The Japanese are back and other local news

In recent days, I have seen a few Apache helicopters going over and yes, it is time for the joint Philippine military/US military exercizes, the Balikatan 2026. 

Usually this helps practice coordination for disasters etc. and usually includes not just the US training the Philippines for cyberwar and fancy stuff, but the Philippines special forces train the US troops in jungle warfare.

But this time there is a difference: Japan, who in the past has sent only observers, is now sending in soldiers to join the exercize:

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

in other news, the big story of the day is the shortage of oil based products, needed for transportation and in the near future to plant the yearly rice crop.

But oil is coming from an unlikely source: the Philippines is one of several Asian nations buying that oil from Russia. Apparently, Russia was stopped from selling oil etc to Europe via pipeline, so stored it in ships and storage areas.

a behind paywall article notes that Trumpieboy sort of ignored this issue with China last year

And now is saying wink wink it's okay for Russia to sell this oil to Asia.

Hmm...

Dumb Trumpieboy or knowing what is coming and winking at Russia so they will be there to help Asian allies and China?

so anyway we have enough fuel for a month or so...but the price will go up which is bad news.

The Bodylanguage Venezuean guy explains what is going on.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

So what is happening to our area?

Well, Kuya just harveted the last field with our winter rice crop, but is having trouble finding people to dry it (usually we use sun drying, meaning put it on a flat surface such as a road, and then turn it periodically until it is dry enough to store..

But the reason he is having trouble finding someone to do this is twofold:

One, a lot of local folks are working to build the solar panel project here. this is a commercial of course, but gives you an idea of what is going on:

but this is not the only place our farmers are working:

There is a local gold rush.

People are renting back hoes to dig up the fields and then panning for gold.

I asked Kuya if they are finding gold, and he said enough to cover their expenses.

----------

One more item: the country is shut down for the Easter weekend, with folks headed to their home villages, and lots of processions and visita Iglesia and singing the Pasyon.

often people build small chapels for this: Emy used to do it up the street before she died, and one could hear the chant in similar small chapels constructed in side streets all over town. This expat explains it for you:

  

since covid it has not revived, maybe because the elders are dead ant the younger folks have work to do: I only heard singing from one such chapel this year.

Our barangay holds it in the local neighborhood chapel, and I donated a little money for food to feed the chanters and all the neighbors who came to the chapel to pray and get a free meal of course.

but today is Holy Thursday, so that singing is ending and today we visit the churches 

Spring harvest time

What is the alternative?

..

...and I hate to agree with this bozo, but anyone who knows about the danger of collapsing churches.

Philippines finds natural gas field

 

this is good news since a lot of money is spent importing LPG and diesel/oil.

Oil: Russia to the rescue

Lots of hysteria here about running out of oil.

But now Russia is coming to the rescue:

AI tells me: 

Based on reports from March 2026, the administration of Donald Trump issued a temporary, 30-day waiver allowing for the sale and handling of Russian oil already loaded on tankers, effectively lifting certain sanctions on Russian oil "stranded at sea".

Trumpieboy let Russia store oil in ships and now is letting them sell it. Hmm... it's almost as if he foresaw that Iran would block the strait of Homuz so did a slight of hand to undermine Iran's blackmail.

BBC site: that quotes the European experts who hate this since it helps Putin does admit this will help a lot of folk:

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the "tailored, short-term" policy move would reduce the economic impact of the US-Israel war with Iran.

 

History of cats

According to this article scientists  are finding wild cats that lived near humans and ate vermin were found in a lot of the world, but these cats were never really domesticated: Most domesticated cats originated in North Africa. and spread with trade etc...even Chinese cats came via the Silk Road.

,,,,,

here is a Smithsonian article 

summary: local small cats did live with farmers before then but were not domesticated but essentially wild cats who came to eat vermin. But then the domesticated (i.e friendly) cats arrived and spread thanks to the Romans etc.: and this wasn't just true in Europe, but also in Asia:

using genetic testing, researchers have discovered that pet cats likely arrived in China around 600 C.E.—over 1,500 years after their introduction to Europe. According to a study recently published on the preprint server bioRxiv, cats were one of the many assets that traveled east on the famous Silk Road, the lengthy trading network that connected Asia with Europe between the second century B.C.E. and the 15th century C.E.

another Smithsonian article here:

An analysis revealed that the cats from before 200 B.C.E. were wildcats, and that their domestic counterparts didn’t reach Europe until about 2,000 years ago. Moreover, these feline friends came from North Africa, not east of the Mediterranean....

the other new study traced the history of domestic cats in China, differentiating them from wildcats there. The team studied 22 feline bones from 14 archeological sites in China spanning about 5,000 years. The analysis revealed that although wild leopard cats (Prionailurus bengalensis) lived among humans for around 3,500 years, they were a “clear example of a ‘failed domestication,’ 

in Japan, of course, cats are popular: Hello Kitty for example in today's world. and cats are mentioned in books from 900/1000 AD: They are mentioned in both Tale of Genji (where a guy steals the cat from a married girl he loves so he can feel a connection with her) and in the Pillow Book,  where the local watchdog attacks the emperor's cat and the dog is (almost) beaten to death to punish it.

Usually cats are a symbol of welcoming home, and this smiling cat that waves at you is also seen in the Philippines as a decoration

 

here in our area of the Philippines, we have feral cats who wander into our business compound to catch mice/lizards and eat what the cook leaves out for them. About four years ago, all the cats in our area disappeared (?infection) but now they have come back. 

The bad news: Our dogs kill cats. The cats that lived here when they were puppies were left alone but they will try to kill any new cat that wanders into our home. So the cats tend to stay in the storage and workshop areas, not in our house any more.

