Beer in space

 

Tell the Pope to stop watching Netflix

I was always puzzled about Pope Francis who seemed to live in a world that had nothing to do with where I live and work. Always bashing people for greed and having too much "stuff", yet winking at promiscuity. 

 I finally figured it out: He watches Netflix and thinks that mirrors the world. 

 My granddaughter, who recently came back to the Philippines after studying at an elite college (on scholarship) has a Netflix subscription, and although our family TV watching sometimes included a Netflix movie, I often didn't bother with the ones aimed at the young. Whereas Hallmark stresses the 30 something single career girl goes to a small town and finds love and marriage, the Netflix ones seem to be about having affluent jobs and one night stands. 

 My granddaughter insists that these romances indeed echo the way her generation approaches dating, especially after the pandemic shutdowns. 

But I wonder: because her Minnesota college was PC but had lots of upper middle class kids, but when I worked in Minnesota, it was on the "res", and we faced a lot of problems: Yet unlike the Netflix dramas, families were still there, and grandmom often was the one who took them in when problem happened. 

 Sigh. 

Of course I moved here to the Philippines twenty years ago and we live in a small rural town. Until about eight years ago we were Filipino, but now we have malls and McDonalds and the society is changing to become more Americanized as the local economy improves. This is, of course, both good and bad, and would take a book to point out the subtle social changes in this time of transition to globalization.

The bad news is that the elite in Manila seem to be importing all the bad social practices of the American elites: now that my granddaughter teaches at an elite school in Manila, she sees the same problems there (albeit probably not as much promiscuity). Narcissism. Ambition. Materialism.

Sigh. So in this elite world, it makes sense that Pope Francis preaches to these narcissists and insists that they recognize that there are poor people and they should get off their puits and help the poor.

He is searching for the lost affluent narrisistic sheep, but he is also ignoring the wolves that are attacking the rest of the flock. 

And those attacking the flock include a lot of those around him, who are pushing the gay agenda and the promiscuity/gender agenda on children: you know: Political correctness... 

And while the Pope condemns this as cultural imperialism, he supports the anti family policies being pushed on poor countries by the USA and European Union and UN elites on poorer countries under the threat of losing much needed foreign aid.

Yes, Pope Francis has called this cultural imperialism,  yet at the same time he pushes gay marriage blessings and blessing of non married couples as if temporary liasons were the same as marriage, and seems clueless as to why Africans, who were sexually exploited by their Arab and European masters, oppose these laws.

The Africans see this as westerners trying to destroy the family, which in poor countries is the main institution that supports the poor, sick, elderly and children. So it is the African bishops who are asking the church to start emphasizing the holiness of the family, instead of letting his minions try to change the commandments against sex outside of marriage

and third world bishops know the problem is not just capitalism but corruption: so why isn't the Pope making a big thing about the sins of corruption. Nor is there a lot of talk out there about  murder (abortion/euthanasia) that is being normalized by the elites who run the world; 

Instead, the Pope even openly supports the elite agenda of ecology (that will result in starvation), sustainability (read population control) etc.

sigh.

what is missing: Talking to people who follow the rules. 

Yes, I know; Jesus came to the lost sheep. But he led the rest of the flock to cool waters and kept the flock safe from wolves: something that Pope Francis is not doing (indeed, some wonder if he is actually hiring wolves to destroy the faith of the flock. I mean: he knows in South America, in places where his Jesuits pushed liberation theology, the result was that a lot of good Catholics became good Protestants).

How bad is it?

Well, that well known agnostic Jordan Peterson just told him off:

.@jordanbpeterson says @Pontifex should be focused on ‘saving souls’ instead of ‘saving the planet,’ slams post-#Vatican II developments#CatholicChurch #CatholicTwitter #PopeFrancis pic.twitter.com/dqzHtkQZPj

— LifeSiteNews (@LifeSite) February 16, 2024

....

EWTN and the papal posse are condemned for telling the truth: 

watch the first ten minutes of this news report where there is a good discussion that summarizes the problems facing the church and how the Pope is not doing this.

sigh. try this link

update:youtube made it private? 

EWTN has it here check 2 16 the World Over

this is typical of the Pope: He ignores 2000 years of church tradition, the Bible (that dang Paul), and then sends his minions out to push something that is important only to the elite dissadents in the church.

But hey, don't push things that might make the family stronger, or embrace the blessing of femininity, or the idea of yin and Yang, or the theology of women as written by JP2 or Edith Stein: just push the elite idea that women are the same as men.

so it's Lent, and time to pray that the Pope starts being a pastor of the average Catholic by teaching normal people including the middle class and poor, how to live by the rules that church and state have until today's modern world had long recognized as leading to both personal happiness and a stable society.

no one reading my blog?

about a year ago, my average blog readership was about 60, and then it quickly fell to about 20, and stayed there. Now since last week it fell to 5 and has stayed there for ten days. Wonder why?

are things turning around?

