The Brits fired this guy: PC madness

his comments were taken out of context of course

he blasted the rise of China, saying: “They’re creating robots out of their own people. Each Chinese person is a kind of replica of the next one and that is a very frightening thing.”

uh, he was talking about Chinese increased pressure on people to conform, which is getting worse, not better, in recent years.

and then there is this: Criticizing Soros is anti Semitic.

He also repeated an anti-Semitic trope by accusing Jewish billionaire George Soros of running a “Soros empire” in Hungary.

Uh,  Soros broke the Bank of England awhile back and almost bankrupted some countries in Asia, not to mention he worked for the Nazis as a kid, so why is criticizing him considered "anti Semitic"?

but his main sin was denying "Islamophobia" is a problem. 

well, Islamophobia is a problem (England is full of prejudice, not just against Islam and "Asians" but against those from the lower classes, and against Christians, Africans, the Irish, and the Jews) but too often this word is used to silence anyone trying to criticize the aggressive radicals who recruit terrorists or criminals who terrorize the innocent, especially women, in their own communities. 

It was fear of being called "Islamophobic" stops police from enforcing laws against abuse of women if the perpetrator is of a protected class, the worst case being the Rotherham gang LINK LINK2

so who is being protected, and from what?

Last time I looked, the good Muslims (and Hindus, and Pinoys, and Polish, and Irish and West Indians) tend to love beauty in the environment rather than the ugly but politically correct death towers they are forced to live in by mindless mindless city planners.

Yet one suspects that Scuton's main "sin" is defending Western Civilization. Or maybe I should say "All traditional Civilizations", since his insistence on beauty being important is not just limited to pre modern Europe but is part of Asian, South Asian, and other great cultures.

the ultimate result of removing a voice that insists that beauty is important in housing will not make things better, because this will mean the proponents of "modern" design will have a monopoly in civil planning... 


======= and here is Sister Wendy discussing Islamic art:


-------------------
update:

Roger Scruton's defense of the accusations at the Spectator:

I recently gave an interview to the New Statesman, on the assumption that, as the magazine’s former wine critic I would be treated with respect, and that the journalist, George Eaton, was sincere in wanting to talk to me about my intellectual life. Not for the first time I am forced to acknowledge what a mistake it is to address young leftists as though they were responsible human beings. Here is my brief response to an unscrupulous collection of out of context remarks, some of them merely words designed to accuse me of thought-crimes, and to persuade the government that I am not fit to be chairman of the commission recently entrusted to me.

he goes into details: here he defends himself against accusations of anti Semitism:

,,,, In retrospect I could have chosen the words more carefully. But my purpose was to point out that anti-Semitism has become an issue in Hungary, and an obstacle to a shared national identity. As for the Soros Empire, I am the only person I know who has actually tried to persuade Viktor Orbán to accept its presence, and that of the Central European University in particular, in Hungary. I did not succeed, but that is another matter. I should add that I am neither a friend nor an enemy of Orbán, but know him from the days when I helped him and his colleagues to set up a free university under the communists. What Orbán did then was the first step towards the liberation of his country, and George Soros was one of those who helped him too. It is sad for Hungary that the two have fallen out, and that the old spectre of anti-Semitism has been reborn from their clash....

and what about that "islamophobia"?

Then there is Islamophobia. It seems that by questioning this word and pointing to its origin in the Muslim Brotherhood’s propaganda campaigns I am somehow showing myself to be guilty of the offence that it describes. I deplore the current use of this word, since it implies that there is some peculiar and irrational state of mind from which all objections to Islam proceed. I myself distinguish Islam, as a faith and a way of life, from the radicals who commit crimes in its name. I have a respect and tenderness towards the first of those, and a hatred of the second. But it is increasingly difficult, with the current abuse of language, to make this point, or to encourage Muslims to make it too.

at the end of the essay he warns:

We in Britain are entering a dangerous social condition in which the direct expression of opinions that conflict – or merely seem to conflict – with a narrow set of orthodoxies is instantly punished by a band of self-appointed vigilantes. We are being cowed into abject conformity around a dubious set of official doctrines and told to adopt a world view that we cannot examine for fear of being publicly humiliated by the censors. This world view might lead to a new and liberated social order; or it might lead to the social and spiritual destruction of our country. How shall we know, if we are too afraid to discuss it?

The future is here

Trumpieboy just announced he is supporting 5 G, something China has recently pushed too.

What is 5 G?

Gizmodo article (for later reading)

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

Scott Adams (Dilbert) discusses why it is good at the end of this podcast including it's ability to enable education.


he also has been pushing these newfangled and safe nuclear reactors, which could revolutionize the way we obtain energy.

more at MIT review: safe nuclear power, half the price.

-------------------------------
Dilbert also discusses Trumpieboy's trolling of the Democrats by saying he's going to move immigrants to their "safe" cities instead of settling them in the poorer regions of the south and Southwest.