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

update: according to AI: Maine coon cats and Norwegian forest cats are genetically related to the smaller domesticated cat we all know and love but developed their traits due to harsh conditions

Family news

a lot of worry here in the Philippines that we will run out of diesel/LPG. The price went up last week, but now it has come down a bit. It is the start of hot season, meaning that the electrical grid will be stressed by airconditioners, which are now cheap enough for the middle class (12 thousand pesos, about 220 dollars).

 In the last 20 years, we have gradually mechanized the farm using hand plows (sort of a large rototiller) and of course irrigation for the winter harvest that uses pumps. 

And over the last 20 year we have switched from hand harvesting and using our small thresher to just renting a harvester thresher to do the harvest. 

 Most of the local farmers we given their traditional land years ago, and by law we can only control a limited amount of land. So we subcontract our organic rice business to local farmers.

 The problem? They are getting old, and their kids are now educated and moving to the city. There is a danger of losing that farm land to developers, such as the big solar panel company that is rentlng/buying up good rice land to put solar panels.

Sigh. 

But more recently, the local are renting backhoes to dig up below the dirt to look for gold.

Considering that the price of fertilizer and diesel has gone up, and big businesses are busy buying and importing cheap rice from overseas which keeps the price of rice down, some farmers figure they might want to get money from these non farming schemes.

Sigh. .....

It is also the eleventh anniversary of my husband's death.

Drones are everywhere

 over 40 thousand people have died from terrorism in Nigeria, and Trump promised to help Nigerian military with training and expertise, including drones.

From

  Crux, a Catholic site.

A spokesperson for AFRICOM, the U.S. Africa Command, told The Associated Press the U.S. troops “are working alongside their Nigerian counterparts to provide intelligence support, advisory assistance, and targeted training in support of the Nigerian Armed Forces.”

Africanews via MSN says the same story: and Nigeria is making their own drones.:
\

The US military who by law is forbidden to enter into combat here, does this type of support with the Philippine military against Islamic terrorists in the South (But not with local insurgencies that are not part of international terrorism, )

Mentioned at 4 minutes in this video:

Johnson's cat

 the rest is history podcast discusses Dr Johnson's final years. A bit depressing.

But one of the aspects was about his cat:

from Wikipedia:

Hodge the cat: 

when I observed he was a fine cat, saying, "Why yes, Sir, but I have had cats whom I liked better than this;" and then as if perceiving Hodge to be out of countenance, adding, "but he is a very fine cat, a very fine cat indeed."

Johnson would buy oysters for him to eat, because as the video notes, oysters were cheap and only eaten by poor people, so maybe Johnson's cook didn't want to buy them. 

.....Today Hodge is remembered by a bronze statue, unveiled in 1997 by Sir Roger Cook, the then-Lord Mayor of London, outside the house in Gough Square he shared with Johnson and Barber, Johnson's black manservant and heir.

The statue shows Hodge sitting next to a pair of empty oyster shells atop a copy of Johnson's famous dictionary, with the inscription "a very fine cat indeed".

It has become customary for visitors that walk past the statue to place coins in the oyster shells as tokens of good luck. To mark special occasions and anniversaries a pink piece of counsel's ribbon may be seen tied to one of the oyster shells or around Hodge's neck.

the wikipedia article notes several poems or essays etc written about Johnson and his cats. 

But Hodge is not the only cat memorialized in a statue in London:

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

 I posted a long post about Dropsy, and included a description of Johnson's final days dying of Dropsy on my medical blog. Too sad.

Remember the Thai farmworker massacres

 One little covered story about Gaza attacking Israel is that they didn't just attack Israelis but attacked Thais working at a nearby farm.

Why were they there? Because in the past local Palestinians were hired, but had participated in terror attacks., so foreign workers were cheaper and safer to use.

Here is the article from 2025 about them:

Why were so many Thai farmers among the hostages held by Hamas?  

 

 Nattapong Pinta was among 31 Thais taken by the Hamas militant group. Thailand’s foreign ministry in a statement Saturday confirmed that Pinta, the last Thai hostage in Gaza, was confirmed dead. It said the bodies of two others have yet to be retrieved.

so how did they die? No one is asking. 

The ministry has said 46 Thais have been killed during the war. Thais were the largest group of foreigners held captive by Hamas

 

They were among tens of thousands of Thai workers in Israel. 

So why did I bring this up? Because a lot of ]folk living in Qatar and the middle East are foreign workers who will be kilked by Iran in this war, not just other Muslims or Israelis. 

thought for today

except in my case, it is being greeted by five dogs:

watchdogs: Two for the house/garden, two for the garage/meeting room and one who guards the stairs to the upstairs office.

Ehrlich's legacy

SciFi writer Sarah Hoyt has an essay on elite planners trying to run the lives of ordinary people: and notes that people are not widgets to be bossed around.

And she brings up the way the elites loved Ehrlich's ideas, which would limit the children to save the planet.

what actually allowed Ehrlich to do harm was this idea — which the poor man (I’m convinced he has not idea how toxic he sounds) above echoes so exactly: the idea that governments CAN AND SHOULD determine how the people of the nation should live: how many people should be born, how many die, what’s “sustainable”, what they can eat, what they can’t, how much they should exercise, what type of work they should do, etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum and ad vomitus.

just like the west is ignorant of China's cultural revolution when students embrace the cancel culture, because the only film that showed what happens when the cancel culture idiots get in charge was the Three Body problem, so too, if you want to see how Ehrlich's ideas were implemented by China, you need to read Mo Yan's novvel Frog: about forced abortions.

No I don't know of anywhere to download it for free . And most reviewers seem to concentrate on the main character and don't get horrified that she not only does forced abortions, but she searches out women who try to hide their pregnancy and aborts them: And in the book, two of these women die because of this.