 It's easy to get discouraged if one only reads the internet since both sides tend to exaggerate and point out the worst of the other. This is especially true since I essentially became home bound with the covid shutdowns, and now that things are open, I rarely go out due to musculoskeletal weakness that I have had since I had a bad case of Dengue fever. (covid negative, or I'd call it long covid).

But my granddaughter, who studied at a woke college and now teaches high school, assures me that a lot of the youngsters are no longer accepting the in thing, and although they don't go along with my old fashioned bigotry opinions, they also don't parrot the crowd.

Which brings me to this meme on that paranoid conspiracy theorist modern Jeremiah Ann Barnhart:

LOL.

Psychological warfare: Covid and Cordwainer Smith

for watching later. This is government manipulation, but manipulation of news and of course the advertisement culture is part of this. So medical journals censored questioning the covid story, but the dirty little secret is that what they publish was influenced by drug companies, mainly because only drug companies could fund the expensive research, but also because they saw developing a miracle drug would make them rich, so even if the new drug wasn't much better than the old drug, they now could point out the medical journal article.

Dr. C discusses manipulation about covid with an Australian psychologist:

Nothing new about psyops, of course. This book is by a psyop specialist during WWII... best known under his pen name Cordwainer Smith:

,,

Dr. L/Cordwainer Smith's sci fi imagines a world run by the wise, aka the instrumentality, complete with underpeople/ animal derived slaves, robots,

..

..more here and here.and HERE...

Hmmm... is the WEF the modern version of the Instrumentality, the council of the wise who manipulate the culture to make you happy?

of course this is not just manipulating people on covid.

Much of the stuff being revealed nowadays is about the full court press to destroy Trumpieboy...this started years ago, when CIA director Brennan asked other countries to spy on him and to manufacture conspiracy theories.

There is a disturbing report this week that U.S. intelligence may have nudged foreign intelligence to surveil dozens of Trump associates. The request to the “Five Eyes” agencies allegedly was made by Obama’s CIA Director, John Brennan...https://t.co/jQ3YkB3H9D

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) February 15, 2024

  PJMedia discussion.

but of course it's not just in the USA: the dirty little secret is that the Ukrainian mess started after the funding of the revolution against the pro Russian president, which worked. But it is not always sucessful: The attempt of the CIA to stop Duterte included funding Rappler (illegally by the way) to try to stop him. I love the part where she claims that Omidyar didn't try to influence the stories. Of course not. The trick is to hire only people you know who will push the agenda, and then say freedom of the press.

The point is that busy people just believe what they are told, because most people have a life and don't have time to investigate what is going on. But the flip side is that once they see the lie, they flip and start believing conspiracy theories. 

Sigh.

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

update: Tucker interview about psyops: transcript here.

how dare they film our aggression

China keeps pushing around the unarmed fishermen who are fishing in their traditional areas in the west Philippine sea, even in areas within our economic borders.

And now the Philippines is daring to push back and help protect our fishemen,

starting last year the tech savvy coast guard started to to film the aggression and tweeting about it.

Manila Standard 2 12 24:

Videos released by the PCG show a CCG vessel just meters from the port beam of the Teresa Magbanua, before it crossed the path of the Filipino boat. “Nevertheless, the PCG vessel professionally engaged both the CCG and CMM vessels through radio reiterating the clear and principled position of the Philippines in accordance with international law,” the PCG statement read. The Chinese embassy in Manila did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

also upsetting China: Placing military on our northern islands. This is near Taiwan, but is also near the shipping routes and internet cables, which could be blocked if China invades Taiwan. 

 

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

Update: Chinese cyberattack against Phil Coast guard.

Unknown hackers attacked the X (formerly Twitter) account of the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) early Thursday morning, wiping out its entire page content since it was put up in 2013, including its logo and profile picture, but this was “retrieved” about five hours later. The hacking came nearly two weeks after the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) blocked cyberattacks “from within China” against the Google Workspaces and email addresses of the PCG’s National Coast Watch, the DICT itself, the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration and the official website of President Marcos.

China, which has a decades long maritime dispute with the Philippines over parts of the South China Sea, has denied any involvement in that attack.

 

Read more: https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1905252/ph-coast-guard-comes-under-2nd-cyberattack-this-month#ixzz8Rrj5Difr Follow us: @inquirerdotnet on Twitter | inquirerdotnet on Facebook

History lesson of the day: Boffin power

Wikipedia:

Boffin is a British slang term for a scientist, engineer, or other person engaged in technical or scientific research and development. A "boffin" was viewed by some in the regular military or government services as odd, quirky or peculiar, though quite bright and essential to helping in the war effort through having and developing the key ideas leading to transformative military capabilities....

So if you are reading this, it might be because a boffin worked for years developing a blue LED.

Why are blue LEDs important? after all, red LEDs had been around for years.

This video explains why making a blue LED was so difficult, and why this is important. And it also tells the story of the stubborn boffin who found the solution by  doing hands on work, and the two other university scientists whose work contributed to the discovery...