Heads explode. But why? Don't they want cheap nannies/maids/gardeners/construction workers? (yes, I'm being sarcastic. My immigrant family members work at these jobs, but it is also well known that affluent areas of the country frequently hire illegals to do these jobs because they don't have to pay as much: For example, no workman's comp or social security taxes for them and you can threaten to fire them if they complain about working overtime or in dangerous areas...when a boss made a threat against my son that he'd call "la migra", my son laughed at him...he is a US Citizen, but what about the other workers?).

one more comment on his discussion of immigration:

What no one is discussing is that maybe the "solution" is not just to build a wall or stop the funding of the caravans by people who have an agenda to change the demographics of the USA (not to actually help poor people) but to cut crime and corruption in these countries.

This can be done: but when someone tries to do it, the SJW/human rights types oppose this solution.

For example, Duterte has cut crime here, but the SJW (and the Catholic bishops) are busy demonizing him (often by taking his jokes/irony out of context) because hey, stopping criminals by rough justice is evil....

my answer: Yes, it is evil: better to convert the criminals to embrace Jesus. 

But from a pragmatic standpoint, rough justice works. Here the "carrot and stick" approach to drug gangs and drug addicts who were fueling the crime wave enabled the ordinary folks to live in safety. But alas too many of the politicians are using the corrupt and inefficient court system to get away with their crimes, and even when they are arrested, the international human rights types take their part and pressure the courts to let them go.

Yes, Mrs. George Clooney, I am talking about you.

The real hacking danger: China

NPR Frontline has a report on China's stealing intellectual property from the US for at least 20 years.

why? Because if the companies complained, China might not let them use their cheap labor to make profits.

Technology theft and other unfair business practices originating from China are costing the American economy more than $57 billion a year, White House officials believe, and they expect that figure to grow. Yet an investigation by NPR and FRONTLINE into why three successive administrations failed to stop cyberhacking from China found an unlikely obstacle for the government — the victims themselves.

In dozens of interviews with U.S. government and business representatives, officials involved in commerce with China said hacking and theft were an open secret for almost two decades, allowed to quietly continue because U.S. companies had too much money at stake to make waves

read the whole article.

This is indeed an open secret, and the Frontline program is supposed to be about Trumpieboy's trade war with China. Trump was in business and knows how these things work of course, but don't expect an accurate account of why he decided to fight back, because, as the saying goes: "orange man bad".

sigh. I wish Congress would recognize that there are very real problems that need bi partisan cooperation instead of constantly whining and obstructing reform to make political points.

In other news, there are hints that Trump will shut down the Federal OPM office (who allowed my files to be hacked).

The WAPO hyperventillates about it but does admit:

Today the agency is widely viewed as slow and ineffective, though, with a long-lingering backlog of background investigations and risk-averse leadership that has failed to respond to calls for faster hiring and recruiting for a changing workforce. “In order to really ramp up the mission around people, we need to have an infrastructure for people management that is really world-class,” Weichert said.

in other words, reorganize the place. Given the advances in technology for records since the office was established, one hopes it is about time the office is reorganized and made more efficient.

But of course, this is government, which takes forever to do anything and tends to be years behind the private sector. If we needed something repaired or replaced at our clinic, it took months and lots of paperwork to get it done. As for computers: we had MSDos for our medical records in 2000, for example, even though Windows 1 was released in 1985... And then we were hacked and went back to using paper records.

ah but the problem with the bureaucracy is that their priorities are more important than the priorities of actually doing what they were tasked to do.

The plan has raised suspicions from federal employees, who have watched the administration attempt to freeze their pay, weaken the power of their unions, and move to clear a faster path to discipline and firing.

Translation: Right now, it's almost impossible to fire an employee who isn't needed, and it is difficult to fire a lazy or incompetent employee.

The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, with 750,000 members, is calling the idea “Trump’s Dangerous Plan to Abolish OPM” and predicting a “disastrous” result if policy for federal employees moves so close to the White House.

presumably they will slow down their work and do things wrong just to "punish" Trumpieboy.

Ah, but the realization that something needs to be done is a bipartisan agreement, which the WAPO admits if you read down to near the end of the long article:

Breaking up the OPM is not a Republican idea, though. The Obama administration discussed internally whether to do it, and so did Hillary Clinton’s team in 2016, civil service experts said. And the agency drew bipartisan fury in 2015 when U.S. officials alleged Chinese hackers stole millions of personnel records by hacking through the agency’s weak security system.

why yes. And who was fired for this security breech? Anyone? Anyone? 

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

update: from Lawfareblog via Belmontclub:

OPM Chief Information Officer Donna Seymour acknowledged that the information compromised in the data breach included “SF-86 data as well as clearance adjudication information.” This was a particularly dismaying disclosure ... The full breadth of the security clearance data at risk remains unclear.