Presumably the reviewers didn't get upset at these deaths, but concentrate on things like character development. Sigh.

lies lies and propaganda uggh

 the MSM is full of lies and propaganda about the war and when I find stories that ignore the context to spin the story, I wonder why the MSM editors aren't noticing.

The latest? Israel killed a priest when they bombed Southern LEbanon. Uh, Hezbollah had placed thousands of missiles in civilian areas and has shot hundreds of them into Israel in recent days, so Israel texted locals and told them to leave, but one priest bragged he would not (why? To stop the destruction of the missiles which he knew were there? To please the anti Israel grifters in th eVatican?_ Well never mind.

Then we hear a guy had lots of stuff trying to kill kids in the US at a Jewish daycare center, and the press sympathetically said it was because the bad Israelis killed his family in Lebanon. Uh, what this means is that they killed two of his brothers who were leaders of Hezbollah in that area, and since it takes time to gather the munitions and guy a gun etc. one suspects he had these things ready to use in his garage. 

Ah but his neighbors said he was a nice quiet guy. 

well so was Hitler who had a girlfriend and dogs who loved him and was a gifted artist.

And what about the wife he married toa enabled him to become a US citizen? Nowhere to be found in any stories. Why?

but anyway there is propaganda on both sides 

and lot of US opposition because they prefer to hate Trump than see the big picture of an ongoing threat to the Sunni states nearby, not to mention the oil and the sea lanes.

Latest lie that I noticed being pushed: Fertilizer shortage and we will blame Trump. 

Uh, fellahs, there has been a fertilizer shortage/and high prices for a couple of years, because of the Ukraine war (Potash anyone) any farmer knows this: Indeed, we are organic, but the price of organic fertiliser went up because non organic farmers were buying it now.

well, anyway, Kuya is worrried about everything, but hey I am an old lady and have given up trying to stay up on these fights.

So who do you trust?

I have posted from StrategyPage in the past because they get things correct on countries that I do know what is going on because I lived there and/or have family there (e.g. parts of Africa, parts of South America, and of curse here in the Philippines).

and here is there take: Posted mainly so I can listen to it on my tablet since it is suppertime here then family time at the movies so I don't have time to listen right now:

Taxes uggh

 I started doing m taxes in Turbo tax t for years, no problem. I would sign in with my password.

They put up all I had filed before and I would just change the numbers.

They would file electronically and voila, done in three hours.

But now everything has changed.

Signing in requires lots of stuff to verify it is you. Trying to figure out how to do that took me two hours.

I have to put in all the details, from scratch, which is a hassle;  

But the list kept circling around, and I had to answer the same questions/details over and over again about my overseas income.

If you live overseas, and make over 100 thousand dollars a year, you have to pay taxes. But smaller amounts are supposed to be reported to the IRS with a different form that is not included on your tax report but you don't have to pay taxes on them.

Yes I have overseas bank accounts with tiny amounts of interest income. and my granddaughter has income from rent that my husband gifted her but since she was underage, it was put in my name until I die. But we use it for her college expenses.

 But the main hassle is the W 2 forms. They kept insisting I answer questions about a w2 that reports income from ebay or jobs. Well I don't sell on ebay and haven't made money blogging in the last ten years, but never mind: Since I won't fill out that form, I can't file electronically.

Bummer.

Sigh.

In other news, the British lady who stayed here a few days after her flights via Qatar were canceled, has found a flight via Vancouver to go home. It is not until next week, so she is now staying with other friends til then.

propaganda works

a good summary

Iran and terrorist psychopaths are the reason for Trumpieboy's war: But no one wants to admit this.

 

......

the shame is that the left has joined the jihad, and anyone defending Western Society is the enemy of the NWO.

We live in a world where Monty Python is the voice of reason:

I would like to point out that Starmer has now managed to alienate the extreme centre

His plans for the evisceration of English culture will be outlined in a new Labour publication called 'Der Starmer' https://t.co/qG3YSLDcMi

— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) March 8, 2026

........

DataRepublican (Small r( has a long analysis of the data. It is hopeful but explains the problems why the war might be prolonged.

 She uses hard facts, not propaganda.

several facts I didn't know: The Strait of Hormuz is closed to traffic due to insurance companies.

There are preset military assets all over the country who are seimi independent to hit other countries etc. Eventually they will run out of weapons but they do not rely on Tehran

There are enough religious zealots to keep the mullahs intact.

and finally if the price of oil increases, the US will make a bundle of money. I sort of know this because when I lived in Oklahoma, the price of oil went up and they started pumping the wells again and our neighbor quit his job as a nursing assistant to go back to work in the oil industry

.

from Wikipedia: a long analysis of the oil price spikes in the early 2000s.

family news

 Joy is now back from Hong Kong.

She was with a delegation from the Dept of Agriculture that sent a group to China, Hong Kong and Macau to discuss organic food exports. But at the last minute, the Chinese part of the trip was canceled. Hmm... wonder if China is mad at the Philippines again.

Well, on the way home she ran into a British lady who had worked as a medical missionary to the Philippines years ago and had adopted a daughter here, so she was visiting friends and family here. And since her plane trip back to the UK was via Doha, alas her plane trip was canceled. Presumably the airports are closed due to drone strikes, and will reopen soon.. If she was rich she could reschedule via North America but she isn't rich and the airlines just say wait.

So she is staying in the guest room.

Luckily she is a dog person and the dogs are letting her alone (we have five watchdogs who we leave outside to roam at night to guard the house and business compound).

Don't ask me what is going on with the war.