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

Shuji Nakamura won The Nobel Prize in Physics 2014

shared with Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano

The Nobel committee explains:

Lighting plays a major role in our quality of life. The development of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) has made more efficient light sources possible. Creating white light that can be used for lighting requires a combination of red, green, and blue light. Blue LEDs proved to be much more difficult to create than red and green diodes. During the 1980s and 1990s Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano, and Shuji Nakamura successfully used the difficult-to-handle semiconductor gallium nitride to create effecient blue LEDs.

headsup from Kuya. 

the blood clot conspiracy

 Dr, John Campbell has had a series of talks about fibrous blood clots being found at autopsy. I am aware of the theory that this is from the spike protein of covid and the various covid vaccines.

watch this, and go to his youtube page for more discussions. He ran across this after analyzing the excess death problems.

he also has a Rumble channel in case this is removed from youtube.

So is there a link?

ON my medical blog, I checked out some studies about clotting problems with covid reported early in the epidemic, and a discussion if blood thinner should be used. Then they decided it didn't make a difference statisticlly, but one study showed that people on aspirin (as a mild blood thinner) had a lower death rate. In other words, it needs to be started very early, before a lot of people saw a doctor.

the reason I put this up was not to say conspiracy theories should be believed, but that sometimes conspiracy theories might be true.

And given the story of the Post Office scandal in the UK, the refusal to try to check such things by authorities sounds like people placing rules before reality.

alas, having worked for the state and the federal clinics, the problem is the mind set of being a bureaucrat, where you are pressured for not being cooperative with their rules.

Seigi Ozawa: Thanks for the melody

Seigi Ozawa, who for years led the Boston Symphony Orchestra, has died.

After working with the San Francisco Symphony and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in Canada, Ozawa became artistic director of the Tanglewood music festival in the United States in 1970. From 1973, he served as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra

as students we used to go to Tanglewood and listen to the music there. My brother lived nearby and was an usher and could get free tickets for the lawn seating.

Propaganda? Who wudda thot?

I am following the AlJ pro Hamas reports on what is going on in Gaza. 

But of course ALJ is not the only ones who quote verbatum the reports of what is going on there but without context that these might not be civilian targets but military targets hidden in civilian areas. 

 and then you have casualty reports.

Are they accurate? Are they verified by outside reporters who haven't been outed as Hamas supporters, such as one lady reporter for AlJ who said she went to Gaza to report on Israel's atrocities, openly admitting she would write stories to fit the propaganda, not report on reality? we see a similar bias in so called UN and Human rights organizations, whose reports often are more sympathetic to the insurgencies than to governments trying to protect civilians from these pc groups. 

This is nothing new, of course: When we worked in Africa, every possible government atrocity was trumpeted, but the many civilian deaths by the communist insurgents were ignored, as was the later atrocities after their favorite insurgent started running the government.

we also saw this manipulation in Iraq:

the worst example of this was a report on Iraqi civilian casualties released two weeks before Bush was reelected. Published in a major medical journal, by a guy with public health experience, it gave the anti war types a victory, and only later did people question why the numbers didn't match the actual deaths on record (maybe because the doc who did the report had worked for Saddam, and bias in who was asked). 

 So anyway, just like ALJ always shows photos of women and children, in emotional poses, the MSM and the intellectuals just gobble up this propaganda and believe it. Yet these photos are often too good to be true. Were they staged? 

Are the shrouded bodies of military age men, or is this a variation of the goats shrouded and buried in Afghanistan so the families could claim a family member died to get money from those naive Yanks? (numerous reports by soldiers who fought there, but hey reporters and human rights types never caught on to the scam).

well, anyway, has anyone actually analyzed what is being reported? 
I mean, if I, an aged grandmother sees such things, where are the reports?

the Washington Institute report did, and it says almost the same thing that I noticed: Deep fake.

As analysts noted at the outset, civilian harm is inevitable in urban battles where terrorist fighters hide among the population and refuse to surrender. The humanitarian cost in the current war has caused justifiable dismay, and fatality figures from the Gaza Ministry of Health and the Government Media Office (GMO)—both Hamas-run institutions—have provided a focus for global horror, providing metrics that have been relied on almost universally by international media and NGOs and at the International Court of Justice.

 italics mine. War is hell, but manipulation of atrocities as a war tactic is not new, as John Kerry knows when he repeated the claims of human rights groups about the VietNam war that turned out to be false.. Yet did John Kerry notice the thousands who died in re-education camps, or the millions who fled after  the US pulled out of the war, partly because of his testimony? 

But in some ways, the Gaza lies are more blatent: Because they simply don't report any soldiers being killed. WTF? 

 If Gaza fatality counts fail to distinguish combatants from noncombatants, underreport the deaths of men, and highlight the deaths of women and children—as they have done until now—then observers can be expected to assume that mainly women and children are being killed. ..

no honest observer would assume that fact. An honest observer would note that the figures come from Hamas (a fact) and that there is a lack of military age men in the casualty figures (also a fact). They might dispute about the weapons hidden in civilian areas if they didn't see them with their own eyes, but they have access people who can detect secondary explosion evidence from stored weapons, or (in the notorious hospital hoax) the lack  of a crater and evidence it was a fuel fire explosion not ordinance.