For instance, U.S. officials have “neither confirmed nor denied” whether OPM’s database was linked with Scattered Castles, the intelligence community’s database of “sensitive clearance holders” ... To make matters worse, it appears that OPM maintained an unsecured and unencrypted database for the security clearances ... Along with the aforementioned databases, the OPM systems are linked electronically to other agencies and databases, and it stored much of this data alongside the security clearance files. 

and Belmnot club adds:

 This is conceivably the biggest headline that never was; quite a feat in an period whose intelligence disasters included Snowden, Wikileaks-Manning, the rollup of the CIA network in China, missing the rise of ISIS and the burning of the US diplomatic stations in Benghazi. When you combine the litany of disasters with what we now know about lobbying for foreign governments in Washington it’s probable that Collusion has been out of control for some time. It’s a design defect. DC was meant to be a national capital not the 'capital of the world' which it has now become. The federal bureaucracy, the press corps and its defensive agencies were designed for more homogenous national age. They seem unable to cope with the corrosion of the global world.

Clean up your cat litter

the real story why Ecuador threw out Assnage: He didn't clean up the cat litter.

so what happened to the cat?

NPR report on Assange's cat.

Moreno explained that Assange treated his hosts disrespectfully; late last year the embassy implemented a series of rules for Assange, including a requirement to be responsible for the "well-being, food, hygiene and proper care of your pet." If Assange didn't, the embassy threatened to put the cat in a shelter. In other words, it is likely that Assange didn't effectively clean up after his cat's own wiki-leaks.

apparently he gave it to his family after the embassy threatened to take it away and put it in a pound.



If I find all of this absurd, it is because boys of all ages are notorious for being messy, so hiring a part time maid to clean up after him wouldn't cost a fortune, so why is the embassy making such a big thing about it? Or maybe buy a self cleaning litter box?

Because of course this is not about being messy: they were pressuring him to leave and a lot of his messiness was about protesting this.

On the other hand, I guess he hasn't read Jordan Peterson:

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

I find it is ironic that he spent years isolated in an embassy for embarassing Hillary, but Chelsey Manning not only got a pardon but a free sex change operation for releasing information that endangered soldiers in Iraq.

Revenge is a dish served best cold

Assange just pulled the deadman switch, and a lot of Wikileaks are now on the web.

most of them are about old news, but hey, whatever.

update: The links I posted are old, identical to the files on the wayback machine site.

But excuse me if I am amused, because a lot of stuff that was leaked in the past revealed shennanigans or faux pas that made people mad (e.g. the US Ambassador noted most US tourists to the Philippines were looking for sex. Well, duh).

But a lot of the problem is the failure of the US Government to take hacking seriously.

For example, Obama hid the fact that China hacked my OPM federal personnel file,

An Hillary saw no reason to worry if sensitive information could be hakced from her unsecured server, or carried and placed on Anthony Weiner's computer, even though he surfed porn sites that hack you all the time.

A lot of the reason the gov't wants to get Assange is about leaking "secrets" which are often rumors and can be spun as propaganda.

But the big reason the Democrats hate him now is about leaking that Hillary's dirty tricks stole the primaries from Bernie. Yet, as Rush pointed out, that wasn't "leaked" but was hacked because Podesta answered a phishing email.

Benedict vs Francis: how the alternative press gets the word out

I don't know if this is being covered in the MSM, but Pope Benedict, who was tasked by JP2 to clear up the log jam that protected pedophiles back in the early 1990s,  and who many think resigned under pressure, has written an essay about abuse and problems in the church. Essay here.

GetReligion blog, which discusses press coverage of religion, discusses the document and notes that the way it was released and publicized was via alternative media and ignored by the MSM...

and it links to an article about Benedict and African Cardinal Sarah's open opposition to the trends of the present day papal "reforms".

“A paramount task, which must result from the moral upheavals of our time, is that we ourselves once again begin to live by God and unto Him. Above all, we ourselves must learn again to recognize God as the foundation of our life instead of leaving Him aside,” Benedict wrote.

What else did the 91-year-old former pontiff say in his bombshell essay (almost an encyclical if you will) that has excited many Catholics?

For starters, he wasn’t afraid, like Sarah, to exert church teachings in the face of a politically correct world...Sarah and Benedict, however, aren’t being political. Rather, they are fulfilling what they consider their mortal obligation.

In a single essay, Benedict did more to properly address the crisis (and its roots) if compared to Francis’ largely ceremonial summit...

“The extent and gravity of the reported incidents has deeply distressed priests as well as laity, and has caused more than a few to call into question the very faith of the church,” Benedict said. “It was necessary to send out a strong message, and seek out a new beginning, so to make the church again truly credible as a light among peoples and as a force in service against the powers of destruction.”

 and how did the Vatican react? Anyone? Anyone?

Bishop Gracida at Abbysum.org has Phillip Lawler's article from Catholic.org about how the essay was released by alternative channels.

Benedict’s essay has not found a warm welcome at (the Pope's) St. Martha residence. Even more revealing is the frantic reaction of the Pope’s most ardent supporters, who have flooded the internet with their embarrassed protests, their complaints that Benedict is sadly mistaken when he suggests that the social and ecclesiastical uproar of the 1960s gave rise to the epidemic of abuse.

