest election, one might point out that the medieval wheel of fortune has turned, and the sixties are now nostalgic for aging boomers.
we were told we could be anything we wanted to be.
Reality check: OK BOOMERS:
But I should note that I was never part of the sixties revolution: that was for spoiled rich kids. Working class kids on scholarships had to study and work part time.
Yes the deplorables were around back then, and we remember how we were treated...
Then, before she hit the first note, she said to the audience, "If you know the words, help me out here." Carrie relied on her flawless vocals and the assistance of the people in attendance who sang along to the patriotic song.
She then gave the audience a round of applause and bowed before shaking the hands of former President Biden, President Trump, and Vice President J.D. Vance.
Europeans don't realize but most Yanks, even Democrats like myself, are proud of the USA. One reason that Kamela lost was she forgot this and instead bowed to the extreme leftists who were imposing their culture on people who objected but were being ignored by the MSM or silenced by social media before Elon Musk took over twitter.
I should comment: The inauguration was in the middle of the night here in the Philippines and I didn't plan to watch it. But one of our female dogs went into heat and the noisy fight over her by the three male dogs woke me up shortly before 1 a.m. so I found it streaming on my tablet so watched it.
One more comment: Biden pardoned a lot of people who the Republicans thought were doing illegal lawfare or censorship about covid, so this gave Trumpieboy the cover to give pardons to the Jan 6 demonstrators, most of whom were not violent but committed a legal faux pas.
Hopefully these actions will stop the bitter back and forth gotcha war.
-----------------
diversity of Trumpiboy Maga here: a theme song by the Village people. Toxic masculinity, celebration of gay disco, or just a fun song that makes you want to dance?
he's not even from Minnesota, where this does happen, but the mountain areas of Western PA are almost that cold, so you don't need long pants and a subzero parka until it hits 20 below F.
I have no opinion on the craziness in Washington DC, but like a lot of people, am afraid of a terrorist (domestic or foreign) attack at the inauguration, especially as the President walks up Pennsylvania Avenue.
However, as one wag wrote: God apparently was worried too, so he sent in a cold wave, and voila, the inauguration will be held indoors as it was when Reagan took office.
this is good, not only for security reasons but because crowds and dignitaries are at risk standing around in the cold for hours just for a photo op.
Indeed, one might argue that the cold rainy weather indirectly led to the death of President Harrison from Pneumonia a month later.
the weather also led to Reagan's inauguration being indoors, so there is a precedent.
the first inauguration I ever watched (on TV) was that of JFK, where it was snowing and the wind was so bad that Robert Frost couldn't read the poem he had written, so instead he recited one of his other poems: the Gift Outright: (fast forward to two minutes):
A couple of bishops that Pope Francis has tried his best to silence have released a film that is a shot across the bow to remind him of what the catholic church is: An institution to help people meet Jesus. Yes, you can find him at home praying, but the cross reminds us of the two directions of faith; one that connects us to God, and the other that connects us to our neighbor. The first gives strength for the second.
Bishop Strickland is particularly forthright and clearly not afraid to ruffle episcopal feathers in his defense of the authentic Catholic faith.
“[W]e’re in a time when too many of the present-day successors of the apostles are saying, ‘Oh, we can abandon what the apostles said, and we’ve got it figured out, and we’re going to take a different path. And what was sin is no longer sin; what was true is no longer true.’
That’s not apostolic,” he says firmly.
“To be apostolic … is to be rooted in the tradition and history of the apostles, and as Pope Benedict XVI said beautifully, we need a continuity of faith and not a rupture,” he continues.
warning: The film is aimed at Catholics so others might not comprehend the allusions. But it is mainly aimed at bishops and the Pope who are trying to change the church from an institution that helps people find God to the church of what's happening now; a modern secular non judgemental woke NGO where people can proudly do their own thing instead of finding God .
Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
Why then is there no healing
for the wound of my people?
The Levant is a dry climate, so the reference is probably to a skin ointment
In regards to the balm of Gilead, this balm is related to the balsam poplar (Commiphora opobalsamum) and is considered a myrrh-like resin/chemical compound found in the Arabian Peninsula, specifically in ancient Palestine east of the Jordan River; it was used for medicine. ... The balm was known to be combined with other ingredients to increase its potency....(such as) oil or lard for bruising, swelling, or damage to the skin. Inflammation is what the balm of Gilead is used most for, presently, especially for sunburns or arthritis. Some ancient historians say that Queen Sheba gave a gift of the balm to King Solomon.