Although thousands of Palestinian noncombatants, including military-age males, have undoubtedly been killed in the Hamas-initiated conflict, the world must also recognize that the group has manipulated and exploited civilian fatality claims for its strategic benefit, in an attempt to truncate Israel’s air and ground operations and stir international outrage. The international media and NGOs have repeated such claims without proper scrutiny and in turn validated and reinforced Hamas propaganda efforts. ...

So why is no one questioning this openly? Maybe because of all those photographs; yet a quick perusal of the photos suggest they are too perfect: so a real situation was posed to show maximum emotional disgust, or even completely faked. 

but in the hospital attack hoax, it was the photos that caught them in a lie.

 

...Hamas’s public relations and information warfare campaigns, especially after the October 17 explosion at al-Ahli Hospital, are instructive. For instance, on the night of the hospital explosion, Hamas claimed an Israeli strike had killed 471 Gazans. Israeli, U.S., and other intelligence agencies now confidently assess the disaster was caused by a failed Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket, with a death toll closer to one hundred, raising concerns that Hamas may be inflating fatality figures for other incidents as well.

Ya think?

if you read the article, it gives an analysis of their reports on who died in detail, and why it is suspicious. Here is a short example:

Hamas’s GMO—part of the group’s propaganda machine—is particularly active in pushing the narrative that a large majority of deaths are women and children. Health Ministry figures from December 31, as noted earlier, show males making up 40% of fatalities, and this figure excludes northern Gaza after November 11, where the proportion of men killed can reasonably be expected to far exceed that in the south, owing to the weeks of ground fighting there.

Yet the GMO figures for the same day show males making up just 23% of fatalities. The Health Ministry also claims, contradicting its own data, that 70% of deaths are women and children. At the very least, these inconsistencies, both within Health Ministry reporting and between the ministry and the GMO, necessitate more explanation of methodology and procedure before the data can be regarded as trustworthy, with specific attention going to the fatalities evidently derived from media reports in northern Gaza.

 In summary, deep fake.

One might suggest one sided reporting is bad and we need to listen to both sides. But what if one or both sides are exaggerating the truth? A good reporter will simply report, but let the reader/viewer realize that it is a one sided report.

An example of this is the recent, much condemned, interview by Carlson with Putin.

Tucker Carlson goes to talk to Putin and gets a boring lesson in the 1200 year  history of Eastern Europe and the Ukraine. But without recognizing Putin's version of history that sees Russian imperialism as necessary based on it's long history that shows a strong government is needed to stop  attacks by enemies and prevent anarchy that threatens ordinary folks. Without knowing such history, we lack background to judge why Russia wants to do. He claims there was a CIA coup in the Ukraine to get a pro American president there,  and without this context you won't understand why Putin sees this government as a threat to Russia, and without knowledge of the need of a warm water port, or that the Crimea was never part of the Ukraine, you might not recognize that there are good reasons to split that country.

By the way: the remaking of a Greater Russian empire would enable resources to be joined as a way to peace and prosperity...

So yes, Tucker let Putin manipulate opposition of the war in the US and Europe. But there are hundreds of other reporters who report the reasons why the US needs to support Ukraine's independence. And maybe the result will be to split the country as was proposed years ago, before hundreds of thousand died in that conflict.

Americans don't know history: but other countries remember and are basing the wars that disturb the NWO on the memories of past greatness.

Gaza is not about Gaza: it is about making Israel the bad guy (and as an extension, the Yanks the evil  empire). This will inflame the area into a war against the Sunni Arabs that Iran is planning to win.

Hamas is an extension of the Persian empire:  Hamas and Hezbollah are threatening the Sunni Saudis and Jordanians. The Houthis used missiles to hit Saudi sites for years, and their war against shipping will bankrupt Egypt by cutting traffic through the Suez canal.

if Hamas wins Iran's proxy wars in Gaza, their proxies in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, will spread Iranian infuence.

what was standing in their way was the Abraham accords, where the Sunni states quietly decided to admit Iran, not Israel, is the real enemy.

In the meanwhile, of course, Biden is weak, and probably senile, but preferred to Kamela who is more incompetent than Jill Biden.

As the Chinese curse says: May you live in interesting times.'

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

Musical Interlude of the day

 turn up speakers and dance

......

///

,,,,,

and lessons how to play 

we don't need no stinkin' maps

 one of the absurdities in the Clinton administration was when the US bombed the Chinese embassy in Serbia because their map was out of date.

Nowadays we read a lot of stuff about people getting lost because their google maps are inaccurate, and the availability of up to date maps was one reason I used to belong to AAA in the good old days.

But now StrategyPage has a nice article about China mapping the West Philippine sea. 

Well, they have been out there for awhile mainly looking for where they can dig up the seabed for their artificial islands and trying to find the huge natural gas deposits there. (as long as the 1970s, I was assured that the VietNam war was about these natural gas deposits, and our lovely president awhile back essentially tried to cooperate with China to find them, i.e. giving them rights to the natural gas etc until our intrepid press caught her at it).