Those protests against Benedict—the mock-sorrowful sighs that we all know sexual abuse is not a function of rampant sexual immorality—should be seen as signals to the secular media. And secular outlets, sympathetic to the causes of the sexual revolution, will duly carry the message that Benedict is out of touch, that his thesis has already been disproven.

But facts, as John Adams observed, are stubborn things. And the facts testify unambiguously in Benedict’s favor. Something happened in the 1960s and thereafter to precipitate a rash of clerical abuse. Yes, the problem had arisen in the past. But every responsible survey has shown a stunning spike in clerical abuse, occurring just after the tumult that Benedict describes in his essay.

the entire text is also found HERE, and it's ending is significant: Because JP2 frequently bypassed the obstructive Vatican bureaucracy/curia to get out his message to the laypeople, telling them "be not afraid".

And Benedict notes it is often the lay people and minor clergy or bishops of unimportant diocese, not the big shots, who are at the forefront of true church reform

It is very important to oppose the lies and half-truths of the devil with the whole truth: Yes, there is sin in the Church and evil. But even today there is the Holy Church, which is indestructible.

Today there are many people who humbly believe, suffer and love, in whom the real God, the loving God, shows Himself to us. Today God also has His witnesses (martyres) in the world. We just have to be vigilant in order to see and hear them. ...If we look around and listen with an attentive heart, we can find witnesses everywhere today, especially among ordinary people, but also in the high ranks of the Church, who stand up for God with their life and suffering...

one is reminded of a similar observation by that good atheist, Camus:

Perhaps then, if we listen attentively, we can hear, amid the uproar of empires and nations, a faint flutter of wings, the gentle stirring of life and hope. Some will say this hope lies in a nation; others, in a person. I believe, rather, that it is awakened and nourished by millions of solitary individuals whose deeds and works every day negate frontiers and the crudest implications of history.

-------------------
UPDATE: ewtn and the papal posse discusses
[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[

update number two: Professor Leon Podles, who wrote a book about the abuse crisis, analyzes Benedict's letter. He goes into the history of pederasty in past and present day cultures, and notes that social taboos and swift condemnation of such actions are the only way to eliminate the problem.

Killing of a sacred deer? Calling Miss Marple...

I never watch any movie which has medicine as a plot, since I tend to throw shoes and shout at the TV when they make major mistakes.

But my stepson was here and we watched the film "Killing of a Sacred Deer", which is a lose remake of Iphingenia in Aulis...

in this, supposedly the surgeon was drunk and caused the death of a patient, so the victim's son put a curse on the family that the surgeon's children and wife would all die if the surgeon didn't kill one of his children.

Lots of dumb dialogue and he ends up killing one of his kids to save the others.... hmm... no, his wife doesn't stop him: unlike Clymenestra she let him do it... so presumably the next film in the series won't include his wife killing him in the bathtub in revenge.

so should you watch it? Well, it's a dumb movie, but like most "horror" films it's okay if you are dumb enough to believe the plot.

but from a medical standpoint?

Fake plot.

First it shows what is presumably the death of a patient during heart surgery. The heart is white for some reason, and it is beating. (usually the heart is stopped for open heart surgery and the patient is put on a heart/lung bypass machine, but never mind.)

But my main problem is that the onset of paralysis that is supposed to kill the surgeon's family resembles polio or acute transverse myelitis or Guillian Barre syndrome, or maybe a peripheral neuropathy from toxins such as heavy metals or chemicals.

And when both of his two children develop identical symptoms, no one wonders why: the first thing an epidemiologist would think is: Check the home for poisons/toxins.

And if you know a patient's family is threatening the doctor, you call the cops to check out if he has access to heavy metals or other toxins that cause similar symptoms.

the paralysis and lack of appetite is supposed to continue until they bleed from the eyes and die.

Again, suggesting anorexia from a toxin...and by the way: The bleeding from the eyes could be a sign of thrombocytopenia or even from decreased clotting proteins from hepatic failure.

I kept yelling at the screen: Check them for thallium poisoning. as wikipedia notes:

Because of its use for murder, thallium has gained the nicknames "The Poisoner's Poison" and "Inheritance Powder" (alongside arsenic).

But if it was thallium, their hair should be falling out. But thallium and other heavy metals can cause these type symptoms, but not show on MRI etc...

Actually arsenic might be a better bet: hidden in the lemonade that the threatening kid keeps giving the family. LINK

Neuropathy symptoms from arsenic begin 2-3 weeks after the first exposure. Pain starts in the lower extremities that later change to numbness and weakness. Eventually the symptoms progress to the upper extremities.

more about arsenic here.

Clinical diagnosis of arsenic intoxication is often difficult because both acute and chronic poisoning present a wide spectrum of signs and symptoms, which are largely dependent upon route of exposure, chemical form, dose, and time elapsed since exposure. In many cases, the patient or person providing the history may suppress information, or the source of exposure may not be apparent. By integrating laboratory results with history and clinical findings, it is often possible to confirm a diagnosis.

-------------------------- 

physicians rarely run into deliberate poisoning cases, so might not consider it as part of the diagnostic possibilities, but ironically, Miss Marple would recognize the problem.