Here, coconut oil is a commonly used for dry skin or to treat dandruff/dry scalp; and our staff uses it with guava leaves for wounds
Whole leaves can be lightly crushed and placed on top of wounds to help heal them and prevent infection.
Ointments are expensive:
We used to give out Fluffo from one clinic for ordinary dry skin problems, because our budget was limited.
Fluffo is yellow Crisco, a lard substitute used in cooking but I haven't seen it on the shelves for 40 years.
In Africa, they used chicken fat ointment Mafuta to keep their skin from drying out: But even when I worked in one country 40 years ago, they were starting to use Vaseline.
Well we used to use BagBalm for sore nipples for our breast feeding ladies because it was cheap and available in our rural area.
The active ingredients of Bag Balm are 8-hydroxyquinoline sulfate 0.3% (antiseptic) in a petroleum jelly USP and lanolin base.[2]
... Originally, it was used for only cows' udders, but farmers' wives noticed the softness of their husbands' hands, and started using the product themselves.
What brought this up was in reading Strategypage about skin problems in the Middle Eastern Wars, they noted:
Fifteen years ago soldiers fighting in the deserts of Iraq and southern Afghanistan endured lots of burns, abrasions, insect bites and scratches. While the medics could treat these minor injuries, the troops preferred to obtain their own cures. But none of the available ointments seemed to do the job well. Then the wife of a soldier developed a new skin balm which she called Combat Ready Balm. Commercially this was a profitable item. That made it possible to send thousands of 59 ml jars of Combat Ready Balm to military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. Soldiers and marines bought a lot more at $25 a jar because, as most of them pointed out, it worked. The balm was even useful during Afghan Winters, when dry skin replaced insect bites.
Legal Insurrection notes that the experts are planning to make a new plague vaccine.
there has been a vaccine for over a century, but it's not very good, and requires several doses. It was given to the US military recruits who were deployed to high risk areas in the past...
But it doesn't protect everyone, and alas now there are reports of antibiotic resistance.
given the fact that it is present in some rodants on the west coast of the USA, and given the garbage and rat infestations due to the homeless encampments (where already there have been cases of typhus and a Hep A epidemic), there is a bit of a worry.
Docs in the IHS in the Navajo area would see a few cases a year, and usually if treated with antibiotics would cure it. But in a city, the average doc might not recognize it.
But when is the pneumonic form ( pneumonia), it can kill you within a day and is very infectious. In the past both Russia and the US investigated it as biowarfare agent.
And of course the conspiracy types (and Russia) point to the biological labs in the Ukraine as a danger, even though most of these labs are about identifying and making vaccines for humans and animals.
But the USA/EU/Russia/China are not the only ones who have these labs... Iran has one, and of course so does Israel
not only could these labs have a lab leak that could cause an epidemic (Brucellosis release in Chinese lab making a vaccine for example) but if a sociopathic leader got hold of it, it could cause problems.
Models developed by this expert committee predicted that the intentional release of 50 kg of aerosolized Y. pestis over a city of 5 million would, in its primary effects, cause 150,000 cases of pneumonic plague and 36,000 deaths.
a physician noticed a cluster of cholera cases, traced the outbreak to a certain public water pump, and saved hundreds of lives by simply removing the pump handle so people had to get water from other sources.
easy peasy, and like Galileo, his findings were immediately accepted by the medical community, right?
t
sigh.
the problem was that people were using contaminated water, but back then the theory was that the disease was caused by "miasma": the smell and fumes of rotting garbage, tanneries etc.
The idea that it might be the water, not the stinky air, as the cause of cholera was not understood... until Dr Snow traced a cluster of cases to one area, and figured what they all had in common was that they all got their drinking water from the same public pump
So he figured it was not the smell but the water was bad, removed the pump, and slowed the epidemic.
Such problems continue in today's world: The most notorious was when, after the Hatian earthquake, UN Peacekeepers from Nepal built their latrines too close to a rives, so the germs flowed into the river. The problem? The normal water supply pipes had broken, so people downstream were using river water for drinking.