So now SP discusses how China is mapping those areas, presumably in preparation for getting the fossil fuel deposits, or maybe just mapping the area so they can figure out where it is safe to sail and if they could blockade the sea routes.

But then I ran across this: about when a US submarine hit a sea mount in that area in 2006. A lot of sailors were hurt from the bump, but luckily nothing imploded so only one died.

Several sailors were punished for not watching out where they were going and not checking the depth of the sea nearby.

Why do I bring this up, and what does this have to do with Serbia? This part:

the sea mount the sub hit had been spotted by survey satellites in 1999 and 2004, but the intelligence agency responsible, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, said it didn't have the money to update naval charts. Neither did the navy, or anyone else. Because of this American submarines were allowed to continue moving around amidst all manner of uncharted hazards.

so the article goes into what they are doing to update the problem including mapping that updates itself all the time.

But then:

The second American SSN underwater seamount collision occurred in October 2021 to the very advanced and expensive Seawolf class SSN Connecticut. The damage was so severe that the sub had to surface immediately, and some ballast tanks were damaged so the sub could not remain underwater.

 there are a lot of rumors out there about training problems in the USNavy, and I'd love to ask my grandson about it but he is no longer at sea (he served on an aircraft carrier but now is doing paperwork).

But when little things go wrong, it suggests a bigger problem needs to be done.

Sigh.

and to make things worse: If two US Submarines hit these shoals, one wonders how many maritime accidents have occurred in the Chinese submarines or ships in the area. 

Film Review: Lost in Napoleon (minus the dynamite)

 So we started watching the movie Napoleon. 

Lots of gore, Check.

Sex scenes. Check.

So what's not to like?

ugly cinematography, check.

incomprehensible screenplay, check.

Unlikeable leading actor, check.

In other words, a badly made movie, which made me sad because it is a fascinating time of history.

And the reviews were of no help:

The reviewers mentioned that the battle scenes that were gory. But these scenes were also very short., so that was no problem in today's R rated world where violence porn is common.

But here, we were given no context and no idea what was going on, or where they were, or who they were fighting. I mean, I am slightly familiar with that part of history bur I had trouble following the story.

At least this film started with his use of cannons against the British Navy. And then the film showed how he used these same cannons on civilians protesting the revolution, an atrocity that is usually left out of history or glossed over in a sentence or two. 

So I applaud that the film did show the Paris massacre since it reveals to us that he is a cold hearted B----d...

Indeed ,during the entire film, Phoenix plays Napoleon as an unemotional somewhat deluded person with a soupcon of megalomania. But how would such a person inspire the fervent loyalty of his troops, many of whom came from the common folk?

The film does show how his artillery enabled his first victory, over the British Navy early in the wars, but it is not explained why they allowed him to invade Italy  and go on to Egypt. Indeed, the campaign in Italy disappeared (as did the fact he jailed the Pope), and Egypt campaign did suggest there were numerous uprisings of locals in Egypt. But no mention of why he left there (uh, Nelson's victory might have cut his ability to get supplies) or the scandal that he left a lot of troops behind to become POWs or worse.... 

Lots about having sex with Josephine, and then divorcing Josephine but not much about why the Hapsburgs agreed to send him a princess, or what she thought about being forced into a political marriage (backstory: her story ends happily since she married for love--twice--after Napoleon's death) 

And then he invaded Russia. I think he invaded Russia: that too was glossed over so quickly I almost missed it. Kuya, who was watching it with me, kept asking if this was Waterloo yet. 

Sorry, at this point it was almost two hours into the movie and we were falling asleep, so I turned it off.

The reviewers had it wrong: it was not the gory scenes or even the emphasis on his love life that was the problem. The problem was the screenplay. And the ugly cinematography.

so my advice to Amazon: re edit it and make it into a miniseries. 

Add someone to explain what is going on (maps would help, as would dates of when things happen, or the back story of other people around him.) And this narrator not only would clarify the history for those watching the film, but would be a lot cheaper than filming more gory battle scenes.

I won't give my review a rating, since maybe the last hour of the film would improve things.

My advice? There are lots of films and miniseries about Napoleon and the various Napoleonic campaigns out there. Sharpe's Rifles, Poldark, and even Jane Austen have these wars as a backstory. And don't miss War and Peace.

But if you want a fictionalized version that might give you an idea of Napoleon's personality, check out Marlon Brando's portrayal of Napoleon in Desiree: it might not be history (it's a chick flick) but it does give insight to his charm, his ambition, his willingness to manipulate people, and his megalomania.

political prosecution: no free speech here, folks, just move along.

 

Oh no: Not pigeons

 A suspected Chinese spy pigeon was captured in India.

India releases pigeon accused of spying for China https://t.co/QJCUI0vEkY

— Inquirer (@inquirerdotnet) February 3, 2024

Whoops. It was merely a Taiwanese racing pigeon.

Push the Pope's agenda ignore the corruption.

The pope makes nice with the press.