Agatha Christie is famous for her knowledge of poisons including arsenic, which was a favorite method of killing people in the past because it was hard to detect.

and her novel The Pale Horse, uses Thallium poisoning as one method of murder.

Bur Agatha Christie doesn't only use drugs and heavy metal murders in her books: this lovely lecture notes Aunt Agatha's knowledge of plant poisons:

Being Buzzed again: Yup Balikatan time

For the last week, every morning and evening, and sometimes during the day, we are being buzzed by low flying planes or helicopters.

Yup. It's "Balikatan" time: when joint US/Philippine military exercizes take place every year.

Usually it includes parachute drops and jungle training at nearby Fort Magsaysay: And our town center, with it's brand new ferris wheel, is a visual point for VFR navigation. Last year, a small plane (A10?) buzzed our town square, frightening our cook who comes with me when I walk the dog there. But this week, it has been very hot and humid ("asthma weather"). So I didn't go out to identify the plane.

here is a short film about the exercizes at Clark AFB: The US left Clark years ago, right after Mt Pinatubo destroyed the area with ash, but our lovely Ex presdent GMA put lots of money into the area to build it up, so aside from a Phil Airforce base, Clark now has an industrial park and international airport.



The news picked up that the USS Wasp was near "disputed" islands bothering China, but this is nonsense. China is illegally digging up the sea bottom to build artificial islands to take over the West Philippine sea with it's mineral and fishing resources, not to mention the ability to block the sea lanes to Japan and Korea.

They are destroying the ecology and pushing out local fishermen. China claims they own the area, probably since the last time they "owned" the area they let Chinese pirates terrorize the are during the Ming dynasty. How bad were the pirates? Well, when they tried to take over Luzon, the locals helped the Spanish throw them out...

Of course, Obama pressured the Philippines not to fight back and take it to court. So now the Philippines has a paper saying China's islands are illegal. which china ignores.

but lately, China has been blocking supplies to an island that the Philippines has long inhabited, and so the presence of the USS Wasp hopefully sends a message that if they invade, the US will help out this invasion of a sovereign country with whom the US has a mutual defense treaty. And Duterte? He essentially has told the soldiers there that it will be a suicide mission to protect our sovereignty.

This is a turn around for Duterte, who has been trying to make nice with China, but even though he is popular with locals, a lot of locals oppose his policy here: The locals hate the Chinese (whose immigrants for years have had a monopoly on the economy), and now many are worried about China's "help", which could result in China grabbing our economic assets if the Philippines could not pay them back.

Duterte's speech warning China was at the big celebration of the day of Valor: To commemorate the soldiers who died at Bataan and the Bataan death march. Filipinos may lose wars, but they will still fight.

Austin Bay at StrategyPage has a short essay summarizing the problem.

Of course, in the USA, the Democrats will claim Trumpieboy is causing the war. Yet China has gone to war with VietNam in the past after similar aggression, and their bullying against a lot of local countries (VietNam, India, Korea, Taiwan, Japan) with similar tactics mean it's not just a US problem. StrategyPage has a nice summary and analysis about all of this HERE.

The key to this is not fishing, or even the natural gas resources there: It is all about the sea lanes to Japan and Korea... true, the ships could go around the east side of the Philippines, but China is also threatening to take over areas there, which would enable them to isolate the Philippines.

-------------
the SP essay I linked to above includes this about the drug war here:

The National Police reported that since the war on drugs began three years ago nearly 1.5 million drug addicts have turned themselves in and the crime rate has declined 30 percent. Nearly 70 percent of Filipinos approve of the anti-drug effort mainly because their villages or neighborhoods are either free of drug activity or that such activity is much reduced.

sounds about right, but hey, the MSM and the SJW on the social media hate Duterte as much as the MSM and SJW in the US hate Trumpie boy. So take what you read about him (usually a joke/irony taken out of context) with a grain of salt...

internet off again

while fixing the roof, the welder sparks started a fire in the ceiling of the second floor apartment. It was put out without problem, but alas the internet connection to the house goes through that area and was damaged, so I have to use the office internet for email etc... so no blogging for a few days.

the untold story about immigration: harming the family ties

Cardinal Sarah has been quoted on a lot of right wing blogs for being critical of the Pope's pro migration policies, but what he actually said is quite nuanced: 

“All migrants who arrive in Europe are penniless, without work, without dignity...This is what the Church wants?” he asked. “The Church can not cooperate with this new form of slavery that has become mass migration.

Yes, slavery.

It is "voluntary" slavery, but poverty is the cause of many of those trying to migrate.

And the good Cardinal points out that the solution is not encouraging individuals to migrate as a cheap source of labor (which break up the family structure) but to improve the country of origin by making the place safe, by eliminating corruption, and by encouraging local jobs as an alternative.

He says a lot more in this interview, which is long and nuanced as to the root of the crisis in the west that puts banks and profits over families and communities, and how the stress on individuals being free to make their own reality, rejecting the wisdom of the past, is based on a rejection of God and ultimately is destroying the family as the main pillar of human existence.