Ironically, people in the ancient world sort of figured this out, which is why they rarely drank pure water: in one famous passage, Paul tells Timothy to mix wine with his water "for his stomach's sake"...
so anyway, at the time Dr Snow removed the pump handle, he was able to publish his findings, even though the germ theory was not a popular theory of disease.
...(for) most medical men at the time: miasma, or the stench from decaying vegetable and animal matter, was widely held responsible for epidemic disease.
Snow's On the Mode of Communication of Cholera, first published in 1849, set out the then radical idea that cholera was a disorder of the digestive system not the blood; and that it was contagious and spread through the oral-faecal route, largely through contaminated drinking water.
Snow's intervention in Broad Street, Soho, in 1854, when he persuaded the authorities to remove the handle from a contaminated pump well, has caught the public imagination, but it was his “Grand Experiment” that same year that secured his huge reputation in epidemiology.
During Britain's second cholera epidemic in 1848–49, both the Lambeth and the Southwark and Vauxhall water companies were taking their supplies from the Thames next to where the London sewers were discharged. By the time of the 1854–55 epidemic, however, Lambeth had moved its works up riverout of reach of the sewage. Here, Snow saw, was the perfect means of testing his theory. He compared the numbers of cholera victims whose water was supplied by the two different companies in 1848–49 with the numbers in 1854–55. During 1848–49, the death rates for the two companies were the same, but by 1854, after Lambeth's move, Southwark and Vauxhall's rate was between eight and nine times higher, and in the first 4 weeks of the epidemic, Southwark and Vauxhall customers had a 14-fold higher risk. In 1855, Snow published a much-expanded second editionof On the Mode of Communication of Cholera that included these results. Again he was largely ignored, although by then the idea that polluted water had some part to play in cholera was gaining ground.
the Lancet article notes how his theory was ridiculed at the time, and even his obituary didn't mention this part of his career:
in that last article, on a debunked and retracted article on HCQ, the critical analysis notes:
true researchers generally appreciate a culture of openness, transparency and mutual criticism. It’s considered part of the process of science maturation. This process is achieved through scientific publication as well as interaction in scientific conferences, meetings or any other media.
Dr. Campbell, a nurse educator/public health expert whose you tube channel has been censored at times, points out how these things are important.
why do I bring this up?
Because the establishment continues to gaslight the public about covid:
For example, PBS newshour (which your taxes are supporting of course) objects to Trumpieboy appointing him to run the NIH.
President-elect Trump selected a critic of COVID-19 lockdowns and mandates to lead the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is known for co-authoring the Great Barrington Declaration, a 2020 manifesto that advocated allowing COVID to spread in order to achieve herd immunity. It was widely criticized by top health officials.
I vaguely had read about the Muslim grooming gangs in the north of England: but didn't realize it was that bad.
However, I was aware that some Muslim guys (even the docs I worked with) considered all Christian girls as sluts and thought it was okay to have sex with them, even aggressively. (a relative in Canada was raped by one at her college: No he never was charged, since he claimed she came on to him and was lying, and never was punished even after she got a restraining order on him for stalking and sexual harassment that others verified he was doing).
So anyway, suddenly the British scandal about the Pakistani and Asian grooming gangs who abused young poor white girls is in the news again, with Elon Musk putting his two cents (or should I say two billion) into the discussion.
It is the holiday so I wondered why all of a sudden this (?old) scandal exploded: Is it anti immigrant prejudice (I hope not: We have Filipino relatives there who are now proud UK citizens, but still are obviously not Anglo ethnics). Or is it about an aggressive Islam? The groomers were mainly Pakistani Muslims, yet one wonders why those from the same area and presumably the same culture who are Hindu or Sikh are not involved. Then you have the question: Are these guys immigrants, or second generation types who were inflamed by (Saudi fundamentalist) preachers at local mosques who teach hatred?
Don't ask me.
Presumably the resentment against Muslim immigrants came to a head was because of the attack on young girls at a dance class, where the UK government tried to cover it up and said the perpetrator was a Welshman Christian, when it turned out he was the child of African immigrants and had lots of jihadi stuff in his possession.