Much of the news ignores that Iran has had proxies making war against lots of folk in the Middle East: Syria's civil war comes to mind, and their proxy Hezbollah put thousands of rockets in civilian areas of Lebanon, but if Israel takes them out, the news merely says Israel is attacking another country.

Sigh.

Sometimes I think that I know more about the military than a lot of these reporters. And of course there is a lot of propaganda out there: From China or the extreme left. 

Trumpie boy finally called out someone named Tucker Carlson for being an anti Jewish bigot, and some of the anti Jewish stuff out there is so ignorant that one wonders if they are reading the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which was a Russian disinformation book put out by the Czar's version of the KGB... I even read that some  politician posting a recipe that includes Jewish blood as an ingredient.

But hey, the press won't notice this because he is a Kennedy 

In the meanwhile, the Pope has his knickers in a knot about trumpieboy on many levels. 

Of course, he was quiet about the Syrian civil war with Iranian mercenaries who helped support the Assads in a war that killed half a million people. For that matter, he didn't notice or the fact that Iran's proxies shot rockets went against Israel and a lot of innocent ships in the Red Sea.

,,. Heck, the Pope can't even criticize China for sentencing Jimmy Lai for daring to say Hong Kong should have freedom of speech (under legal agreement after Chinese takeover of Hong Kong the British law was supposed to stay there). Instead, the Chinese govt imported their patsies to run the place, something most folks there know (because they speak a different dialect).

In the meanwhile, it is the start of summer here: Hot and dry season that will last until the monsoon arrives in June.

It is of course Lent, and last evening, during mass, a bunch of people came into the parking lot in a bus all with similar tee shirts;;They didn't come into church but went to the nearby open shrine to Mary across the parking lot.

. It is a fiesta celebration for Mama Mary, and the Church  has the Divina Pastora shrine here (translation: Holy Shepherdess). When we went home, there were five other buses parked in the street, and the maid said they were doing a pilgrimage to various shrines for some feast day this weekend.

As a Yank I am not up to date on all the feast days here. The city church honors the Three Kings so we have that fiesta, and the Divina Pastora shrine is there because the Spanish gave a statue of this Spanish madonna to a local family and it saved them from a flood, and then we also have barangay (Neighborhood) fiestas: ours is San Lorenzo, St Lawrence, the patron saint of bakers (don't ask) and the next neighborhood is St Vincent (the Spanish one), and this week another neighborhood where the mayor lives is having a fiesta (non saint) and then there is the Sandal fiesta (one of the local businesses run by a previous mayor, so not celebrated with this mayor). There are also federal holidays for various heroes, and then there is Ramadan, and of course Chinese New Year, The big fiesta here is May 1, a feast of Mama Mary, when lots of local people travel home for family reunions

but the big celebration is Christmas season lasts from Sept to the end of January and again it is a reason for traveling home for family reunions.

I mentioned I was in church yesterday, i.e. Saturday...I should note that since Vatican II, Catholics recognize the ancient practice of starting the sabbath on the evening.

If you have Jewish neighbors you would be familiar with this, since many Jewish families dress up and do a formal dinner on Friday night. This is best known to gentiles via the scene in Fiddler on the roof, but many Jewish families continue this practice (I had a Jewish roommate in Medical school whose mother kept kosher).

Well, anyway, here in the Philippines we have all the holidays off: Including the Muslim ones. Even though we are in a rural area, we do have a halal butcher down the street and several of the kiosks at the palenke are run by Muslim women. I am not sure if they are from Mindanao or were reverts after working in the Middle East.

there are a million Filipinos in the Middle East, so here people worry about war there. 

But I have to shake my head in wonder when the US MSM breathlessly say 1000 Yanks out of 100 thousand living there want to go home because they are in danger. Well, the Phil gov't also say 1000 people want to return home too. But the other million are staying put for now.

Sigh.

Shipping news and other domino effects of the Iran conflict

 

there are links about these stories on the youtube site.

All I know about this is that I was working in Liberia when a previous war closed the Suez canal, and all the big tankers had to go around Africa. This was before container ships by the way. 

We had a contract with some shipping firms to treat sialors... many small ships would go around the hump to local ports, meaning first to Sierra Leone then to Monrovia, so most of those we treated were for diseases the sailors picked up from the nice ladies there. And since I spoke some Spanish (lots of Portuguese seamen could understand Spanish) and German (lots of Polish seamen could speak German) it meant I got to see a lot of these in our clinic.

since Monrovia's artificial port is small, it meant we had to go out to the larger ships to evacuate patients which I did a couple of times.

Things are now different: Container ships for example, and LPG not just tankers... 

The video discusses the money part, about insurance coverage, and about the dark fleet to get around sanctions. 

And don't forget China. LINK 

Tanker traffic through the energy chokepoint effectively halted after the US and Israel began a bombing campaign over the weekend that has prompted Iran to respond with strikes across the region. As the world’s largest oil and gas importer, China is among the most exposed nations — while it has ample reserves, almost half of its crude imports transited the strait in December.

 And he reminds people about the Houthis who are Iranian proxies, who will probably start shelling ships from neutral countries in the Red Sea.

Translation: This will cause many ships going to Europe to divert around Africa, and also impoverish Egypt since it won't collect fees from ships using the Suez canal.

 Another change: Huge numbers of Filipinos are seamen and in danger.

There are  over one million Filipino OFW in the Middle East, and over 1000 have asked for help to come back home, mainly from Dubai.

But trouble in the area has other implications for the Philippines.

and here in the Philippines, the gov't is worried that the price of oil/petroleum products will go up. This means higher diesel prices for those of us who farm (using hand plows instead of water buffalo), higher prices for fertilizer, (even organic chicken manure fertilizer needs to be bagged and transported to the fields), higher prices for anything that has to be transported, higher prices for people using public transportation to work, and higher prices for LPG to cook food (the alternative wood means deforestation). 