In Europe, the "refugees" tend to be young men, who don't speak the language and have problems assimilating (not to mention the universal problem of men without women, causing frustration, often resulting in turning to religion, sometimes the jihad type of religion, or sometimes turning to crime). But no one seems to be asking why they migrate.

In the USA, policies that insist migrants with children can't be jailed, led to migrants bringing vulnerable children along as a way  to guarantee they won't be deported, putting the children at risk.

Yet even legal migration is a type of slavery: because often there is little help for those who are exploited by employers, either monetarily, by overwork, or sexual exploitation.

MigrantRights Org has a lot of stories about migration: why people migrate, what they work at, and the problems they run into in their new jobs.

Immigrants work hard and often at lower wages: And this is a problem not just for the country that sends them but for the host country. For example, Saudi deported a lot of legal immigrants because their own youth had a high unemployment rate. But of course their own men don't want to work as hard for such low wages... Why not just raise wages? Ah, because capitalism...

(nor is this problem limited to Saudi: why all those guys in their parents basement instead of working in construction or doing farm work, or all those snowflake feminists complaining they owe thousands of dollars for a useless degree when a short caregiver course or two years in a community college will get them a well paying nursing job?... here, people become nurses to work overseas: and if they can't pass the RN exam, often they can get a well paying job as a super nanny in nearby Asian countries.)

in the Philippines, our 11 million Overseas Foreign workers (and those who work on ships) keep the economy going, and support much of the families left behind. But at what cost?

Men working overseas leave wives and children behind, often leading to broken families when they find a new common law spouse... women work as nurses or nannies or maids, often risking mistreatment and sometimes sexual exploitation. And then, who cares for the children?

But what is the alternative? These commercials show the family member giving "stuff" to the kids, but actually the wages sent home often is used to buy a better home, decent food, and especially school fees. And education is seen as the way out of poverty. But without local jobs, the cycle repeats itself.

one alternative is to get local jobs, e.g. invest in factories etc. in the home countries. And to do this, you have to get rid of the culture of corruption. The Catholics, alas, are pushing the green agenda and socialism, with little clue about economics or human nature. Which is why so many turn to more rigid religions such as Evangelical protestantism or fundamentalist Islam, since both these religions stress strict rule following when it comes to lying, stealing or taking bribes.

Yet even supplying local jobs this can lead to family breakup, with both parents working all day in a city without extended family to watch the children, who are left on their own, which for poor children means often ending up as street children seduced by petty crime and drugs.

So the alternative is to let the children in the provinces to be raised by grandparents.

Even in China there is  major worry about the "left behind" children raised in the home villages when their parents move to the cities but cannot bring the children (or bring their parents to babysit).

So modern capitalism and globalism and modernity results in stresses for families: But what is the alternative? Living the traditional life is hard and won't support the growing population.

Sigh.

This is a local Filipino commercial.



the company describes the scene:

Joy, the country’s most beloved dishwashing brand, celebrates the self-sacrificing love that Filipino parents have for their children. This is especially true in the case of OFW parents who constantly struggle with having to spend most of their time away from their loved ones – in the hopes of giving them a better future.

the better future is shown as a middle class existence, but also the chances of an education so one's children do not have to live in dire poverty and working so hard that you are old and arthritic by age 50.

So running water (not getting it from the community pump and hauling it back to wash dishes and clothes and yourself, and less danger of diarrhea and other water borne illnesses that are a common cause of children dying). Electric lights, a TV to watch in the evening, fans (and maybe even an air conditioner), a decent bed, and maybe even a bedroom without ten people sleeping with you. Instead of walking you have a motorcycle or tricycle to get around to shop or visit friends. 

And the house is now made from concrete, so fewer bugs (less danger of dengue). and a decent roof that keeps you dry in monsoon season (and will probably survive the periodic typhoons we have here).

what makes this work is the presence of the extended family: but modernity stresses individual freedom over responsibility, so what comes next?



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

why the PC hate the movie the Highwaymen

In my last post, I reviewed the Netflix movie the Highwayman, and noted that some reviewers in the MSM disliked the film.

Lileks does a better job at taking down these politically correct reviews LINK

here is part of his essay:
The Guardian quotes are in italics.

 After 50 years vaunted as a masterpiece of New Hollywood film-making and 60s zeitgeist, it’s finally getting taken down a peg, courtesy of some fogeyish cop-aganda furious that the world won’t follow its moral code. 

 And that moral code might be don’t kill people and take their property? Is that it?...

The earlier film, promoted with the flirty tagline “They’re young … they’re in love … and they kill people”, submitted the ravishing Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway as icons of countercultural style.

 Because killing people while being ravishing gave the target audience a delicious little thrill, perhaps. Oh to be footloose, fancy-free, not working, and accompanied on all our journeys by enthusiastic bluegrass that mythologized our greed!

read the whole thing, and remember the film Bonnie and Clyde as being one of the many things in the 1960's that made things change by making evil people out as glamourous and wonderful.