In a first-ever group meeting with Vatican-accredited reporters, on Jan. 22 Pope Francis praised them for avoiding "profane and political" molds in their work. "I would like to add the delicacy that you so often have in speaking of scandals in the Church: there are some and many times I have seen in you a great delicacy, a respect, an almost, I say, 'abashed' silence: thank you for this attitude," said the pope in a Vatican transcript. ... Damian Thompson of The Spectator tweeted: "Incredible! Pope Francis lets the cat out of the bag, thanking Vatican correspondents for their 'silence' and therefore helping him conceal the scandals of his pontificate. Take a bow, guys!"

the bias of alas too many reporters is to push the PC type trying to "reform" (some would say deform) Catholicism, which means you ignore some very important stories. That article was about a FOF (Friend of Francis) who abused a lady, but it's not the only story. 

And to make things worse, no one wants to see links between stories that suggest manipulation of opinion by ignoring the backstory.

take the blessing of couples (not individuals) that are in sexual relationships outside of marriage (divorced remarried couples, polygamous relationships, couples living together outside of marriage, and gay couples who want their marriages approved).

This is about destroying that inconvenient commandment that opposes sex outside of marriage. But in today's world, it is the LGBTETC dogma that the Pope is pushing of course, because that is one of the goals (along with abortion on demand) by the elites behind the NWO.

Of course, this is not admitted outright, but in document that mixes good and bad so the weak can pretend it doesn't push blessing sin and maybe have to face mean tweets by the layfolk.

No, blessing of same sex couples is not merely blessing people and you can tell this because of how it is being reported in the press:   LINK

 Dirty little secret: the Pope continues to destroy 2000 years of Catholic beliefs on many levels, not just in the sexual sphere but in the idea of the Eucharist as being Christ's body and blood and should not be taken by someone living in sin or by non believers, or the idea that thou shalt have no other gods before Me. (pachimama scandal comes to mind, not to mention allowing the Chinese communists to take over the church there).

Everyone knows this but they have to tapdance quietly around the truth.

which is why Pope and his minions continue to stonewall those who object, calling them narrow minded etc. 

some bishops object, and this could cause problems if enough of them get a backbone and follow the Biblical rules, but most are keeping their heads down: and that, not a withdrawal of the document, is Francis' plan: Wait and gradually people will quiet down about it.

Not mentioned: they may just stop going to church or join other churches, because the religious version of Gresham's law is that bad theology pushes out believers, something we see in South America and in the Philippines where believers are flocking to evangelical churches that preach Jesus, not marxist revolutionary theory or global warming.

By firing Bishop Strickland, Francis shows that if you are a bishop who objects he will fire you. 

But one of his enemies those dang lay people. And although we can be excommunicated, they can't fire us, and we can write nasty letters. (Catherine of Sienna comes to mind).

Cyber war is coming to your town soon

Years ago, my US Government OPM file was hacked. We were told it was by criminals and given insurance to cover expenses if they stole our identity.
But it turned out to be Chinese hackers,

Wikipedia report:

2015 data breach targeting Standard Form 86 (SF-86) U.S. government security clearance records retained by the United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM). One of the largest breaches of government data in U.S. history, the attack was carried out by an advanced persistent threat based in China, widely believed to be the Jiangsu State Security Department, a subsidiary of China's Ministry of State Security spy agency... 

Approximately 22.1 million records were affected, including records related to government employees, other people who had undergone background checks, and their friends and family

so anyway, if China decides to start a war, they know I am a dangerous person and they probably know where I live, along with other Yanks (expats and Fil Ams) many of whom have military training. (never mind that I had a waiver not to carry a fire arm).

but of course we would be outnumbered by thousands of Chinese citizens who live here, many of whom are military age men working for the casinos, but also working with Chinoy businessmen.

Indeed, Rappler in May 2023 noticed a lot of them were working on our electric grid:

Here's a rundown of the controversies surrounding the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines and a history of how China teamed up with Filipino businessmen to manage the country's transmission network:

it goes back to our lovely ex president Arroyo of course, so China essentially owns 40 percent of the grid. (the legal limit since the Philippines usually doesn't let foreigners own businesses or property).

So fast forward:

Reuters has an article today about the vulnerability of the power grid to hackers.,

WASHINGTON, Jan 31 (Reuters) - Hackers linked to the Chinese government are targeting critical U.S. infrastructure, preparing to cause "real-world harm" to Americans, FBI Director Christopher Wray told a congressional committee on Wednesday. Water treatment plants, the electric grid, oil and natural gas pipelines and transportation hubs are among the targets of state-sponsored hacking operations, he told the House of Representatives Select Committee on competition with China

Hmm... I think we've seen this before.

of course, with recent reports on the illegal migrants have changed in character, noticing most of them are now military age men, (most coming to find work), but also gang members and at least 700  known terrorists, so such sophisticated attacks might not be needed: attacking sub stationg with rifles will do a lot of damage. (although I should point out that most of the damage of substations are by squirrels, not sabateurs)...

fast forward to today's Philippine news. The annual Philippine American military training session this year is not about invading places or fighting people or even teaching the Yanks to coordinate with the Phil Military in delivering supplies to a disaster area (as in previous training sessions)

No the Inquirer reports:

ASIA & PACIFIC US, PH ‘Balikatan’ 2024 to include ‘cyberspace, information warfare’

“Aside from kinetic activities and littoral, airspace and land, we will also be doing exercises in the nonphysical domain such as cyberspace and information warfare,” she added. This development is in line with the military’s move to bolster its cyber defense capabilities, culminating with the creation of AFP’s Cyber Command.

information war fare means getting the story out.