So use modern solar farms? Yup. We have them being placed all over our valuable rice growing areas here but they aren't on line yet.

we  are seeing a few e-bikes being used as tricycles (which is what ordinary people here use for transportation) But  you can't use solar energy for handplows.

Or for backhoes either. 

Right now, the winter harvest is almost done, and it's too early to prepare the fields for rice planting, so a lot of farmers around here are renting backhoes to dig up the soil so they can pan for gold. We hope this won't destroy the rice paddies, but hey poor people are more worried about eating today than about possible ecological problems in the future.

(Note: We are approaching hunger season, when the money from the last harvest runs out but no money until the next harvest).

Sigh.

putting the war on Irn into context

Iran has been destablizing the Middle East for 49 plus years via their proxies including Hamas in Gaza, Assad in Syria, the Houthis, and by taking over Levanon.

Bit the USA essentially helped the crazies take over by encouraging the dying Shah to leave. And as a result, the Mullahs declared war against the USA: 

And because Jimmy Carter was a Christian who hated war, he did nothing even though attacking an embassy is essentially a declaration of war...So nothing was done. Well, almost nothing.

In those days, Hollywood didn't hate America, so helped rescue some of the hostages, and later a film was made about this: Argo..

I couldn't find free movie on line but it is streaming on Netflix if you have it.

But there was another rescue, of American civilians, arranged by their boss: Ross Perot.

,.....

War is not the answer, but. peace doesn't work either

.....

🚨 EPIC! Massive amounts of Iranians spotted dancing to YMCA holding up "THANK YOU, TRUMP" signs in Washington DC

Incredible things are happening right now.

A liberal's mind BREAKS just looking at this!

Trump has just stunned the world 🇺🇸🇮🇷pic.twitter.com/2lPSnT2s2x

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) March 1, 2026

the next epidemic thanks to research on viruses

Cell phones are destroying the environment

 A lecture about it from a UK College:

Posted mainly ro listen to later on my tablet. But I have posted about this in the past.

Family news

Joy ia still visiting family in the Visayas. I thought someone was sick there, but apparently it is a family reunion to settle the will of her deceased parents who had land etc there. 

 While she is gone, Kuya is busy fixing up the house, including putting new screens on her bedroom windows (which had rusted out and had holes leaving mosquitoes inside). 

 The latest news for our rice land: One more harvest to go, but a good winter harvest. 

 But even though we are in the major rice growing part of Luzon, there has been pressure to divert land for solar energy farms.

 And now: A gold rush:

 Someone found gold nearby so a lot of farmers are digging up the superficial soil to pan for gold. Presumably they will put it back into place before planting season in June. 

 grok says there are no reports of gold in our area, although it can be found 45 km from here in Palayan. 

 Gapan City in Nueva Ecija, Philippines, does not appear to have active gold mining, significant gold deposits, or gold panning activities directly within or immediately around the city itself. Nueva Ecija province has some historical and limited association with gold, primarily in other areas:

There are mentions of small-scale or historical placer (alluvial) gold in parts of the province, such as near Palayan City (where a "Palayan Gold Mine" was referenced in older reports, located about 45 km north of Gapan City and near Cabanatuan).

Some copper-gold occurrences or prospects have been noted near Cabanatuan (close to Gapan), but these are not major operations.

........more here is history 

The province is better known for agriculture (as the "Rice Bowl of the Philippines") and tourism spots like Minalungao National Park in General Tinio, which has been poetically called a "mine of gold" due to its scenic beauty (e.g., clear river, limestone formations, and cave), not actual gold resources. Gold panning was historically restricted there to protect the environment after it became a protected area. No recent news, discoveries, or active mining operations show up specifically tied to Gapan City. Searches for gold mining, deposits, or panning in the area mostly point to jewelry shops, pawnshops dealing in gold (e.g., Cebuana Lhuillier branches, local jewelers like Helen Jewelry Shop or Chinatown Gold Center), and buy/sell posts for gold items in Gapan and nearby cities like Cabanatuan. If you're referring to buying, selling, or pawning gold jewelry/items in Gapan City, it's a commercial hub with several pawnshops and jewelry stores where gold is commonly traded (often at rates aligned with current Philippine gold prices, around PHP 5,000–8,000+ per gram depending on karat and market fluctuations). If this query is about something more specific—like a particular news story, investment, historical site, or local business—feel free to provide more details for a deeper look!

The clergy are silent

Sigh. IN our prayers

How to fix a leaky Submarine

Instapundit has a comment on fixing leaks on a post about NASA trying to stop hydrogen leaks from their latest rocket.

But I am old enough to remember another story on how a common radiator repair fluid saved a sub:

Epstein was here (Philippines)

\]]

ABSCBN article states 

congress plans to do an investigation: “A recent report indicates that email exchanges from the Epstein files show that Epstein and his associates engaged a Philippine-based team to clean up hisonline image after his conviction as a sex offender,” Elago said. ///The investigation shall cover allegations of media manipulation and reputation management conducted from the Philippines supposedly to shield Epstein from accountability.

many groups help the local cops and charity outreaches, including NGOs anc churches, but as this report notes: there have been times when abusers infiltrate the charity outreaches to abuse children or to make money. 

Sigh. One of the problems, and not just here in the Philippines 

 

.

...this is from two years ago:

.government report on sex trafficking:... https://philja.judiciary.gov.ph/files/journal/vol6issue21.pdf

Miracles we haz them

5 ,,

,,,Bishop Sheen was a popular Catholic speaker who had his own TV show, which you can still find on you tube. A bit flamboyant for today's laid back media, but very informative and often very funny.  Lots of people in the USA think he was a saint, so most are happy that he might be declared one by the church.