Suddenly, calling evil good and good evil became okay, in the name of "multiculturalism".

 Because this has more to do with normalizing their evil so the sociopaths in society can feel good about themselves (Freud made guilt something evil and so if you point out their deeds are evil, you are the bad guys.)

Because multiculturalism has nothing to do with how different cultures view evil: because as one who has lived and worked in a half dozen cultures, most of them non European, I hate to tell the multiculturalists that murder is sort of looked down upon in all of these cultures, and the story of men being willing to risk their lives fighting monsters is as old as Gilgamesh or Beowulf or the Ramayana.

It takes modern day "multiculturalism" to make Grendel a hero instead of the spirit of chaos that destroys the safety of the ordinary folks.

I dislike horror films because too often they start with a classic "kill the monster, protect the innocent", but often the film ends up as a series, and now the evil monster is the hero: "hey look our hero Freddy is killing the innocent again, whoopie".

Some writers of horror, such as Stephen King or Dean Koontz, tend to paint evil as evil, and the good guys as good guys trying to stop the evil, but alas that is not always true, either in film or in modern novels.

Because if you take the part of the bad guy, hey  you are hip and edgy.

and what does it say when the press paints the innocent touchy feely embraces of a decent man like Uncle Joe as evil, while painting a fake Hispanic sociopath as the new Messiah? From a sarcastic essay at the NYTimes:

WASHINGTON — The heavens part. The light shines down. The rise in the oceans begins to slow. The world is once more bathed in the mystical glow of a messiah. Our redemption from Donald Trump is at hand. We have The One again, a New One — another lanky, bookish, handsome man with an attractive young family, a thin résumé, an exotic name, a hip affect, a rock star aura, an enticing smile, a liberal press corps ready to fluff his pillows and a frothing Fox News....

Still, Menn writes, “it’s unclear whether the United States is ready for a presidential contender who, as a teenager, stole long-distance phone service for his dial-up modem, wrote a murder fantasy in which the narrator drives over children on the street, and mused about a society without money.”

it's not that he wrote a murder fantasy per se: it's that he wrote in the first person voice about a man who took pleasure in killing the innocent. As if he identified with the protagonist.

Has anyone read this? 

It is sick and evil.

And don't tell me it's teenage fantasy: because people just don't change that much.

The Highwaymen: film review

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

from a story telling standpoint, it reminds one of the old time films when telling a story and character development was key to the film.

In this case, it is about calling back retired Texas Rangers to eliminate a dangerous gang who had shot quite a few law enforcement officials, not to mention innocent civilians in robberies.

The film does not glamourize the killers, who are seen killing cops and the innocent, nor does it glamourize the two men tasked to hunt them down.

The Texas Rangers had been disbanded for dispensing rough justice ... in frontier days such things might have been tolerated, but that by the 1930s was considered wrong.

Yet when Bonnie and Clyde's murderous killing/robbery spree had caused enough anger, the Governor finally decided that maybe rough and ready justice might be the answer and called two ex Texas Rangers out of retirement.

One point in the take down of the criminals is that they had eluded police capture several times because essentially they used combat weapons, not the usual guns of civilian criminals. So one scene shows Frank Hamer buying weapons and ammunition. But the main story is the interaction of the two characters, and how the two rangers figure out where they will be going by checking out the behavior pattern of the crime duo, and plan to ambush them.

So who shot first? Sort of beside the point: Because hesitation after shouting a warning would merely have resulted in more dead policemen, something that today's human rights types don't want to acknowledge.

in some way this is an old fashioned film, because usually Hollywood and the MSM usually glamourizes drug dealers and killers, while the MSM often twists stories of those who try to keep the peace as being the bad guys.

Yet the film acknowledges that Hamer and Gaut are not shiny boyscouts, but hardened lawmen who have killed before and would kill again, seeing the criminals as predators to be eliminated. There is a poignant scene that emphasizes this, when Clyde's father meets Hamer and acknowledges that his son will be have to be killed because he won't surrender to the law, but then relates how his son turned criminal, and the two men ponder the small deeds that altered the paths of life of both cop and criminal.

A satisfying film, not fancy with special effects, but essentially a low key character study.

AmericanCatholicBlog has an essay on the film, and on the main character LINK The summary says it all:

Kostner and Harrelson provide a highly entertaining look at Depression Era America in rural Texas and the birth of modern celebrity mania, which turned two murderous outlaws into the darlings of all too many Americans who should have known better.

of course, the WAPO complained that the film "whitewashed" the men's careers, but never mind.

Reality is a bit messy, and those who lament rough justice ignore that the alternative might not be "sweetness and light" but a lot more innocent people killed.

Brexit Dittie

still have no idea on what is going on with Brexit: like Trumpieboy, it seems like patriotism is not PC...

except among normal people.

Sisi, the miniseries

------------
 in German with subtitles. A nice costume drama.

Empress Elizabeth aka Sisi, was the "Princess Diana" of her time: Popular with the people but prone to break protocol so not popular with the aristocrats.