 Anyone reading Hama propaganda knows they are sophisticated in reframing the story, but less well known is how the Philippine military has young computer/smartphone savvy guys who record and post what they are doing. They did this after the Islamic terrorists took over the city of Marawi, and they are now doing it to show how China is terrorizing Philippine fishermen and even the Phil Coast guard in the West Philippine sea: not just in international waters, but in the EEZ of the Philippines.

Like the guy streaming boogie woogie, showing what happened in real time and getting the story out first is not something China likes.

True, China would probably not invade Luzon (locals would take up arms and cause a mess), but they can and will use economic warfare, sabotage (and bribery) to get the Philippines to kowtow to their plans.

Some worry about these things because of the presence of thousands of military age Chinese men working in the casinos or other Chinese businesses, and of course the Philippines is very vulnerable to cyber attack.

Now, hitting the power grid here might not affect people as much as it does in the USA: why? Because we have frequent brownouts and lots of earthquakes and typhoons that leave one with no power (or water or internet, but cellphone service usually works)... and of course every business and middle class family has a generator. Of course, if the diesel/gasoline supply is stopped, that could cause trouble (palm oil diesel or alcohol might eventually let us fill in the gap).

but businesses would suffer. And it's not just the local electric grid. The huge internet cable that carries a lot of traffic from India, SEAsia and the Philippines goes right by Taiwan.

SCMP article from 2022 discusses this.

>China has already cut the internet connection of Taiwan's Matsu Island

as the TaipeiTimes points out, if they cut these cables it won't just isolate Taiwan, but could hurt a lot of other Asian nations.

Taiwan has 14 subsea cables — many little wider than a garden hose — stretching thousands of kilometers and directly linking Asian nations including China to the US and other parts of the world. That is a vulnerability the government, which sees any interruption as potentially destabilizing, wants to minimize.

I remember in 2006 when a large earthquake cut an internet cable: it affected China and Taiwan but also Korea, the Philippines and even India. We were offline for six weeks.

So would China cut these internet cables to isolate Taiwan, knowing it would hurt other countries that are already mad at China (not to mention affecting China's internet)?

and into this geopolitical question, comes the white knight who saved the Ukraine:

of course, last year Fortune magazine notes yes Starlink is there, but Musk does a lot of business with China so might not cooperate. So Taiwan might be looking also to other similar services, in the UK or do it on their own.

So even if Biden screws this up, remember that India, Japan, Korea, Singapore and Viet Nam are all being bullied by China and might help.

Family news

 Light blogging, mainly busy with doing ordinary things.

The ceiling in the alcove where we hang clothes indoors (in rainy season) collapsed, so I hired two men to replace it.

the ceiling fell, not from the leaky roof but termites. So they removed the entire ceiling, put up new struts, and sprayed the replacement wood of the ceiling. I guess I should have put up a plasticized ceiling, but never mind. Feral cats tend to run around up there, and we have had several incidents where they fell through the plastic skylight in the ceiling, and one into my bathroom through the white plasticized ceiling there. 

No cats here for two years, when all the cats in the neighborhood disappeard, presumably from an epidemic, and we still have one or two in the garage. I miss my cats but the dogs are aggressive and it's hard to keep kittens alive.

sigh.

Got my yearly checkup, and since my routine lab was okay asked for some advanced tests, which were also normal. Presumably my fatigue is just old age and/or long covid or post dengue fatigue. But my weight has gone up 8 pounds so I will have to start eating less. Sigh.

All the puppies have gone to new homes, but we kept one black female. The father is a neighbor's dog, and large so hopefully she will take after him and be another fairly good sized watch dog. 

Ironically, the larger dogs here are scary but don't bite: it is the mediumsized  mamadog who bit Ruby for getting too close to her puppies.

The Techology that saved four billion lives

why is the Malthusian ïdea "we're all gonna die" being pushed by the elites? 

Because there is money in them there hills.

 Indeed, even though these predictions have been going on for centuries, Ehrlich continues to push the idea that to get rid of poverty, get rid of poor people. 

The Population Bomb, written with his wife Anne Ehrlich in 1968, predicted “hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death” in the 1970s

 – some thing that never happened, but never mind: he is still a hero and his ideas of getting rid of excess people is still popular today, 

of course, no one wants to admit they want to get rid of the people or how they plan to do it: it is usually phrased as lowering the population, something that could take decades. Unless they let people starve and/or die of disease. 

place covid lab conspiracy theory here.

Starving people because the plan needs fewer people to implement their utopia has been done before, as the Irish and the Ukrainians can tell you.