Trivia fact about him:  Martin Sheen chose his name for his stage name. 

But coming back to the baby who lived: as a doc I see why this incident is called a miracle, but, is this a miracle? such things happen in medicine although very rare....

the medical explanation is that the hemoglobin in babies carries oxygen differently so prolonged lack of oxygen is not as dangerous as it is for adults, but betting a baby back after a one hour delay is unusual, and getting a child who recovered fully after this is sort of a miracle too, so I guess you could call it a miracle.

as a doc, I did have a similar case of full recovery of a baby.

when I worked in rural Africa 40 years ago. Premature babies usually didn't survive, and the only incubator was a wooden box with a glass lid, where we controlled the temperature with light bulbs and supplied oxygen via a tube.

One Christmas, we had a  three pound baby who was struggling to survive.,

When she started gasping, the nurse called me to help. 

We increased her oxygen and started to stimulate her, rubbing her to encourage her to breathe. But then suddenly she gasped and died: i.e. turned pale and went weak. So we started CPR. 

She did come back but her heartbeat kept going off and on and she was not breathing. Finally, after about a half hour, she again  turned pale and lacked a heartbeat, 

so since nothing was working I figured it was time  to do something illogical,  I instructed the nurse: Petronilla, baptize her. So she was baptized Mary,,, at which point she started breathing and moving a bit and within five minutes she was breathing on her own and looked normal.

A miracle from being hit with cold water on her head? I don't know. But she did recover and eventually went home.

Now there is another part to this story.

In Africa, unless both parents were baptized Catholic and married in the church, we did not baptize babies because their parents might not bring them up in the church. So the local priest, hearing what I had done, was very annoyed, especially since the father was the local shaman and not a Christian. ]

But as I  explained: well, we tried everything else so I figured it was time to ask for a miracle. 

 LOL

In medicine, we do see a lot of coincidences: people who should live but who die, but also those who we thought would die but survived...

when I was in medical school one teacher pointed this out, ,and said that was why few doctors were pious, but most did believe in a higher power and an ultimate reason for all the things we saw, both good and bad.

Family news

 We held Kuya's birthday party so we have been busy.

He is larger than the average Filipino, so I checked out the used clothing merchants a few times in the last two weeks. I ended up buyint 12 polo type shirts and figure half will fit him. The rest he will give to staff or to me since I wear large shirts as tunics or to sleep in.

Joy is busy teaching business to the farmers in her coop and working with the government outreach. Farmers tend to be poor and their kids are leaving the farm land for better jobs, so the government is trying to upgrade their ability to raise crops that make a profit, for example organic rice and vegetables, which Joy helps by doing the marketing for the coop.

Myself, I had been weak and home bound for six months then suddenly got my ability to walk etc improved last week. I even managed to shop at the mall and go to church, something I had not done for months.

we are in the cool season, and the heat will sart next month, and won't  get better til the monsoon hits in late May, when the crops will be planted.

Our crops from the winter season have almost been harvested, so Kuya has been improving the house to keep the staff busy and employed until it is time to work at the farm.

more conspiracy theories anyone?

.....

 

........\

when Rogan calls something evil, one wonders where are all the clergy in this? 

Cardinal Vigano says it''s members include some in the Vatican. article from last year, before the files were released:

PBS assures us he abused girls but wasn't part of a sex abuse

ring. 

Prosecuation memos, case summaries and other documents made public in the department's latest release of Epstein-related records show that FSome allegations couldn't be verified, investigators wroteBI agents and federal prosecutors diligently pursued potential coconspirators. ...No videos or photos showed Epstein victims being sexually abused, none showed any males with any of the nude females, and none contained evidence implicating anyone other than Epstein and Maxwell, then-Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey wrote in an email for FBI officials last year

 one does wonder what would have been found if these files had been examined years ago.

One hopes no one starts a war to distract the public from this corruption.

Jimmy Lai

 Publisher Jimmy Lai, a voice for freedom in Hong Kong, has been sentenced to a long prison sentence by China.

Lai founded Apple Daily in 1995, a news publication which became particularly critical of Hong Kong’s government in the wake of a controversial 2019 bill to extradite locals to the mainland for trial in political cases. 

The bill caused widespread protests and demonstrations, and Lai was arrested in 2020.,,,

he wasn't the only one jailed:

Six former Apple Daily staffers, and two human rights activists were also sentenced on Monday. Lai’s codefendants received jail sentences between six and 10 years. The convicted journalists are publisher Cheung Kim-hung, associate publisher Chan Pui-man, editor-in-chief Ryan Law, executive editor-in-chief Lam Man-chung, executive editor-in-chief responsible for English news Fung Wai-kong and editorial writer Yeung Ching-kee. 

... After Lai’s sentence was announced on Monday, the UK foreign secretary Yvette Cooper said Lai was a victim of a “politically motivated prosecution,” while prime minister Keir Starmer has said he had raised Jimmy Lai’s case during his visit to China last month.

Jimmy Lai is a UK citizen,  

 Rep. John Moolenaar (R-MI), chairman for the House Select Committee on China, said in a statement that if President Xi Jinping “wants to improve his relationship with the United States, freeing Jimmy Lai is where he needs to start.”

 

Meanwhile, the European Union’s foreign affairs spokesperson Anitta Hipper said that the EU “deplores” Lai’s sentencing and called for his “immediate and unconditional release.” 