Unlike Diana, however Sisi interfered with politics: And her role in keeping Hungary in the empire as a co equal kingdom is true. (she even learned Hungarian language, which made her popular there). 

This version shows Sisi not just as a boisterous teenager over her head when she marries a prince, but emphasizes the political: trying to influence her husband to become more liberal and more "people friendly". It also shows the tensions between her and her overbearing mother in law. But it also brings up how her people friendly behavior made her popular and probably helped keep her husband on the throne at a time when revolutions were breaking out all over.

I haven't finished part two, so I don't know if the film brings in her hypochondria/anorexia nervosa/and constant traveling in later years. Presumably it ends before the suicide of her son and the lonely years of traveling before she was assassinated by an anarchist.

A nice miniseries, as good as the 1950s film for romance.

Spaghetti

from the BBC....and a happy April Fools day to you.

Touchy Feely Uncle Joe

I guess working class candidate for president, Joe Biden is now finished, because a lady with ties to the Bernie campaign accused him of sniffing her hair.

heh. Joe Biden is not really taken seriously by anyone, hence the many many internet memes on the guy, including many photos of him touching young women like a boorish old uncle.

example: UKMail article from 2015.

Biden is stuck back in the 1970s, when everyone was "touchy feely", often embracing you and kissing you as a greeting, and if you pulled back, you were considered "frigid" or at least "unfriendly".


Definition of "Touchy Feely":
from The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. . Retrieved March 30, 2019 from Encyclopedia.com:

Touchy-feely openly expressing affection or other emotions, especially through physical contact. In its literal senses, touchy-feely is associated with the development in the 1960s and 1970s of encounter groups in which participants sought psychological benefit through close contact with one another. By the 1990s, the figurative use of the term was strongly established; it is often used to sum up the attitude implicit in the ‘caring nineties’ and the values of a New Age society.

my mother used to call this type of greeting "copping a free feel": and if it gets too strong, most of us knew how to accidentally kick the guy to send a message to back off.

But the "touchyfeely" stuff still is going on in some places.

Indeed, if you live in a "modern" friendly Catholic parish in the USA,  you frequently get manhandled in the midst of the mass in the name of being friendly.

this cartoon is from CTCatholicCorner:

Where do they go to get their lives back?

Raymond Donovan, after being declared innocent from a politically inspired court case, was quoted as saying: "Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?"

so a lot of the stuff going on in Washington makes one wonder: how many are being tricked into "perjury traps" and one even wonders if the scumbags who made money lobbying who probably deserve jail were prosecuted while others who did the same thing or worse were never investigated because of their "connections".

Instapundit links to a long detailed article at the Conservative Tree House about the various ways that a fake dossier was manipulated to take down Trumpieboy.

for later reading (I do have a life and other things to do).

But from a human rights perspective, the use of the CIA/FISA/ and FBI to spy on someone for political reasons is quite disturbing.

One would expect that the CIA would love Republicans (Bush Sr ran the CIA for example), but apparently things have changed with Trump: so is this why so many Democratic candidates in the midterm elections had CIA connections (something usually overlooked, in favor of publicizing the Socialist and Muslim "it girls)...

 I noted in earlier articles about the CIA manipulation of the elections here, and how Duterte, by putting his name in late in the election cycle, threw a monkey wrench into their plans (and here, his support came from ordinary folks: ads and social media propaganda doesn't work for tricycle drivers and farmers, who like Lolo figure they are all crooks and vote for the highest bidder, but Duterte's macho approach to crooks made him popular).

But when the CIA or FBI (or the IRS) get involved with influencing elections in the USA, it is a big story.

When Nixon used the IRS to "scrutinize" those on his enemy list, and paid CIA connected Cubans to break into the Watergate offices of the DNC, it resulted in his impeachment.

when during President Obama's administration, the IRS punished tea party groups, there was little outcry.

So when the CIA and others spied on Trumpieboy, no problem?

Silly me.

and when Scooter Libby, who had nothing to do with "outing" deskjockey Vallery Plame, ended up in jail, why was there no outcry, especially after the real name dropper (a Democrat) never got any punishment? This was a made up scandal too, but Bush was too polite to fight back.

Now, however, Trumpie boy tweets, and his tweets get attention.

But what was not done was actual obstruction or interference with the investigation, unless you think hurt feelings are a crime.

I don't know if it is true, but CT points out the overblow SWAT Team arrests of those on the periphery of the investigation was not because of terrible crimes but to try to provoke Trump to fire Muller so this could be spun into impeachment.

These actions, along with the MSM demonization of anyone associated with Trump, not to mention open attacks on Trump supporters in public places, is even more ominous.

Essentially, ordinary folks with ordinary lives will avoid taking a job for fear of their own and their family's safety.

Sigh.

So who is the first Democrat going to say: Wait a second?

Well it works until one scans the headlines

https://www.savagechickens.com/2019/03/a-sense-of-hope.html

Bananas take three: Turon

Bananas take two

hate someone?

Play this video very loudly when they are around.