Yes famines still occur: climate problems in history have led to major famines, and of course, some are due to war, displacing civilians, disrupting the supply chain, or when some farmers who lose their crops and no one helps them survive this temporary famine.

But the main reason for hunger is war.

https://www.wfpusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/60-percent-hunger-1.png

Now, the UN could stop war, but never mind. 

Another problem is NGOs so busy pushing old fashioned methods of farming in the name of a "sustainable green future"; never mind that using traditional methods of agriculture would not be able to feed today's population.

For example, NGOs hate GMO crops, 

How much do they hate GMO crops? Well, when Zimbabwe was having a famine (because the most productive white farmers were chased out of the country, leading to a food shortage), Mugabe refused to accept American grain, because he said it might contain GMO seeds, and his experts told him these seeds, if planted could contaminate the local crops. 

'

But when I worked in Africa, many NGO's also opposed newer high yield hybrids because they meant buying seeds, using fertilizer and herbicides to grow the food.

hopefully, as China invests in agriculture in Africa, these technologies will increase the amount of food grown

I am old enough to remember hunger in post war Europe and the various Chinese famines...in contrast, the main problem right now in Asia is.... obesity.

The reason fewer starve: modern agriculture.

A lot of this was thanks to Norman Bourlag, and the green revolution of crops that produced more grain. from Encyclopedia Brittanica

 

Borlaug began his agricultural revolution in Asia. With India and Pakistan facing food shortages due to rapid population growth, the importation of Borlaug’s dwarf wheat in the mid-1960s was responsible for a 60 percent increase in harvests there, helping both countries to become agriculturally self-sufficient. His work in developing countries, especially on the Indian subcontinent, is estimated to have saved as many as one billion people from starvation and death.

italics mine 

The increased yields resulting from Borlaug’s new strains empowered many developing countries, though their use required large amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. These high-yielding crops raised concerns about cost and potentially harmful environmental effects,

italics mine.

The same experts who predicted famine now were lamenting the fertilizer run off in streams etc... These problems can be solved, of course, and are a lesser evil than a hundreds of thousands of dead peasants. But the experts see only the problem, and are pushing old fashioned organic farming as the way to go. 

Now, we grow organic rice, but the dirty little secret is that it is more expensive, more prone to disease, and produces a smaller crop.

But don't take my word for it: Just read what happened when SriLanka took their advice and tried to grow green

and if you think they hate hybrid crops, just read the hysteria over GMO organisms. 

But it is not just new hybrids that resulted in people being fed: another reason is fertilizer.

One reason for the fertilizer shortage is the war between Russia and the Ukraine.

But today's big virtue signaling is anti fossil fuel protests.

Uh, did any of these bozos ever hear about  Haber-Bosch process that uses fossil fuel to make fertilizer?

What brought all this to mind is this article in SciTechDaily Transforming Fertilizer Production: True Mechanism of Ammonia Catalysis Revealed

about a more efficient way to produce fertilizer and use less fossil fuels to do so.

Good news if this pans out.

a technical article: so why is this important?

Ammonia, produced in the Haber-Bosch process, is currently one of the most essential base chemicals for the world to produce fertilizers, with an annual production of 110 million tonnes. The journal Nature proposed in 2001 that the Haber-Bosch process was the most critical scientific invention for humankind during the 20th century, since it has saved around 4 billion people’s lives by preventing mass starvation. An estimation of the nitrogen content in our bodies’ DNA and proteins shows that half of the atoms can be derived from Haber-Bosch.

italics mine.

More here:

Boogie Woogie gate

 One of the more absurd items on youtube is about a musician in the UK who  plays the public piano (i.e. a piano put there that anyone can play).

and who was streaming (luckily) his music, and then some Chinese carrying a Chinese flag tried to stop him, and when he asked if they were Chinese, they accused him of racism.

Here is the video, (until they take it down for complaints). I should add that early in the video he calls them Japanese, which is maybe why he asked if they were Chinese. And notice that they are merely standing around for nine minutes and didn't bother to move, which would have been easy.

Turn on to listen to the wonderful music, or if you want to see absurdity in action fast forward to nine minutes....

...music restarts at 30 minute mark.

in the meanwhile, the ChiComs are busy spreading their side of the story, which of course is proved to be a lie if you watch the video. So they are now trying to get the video removed from You tube.

A little late, since over 8 million folk have already watched it.

to show he wasn't picking on the Chinese, here is an older video of playing at what appears to be the same site. Playing piano and interacting with some of those listening, and even asking them to join him in making music...

....

Note he has 2 million followers so if youtube demonatizes him, it will affect his income. Never mind that their story is proved to be a lie by the original video.

I should also note that he has videos of various security type trying to shut him down in the past. 

The piano was donated and placed there by Elton John, with the idea that ordinary folk could play it in public.

And although the piano was corded off after the incident, it is now released to be played.

===========

update: the free Hong Kong activists use the piano to protest how China has destroyed freedom in that city.

................................

update

these vloggers explain both sides of the story, putting it into context of Chinese culture.