 

Calling Amerlia: The church needs you

  one exiled bishop who is still in good standing has posted an essay  telling the bishops in the US to go back to being pastors 

(this is) A real emergency – measured not in feelings, but in facts. An emergency measured by silence where there must be answers. In tolerance where there must be correction. In shepherds who refuse to name wolves, while those who simply want to guard the flock are treated as a problem. 

 Let me be very clear: this is not about personalities.... When men who openly contradict Catholic teaching are tolerated, promoted, even celebrated – while those who hold fast to tradition are restricted, sidelined, or ignored – something is upside down.... This is not about one group. It is not about one society. It is not about one bishop, or one letter, or one unanswered request. It is about a pattern – a pattern where orthodoxy is treated as dangerous, tradition is treated as suspect, and fidelity is portrayed as rigidity while error is praised as pastoral sensitivity....

 

.... I am not calling for rebellion. I am calling for honesty. I am not calling for chaos. I am calling for courage. I am not calling anyone to abandon the Church. I am calling the Church to remember herself....

 

Pray for bishops who will speak even when it costs them everything. Pray for priests who will remain faithful even when abandoned. Pray for Rome – not that it will manage this crisis, but that it will answer it. And pray for yourself. Because the line is already there.

*Why was he exiled? I am not sure but maybe because when a sports team honored transvestites who ridicule Catholic nuns and Catholicism, he led a prayerful protest against this (even though it wasn't his dioceses). Can't have that can we. It goes against ecclesiastical protocol...

. The local bishop, who is a good bishop, complained about the episode but also complained about the protest where people prayed, making one wonder about the backstory, but never mind. And this news story did note that some bishops sent them "Nasty letters".

Yes, it is so bad that one longs for voices that are actually noticed instead of the McCarrick bishops and hertical priests who usually get all the headlines.

 EcclesIsSaved satire blog suggests what the church might need is it's own Amelia:

Here she is with a bishop who is now in charge of regulating Catholic dogma, and whose nickname is "kissy" because he is most famous for writing a soft porn book on the art of kissing.

Well, one hopes some youngster who knows how to make AI will take up this theme, and maybe this will get some notice from the blockheads who are busy pushing synodality, which resemble the Marxist inspired meeting tactic that I remember from the sixties,  that let activists take over the meeting and silence those who go against their agenda.

Sigh.

So what can one do if one is a retired little old lady who is pretty well confined to her home due to age?

 We have our rosaries and are praying.

making the church into an NGO (and making lots of money)

 LINK

article explains how the Bishops conference is making money from helping illegal immigration.

The USCCB acts as a Prime Contractor for the federal government. ...

for example 

 Take Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston. In Fiscal Year 2024, they reported $101 million in revenue. A staggering $82 million—or 81%—came from government grants. The institution has a fiduciary interest in the continuation of the border crisis. If the flow of migrants stops, the contracts dry up. If the contracts dry up, the budget collapses.

Monetizing Debt: ...The system doesn’t just pay the Church to host them; it pays the Church to collect debt from them. Under the State Department’s refugee program, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) provides interest-free travel loans to refugees to fly them to the United States. Before they board the plane, refugees sign a “Promissory Note” agreeing to repay this debt. Here is the part they don’t tell you in the Sunday bulletin: The USCCB and its affiliates act as the debt collectors. ... The more debt they collect from the poor, the more revenue they keep for themselves.

  then they psychologically manipulate you with guilt to support this and look the other way at the corruption implicit in this policy.

The USCCB has mastered the art of weaponizing parish piety to protect its federal revenue stream. This is done through a sophisticated internal propaganda machine known as Justice for Immigrants. When you see a “National Migration Week” banner at your parish, or hear a homily about “welcoming the stranger” that sounds suspiciously like a World Economic Forum talking point, you are witnessing a downloaded “Action Kit.” These kits are explicit. The Missionaries of Hope Toolkit instructs parish leaders to “Bring elements of your community’s popular religion... to the forefront.” They cynically use beloved figures like Mother Cabrini as mascots. They weaponize Our Lady of Guadalupe to emotionally blackmail the faithful.

But this part is into conspiracy theory stuff, so I can't vouch if it is true. 

,,.. Even if you refuse to donate to the “Second Collection” for the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD)—which was exposed for funding groups promoting abortion and LGBT ideology—you are still paying for it. Every parish pays a “Cathedraticum” or “Parish Assessment” tax to the diocese—usually 10-15% of the tithe. This money funds the “Social Justice Offices” that lobby for mass migration.....  ...

...Then came November 20, 2025. In a move that sent shockwaves through the Complex, the Department of Homeland Security finally pulled the plug. They issued a Notice of Suspension and Proposed Debarment to Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley (CCRGV)—the operation run by Sister Norma Pimentel. The letter was brutal. It didn’t cite theology; it cited fraud. DHS auditors found “sweeping inaccuracies” and “large gaps” in migrant records. They found over 248 instances of billing violations. This was the smoking gun. It proved that the “humanitarian” shield was masking a lack of accountability for hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.

 

The End of Prophetic Distance Here is the hard truth that the USCCB doesn’t get. You cannot be a prophet and a contractor at the same time. A prophet stands outside the system, calling it to repentance. A contractor stands inside the system, cashing the check. By hip-joining itself to the federal migration apparatus, the American Church has traded its moral authority for bureaucratic relevance. It has become a logistics partner for a policy that—as the whistleblowers testified—often ends in the exploitation of the very children it claims to protect.

We are witnessing a profound identity crisis, where the Church is becoming indistinguishable from the government agencies it serves. 