Then the government started arresting parents protesting, probably because the good old boys there who tend to be rowdy, were threatening to the innocent or something.
So anyway, after that, the party in power got booted out and another party took over.
Yeah. The Labour party loves the working class, right?
So why is the story of the grooming gangs blowing up again? Maybe new reports? Maybe because one extremist who had a film about it was jailed? Anyone? Anyone.
Canadian journalist David Warren (who also writes on culture on the Catholic Thing) mentions what was the problem:
...the British prime minister, Keir Starmer... rose to power as the prosecutor protecting Muslim “grooming gangs,” and now puts people in gaol who protest on behalf of their rape and murder victims.
The idea that Mr Starmer should have a rôle in the government of a civilized country, is as absurd as the idea that the 14-year-old narcissist who has ruled Canada, or the 82-year-old senescent who has ruled the United States...
Ms Oliver, who now runs a foundation supporting abuse victims, said that, while previous inquiries had led nowhere, she did believe it was now time for a fresh independent investigation into grooming.
She added that as a former DPP, Sir Keir had to bear some responsibility for the widespread failure to bring those responsible to justice.
Writing on X, she said: “Those leading these ‘enquiries’ have always wanted to cover up the truth, to hide it. And I’d say it’s become even worse in recent months with those who dare to speak out finding themselves in prison within a couple of days… when victims wait 6/7/8 years for a trial! Corrupt and just wrong....
so who in the USA is pushing the UK to investigate the story?
...Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman urged Mr Trump to “consider appropriate sanctions against the UK” over its handling of the grooming scandal. ....
He wrote on X: “Who was the head of the CPS when rape gangs were allowed to exploit young girls without facing justice? Keir Starmer, 2008–2013.
“Who is the boss of Jess Phillips right now? Keir Stamer
Here is a discussion by some well known podcasters (lotuseaters) of what is going on:
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sigh.
update: From another popular podcast, triggernometry:
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this wouldn't be the first time the elites ignored injustice against normal people in the UK, and then tried to block inquiries.
It brings to mind the Post Office Scandal, where a computer software glitch caused many ordinary people running post offices to be accused of theft.
The Real Story chronicled sub-postmaster Alan Bates’s legal battle against the Post Office, which had falsely accused him and some 3,500 others of defrauding the UK’s postal service.
Following the airing of the four-part mini-series, the number of signatures on a long-running petition calling for an official honour to be stripped from former Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells rocketed to more than one million.
what both these scandals have in common is that years later, it was the small people who stubbornly pushed for justice who finally got a smidgen of justice.
as the African proverb warns: Even a small snake has a fang.
Alas, so far the ones who should have stopped these things are still free and have never been punished.
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Hirsi Ali discusses the culture. In her biography she discusses the threats to women. It is not just in Islam, but universal in many primitive cultures that sees raping a woman from a different and inferior culture as okay.
What stops this in many cultures is not just keeping women in the homes and veiled, but the knowledge that if you harm a woman, her brothers will punish you. Vigilante justice.
But in Muslim majority cultures, often the court system looks the other way when Christian or Hindu girls are kidnapped, forced to convert and to marry her rapist.
But in the UK, this was not forced marriage but grooming for prostitution. And alas they often came from dysfunctional families and were vulnerable because of widespread use of drugs.
The problem in the UK is not just the culture of south Asian Muslims, but the culture of the liberals who didn't want to insult Islamic immigrants, so gave them a pass on their crimes.
a swift punishment of the perpetrators, plus an outreach to the local religious leaders, would have stopped it. But this was not done.
it is a worldwide problem: the background is the idea that women from an inferior group are fair game: in Europe, it explains upper class men raping rural women or seducing servant or shop women, in India, it means rape of women from lower castes, in the past in the Southern USA it meant black women, in today's USA it often preys on runaway girls or in more recent years, immigrant women, in some areas it means Native American women.
The Laken Riley Act would require the Department of Homeland Security to take into custody undocumented immigrants who have been charged with theft and other crimes.
Riley was raped and killed by an illegal immigrant while jogging.
like most elders I didn't know or care a lot about Gamergate, where the woke tried to reform the game industry, the incels fought back on line and the left exaggerated their trolling as being an extremist right wing conspiracy instead of guys just wanting their games to continue to be fun and who liked ridiculing the gaming equivalent to nagging girlfriends aka Karens.