Excuse me, but when I read about certain bishops condemning the government without putting things into context, I recognize those bishops are high on the gay friendly axis of McCarrick bishops.who protect their minions and don't recognize we layfolk see what they are doing.

any cynical Catholic knows this: We saw similar word games to protect priest predators in the past. My favorite: when our bishop claimed he had had no reports of pedophilia on his watch, yet one of my patients tearfully related how her husband helped pressure a family not to report their son's abuse by a local priest to the police. We also had editorials in the local Catholic paper praising the gay friendly priests as an exanple of tolerance and charity: These priests served in a local college town that later found a massive pedophilia scandal related to their football team outreach to poor children, 

The care of those fleeing to richer areas in times of war and mass migration is an old problem for the church: St Gregory the Great confronted it 1500 years ago.

actually I would allow those willing to work and check they are not being exploited: Ronald Reagan gave an amnesty to do this so Trump can do it too. 

But first there is a need to clear up the corruption and fake politicization using outside fund to train protests, where the naive are being used as propaganda as part of the Colour revolution against Trump. These tactics are well known but only work when ordinary people support them (they didn't work against Duterte even with the CIA Omidyar group funding news sites that were widely praised and quoted in the western media to blacken his name: But ordinary Pinoys knew the truth, and hey here they will only become paid protesters if they don't care or if they support the issue).

 Trump is trying to clear out criminals and the gangs and stop those with fake NGO and charity and clinics that are stealing money under the guise of helping others.

yes there are many good people out there, and most who do work for NGOs and churches are honest and hardworking.

but even Jesus knew about how the crooked can figure out sophisticated ways to steal money or divert money meant for charity and churches into their own pockets.

Sigh

 

catholic workd report discussion of the confusion of when the bishops release statements on political issues as if they were about the church's moral issues.

conspiracy theories? Or secret histories? oh my

What

and am I the only one who sees the fraud and corruption in institutions/NGOs supposed to be helping people the equivalent of the corrupt monasteries that were shut down not just by Protestant princes in Germany and England, but By one of the Catholic monarchs in Austria/Hungry empire?

as for invading churches: 

This reminds me of an incident in Africa, when one of our priests (a holy, humble priest but a bit of a nerd) had his mass interupted by a semi naked woman shouting and cursing and trying to hit people. He approached her and shouted for the demon to leave her, at which point she fainted, and when she came to, she was normal. Later he asked me if this might have been demon possession or a medical problem. Myself I thougt it sounded like hysteria reaction, which his order interrupted the fugue state and so she recovered, but hey it might have been a demon....So I wonder what would have happened if the minister had ordered Satan to leave when Don Lemon and his friends came into a church to terrorize the congregation. 

Probably nothing, since they were radicals following orders, not in a fugue state.

Well, anyway, it is not hysterical radicals that are the problem, but crazies with weapons, which alas happens too when crazy people pick up vibest and think acting out hatred by aggression against the one they hate is okay.

Oh well

but to change the subject: Here is what was going on under Biden when fundies and trad Catholics were made the enemy of the state:

Somalia vs Somaliland

....

a comment on FReeREpublic explains:

Because of the wretched Ilhan Omar, Tim Walz and the Democrats 3rd-world import welfare scam, we’ve all been forced to learn Somali tribal politics.

 Jacob Frey actually won his recent election against Omar Fateh, because he made a point of getting the tribal vote of Somaliland Isaaq tribe migrants in MSP. Somaliland Isaaq tribesmen hate the Ilhan Omar clan - and her in particular, given her father’s connections to the dictator Mohammed Siad Barre, who tried to wipe Somaliland its tribe off the map. Recognizing Somaliland also helps Israel create a wedge against the influence of Omar in the United States too

more background from this Indian news program from five months ago: 

  

I also am waiting for the press to recognize that many of the Somali resettled in Maine are not Somali tribal members but descended from their Bantu Slaves whose ancestors were kidnapped in the 19th century to work on their farms. 

Wikipedia article about them.

 

animal stories

......

and then you have man's best friend:

...

 and a more recent story: Cats in the Ukraine war:

  

and don't forget the lowly pigeon

the next pandemic

China claims a drug used for covid might help patients.

several articles admit some cases are asymptomaticB

Wikipedia article here.

Human contraction of the virus may lead to asymptomatic infection, acute respiratory infection or fatal encephalitis. Clinical signs typically manifest within 3–14 days which include fever and headache, often accompanied by a cough, throat soreness, difficulty breathing, and other common signs of respiratory illness.[1] Patients may also initially present with symptoms of myalgia and vomiting.[2] This can be followed by dizziness, drowsiness, altered consciousness, and neurological signs that indicate acute encephalitis. Some people can also experience atypical pneumonia and severe respiratory problems, including acute respiratory distress. Encephalitis and seizures occur in severe cases, progressing to coma within 24 to 48 hours. 

several articles insist there is a high rate of death and complications including long term brain problems. But what percentage of people have mild infections that don't go to hospital? 

 The mortality rate ranged from 7.7% (1/13 NiV patients) in Singapore (Chew et al. 2000) to 92% (11/12 patients) in Bangladesh 

 could this be because of better nourishment in Singapore, or because they tested more people and found those with mild infections?

In poor countries, a lot of sick people don't see doctors unless they are reallu really sick so mild cases won't get diagnosed. 

 ironically what was found is that those in contact with patients might develop the virus but most don't. 

And there are drugs to use that stop it, especially if you start it early (and will keep you from getting it if you are in contact with a case). so no, unless someone stupidly does Gain of function research and increases it's ability to transmit to others easier, the disease won't be the next pandemic problem. 

 Alas, because of the question of which variation of the virus is most dangerous, there is a suspicion that gain of function research will be done anyway, claiming they need to investigate which mutations will become more lethal. Which is what Dr. C is worried about.

......

https://justthenews.com/accountability/watchdogs/biological-incident-federal-pathogen-lab-shines-light-trump-admin