To me, gaming seemed to be just another shoot em out thing like wrestling or John Wick, where the good guys fought the bad guys but since gamergate overlapped with other trends trying to destroy free speech it caught my attention.
Essentially we saw censorship: done by cyberbullying of those whose opinions are not politically correct. But it went beyond mean tweets: by libeling those who disagree with them they marginalized their opinions, and this influenced the industry and led to the woke Karens taking over the adventure/superhero stories to use them as propaganda instead of entertainment. Of course, it also led to the customers not using the product anymore, and financial problems for the gaming (and later comicbook and film industry) but the woke Karens didn't worry about such things.
So Gamergate and sad puppies in sci fi, was a precursor to the destruction of Hollywood franchises, e.g. the destruction of Star wars etc by woke... and a similar fight could be seen after covid hit, and we saw not the Karens but the government censoring qualified medical data on covid by libeling true experts as anti vax crazies (something that continues to this day).
so how to fight back? Humor and satire.
Trolling with memes is a big way to fight back, and the left wing hysteria of the experts to being trolled is laughable.
But the censorship was worse when it came to science: some prominent physicians not only were censored but punished.
And since the usual methods of discussing things was being censored, a lot of folks drifted to alternative sites: true, some are crazy but some were just saying things that some people in government didn't want to be said.
But with Trumpieboy taking over, the hope is that the push back will include free speech, and that means that mature types will be able to take over the culture wars before the crazies do.
This freedom of speech means letting us discuss medical illnesses and treatment. You know, we used to do this in our hospitals, where we had meetings discussing and analyzing journal articles. These published articles were often biased or laughable, but back then, aside from a letter to the editor, which was slow and clumsy, we had no way to push back against what was being published.
Now we can discuss our questions and tweet our objections without being censored.
A lot of the MSM/government monopoly was destroyed not just by crazies but by pushback: thanks to podcasts and the twitter files.
And this is good.
the destruction of the woke censorship complex goes beyond medicine, and goes beyond politics, but into culture itself.
Because I have worked in various cultures both in the USA and overseas, I have an interest in mythology and how mythology and psychology impacts culture (and religion). Jordan Peterson has a lot of lectures about this, People forget that he started on the internet by posting to discussion boards answering questions for boys, and saw the need to teach boys to be mature men.
But then something unexpected happened: Trumpieboy won, and suddenly things changed.
The culture wars, which appeared to be lost on many levels, has seen a revival of traditional ways of looking at things.
Fast forward to Kekius maximus, an icon that Elon Musk is using on Twitter/X.
I know Kek from the Q conspiracy pages, and Maximus is a bow to the Gladiator I character played by Russel Crowe.
The catchphrase "Kekius Maximus," used in a way similar to "lol" to react to something funny, is a portmanteau of "kek" and an Ancient Roman name such as Flavius Maximus.
"Kek" originated as a translation of the acronym "lol" when written by members of the Horde faction and viewed by Alliance members in World of Warcraft and became a popular alternative to "lol" in the late 2000s and early 2010s, primarily on 4chan.
Kekius Maximus likely references Maximus Decimus Meridius, the main character in Ridley Scott's film Gladiator, and has been associated with imagery of gladiators and soldiers of Ancient Rome for many years. Additionally, "Kekius" translates to "the greatest" or "largest", with the phrase therefore literally translating to "the greatest kek" (while "great kek" is itself a common expression).
more details at link.
But it also has to do with a game that is now being released: Path of Exile 2.
I saw a discussion of these games on a Joe Rogan podcast that mentioned these games are ways to relax the mind for geeks.
These multi layer games are not just shoot em ups, but include strategy and planning that overlap into war gaming, which is a way to teach people to think strategically.
Hmm... sounds interesting.
Wonder if they are using this to teach medical students to think? thirty Years ago, we did have a primitives game to teach us about CPR, and apparently there are still games being used to teach thinking.
So if nothing else, Elon Musk's using Kekius Maximus is not just a troll, but a heads up to we old folks that this gaming subculture exists and like movies and books can be used for good or bad ends.
