concerning War, disease, and... why is fertilizer so expensive?

 things must be getting bad in the Ukraine, because the Philippine gov't told all our OFW there to come home.

one doesn't have to be cynical to see the MSM pushing the war war war meme: We saw this before both Gulf wars, by the way. And noting that propaganda is being pushed doesn't mean that behind all the propaganda there isn't a reason to think the Russians are the "bad guys" here.

Cardinal Vigano notes the backstory here.

summary: He gives a long background on the geopolitical history of the area. But he also notes, like the covid epidemic, the evil guys behind the scenes didn't cause the problem but they are taking an advantage of this. Mainly linked for later reading.

The real problem? Vigano is not an Alex Jones conspiracy theorist: he was a member of the Vatican diplomatic corps, and that groups is known for their knowlege of the story behind the story. 

And he includes notes about how this foreign war might affect you:

The current Ukrainian crisis entails secondary, but no less serious, consequences on the geopolitical balance between China and Taiwan. Russia and Ukraine are the only producers of palladium and neon, which are indispensable for the production of microchips.

so where does Russia come into this?

“If it is true that a Chinese invasion of Formosa would put the global technology supply chain at risk, it is also true that a sudden shortage of raw materials from Russia could stop production, so as to make the island lose the “microchip shield” and induce Beijing to attempt the annexation of Taipei.”

add to this that China is licking their chops to invade or destroy Taiwan, who makes most of the good computer chips, and you see the problem.

All of this is pushing Russia to join with China, which is not good news.

and then there is stuff about crypto currancy, which Biden now wants to regulate... and of course China is trying to oust the USDollar as the main world currancy.

Vigano has a lot of history and diplomatic background on the Ukraine invasion, and here is StrategyPage's take on the war:

Above my paygrade: I'm a doctor, not an expert on geopolitical strategy or even conspiracy theories.

 ---------

Election time here. Background article in the (liberal) Inquirer notes that Leni isn't liked by politicians but has a lot of "volunteers" backing her (read young folks inspired by the social media), but one mayor pointed out Duterte had few politicians (or social media rich kids) support him and he won anyway.

there have been a few pep rallies locally in the city plaza which is near us. Covid restrictions have been pretty well lifted, so no problem. Businesses are opening up, and presumably a lot of OFW will be able to return to their jobs soon...and in our area it is time to start preparing the rice fields for the next harvest, so a lot of folks are busy.

Here, votes are bought, and a lot of folks take the money figuring that hey, they are all crooks, so at least I should get a few dollars. However, the problem is that when people feel strongly about an issue they can't be bribed...so Duterte won, despite all the money poured into other campaigns and the CIA funded press and social media, because he promised to push against drugs and crimes, and his time as mayor in Davao proved he was mean enough to do it...so now crime is down, a lot of folks had justice (or paid for a hit man to get justice), and I can walk the streets again without worrying we will be kidnapped...all elections are local, you know.

Before Duterete, the cartels who were trying to make the Philippines as a narco state so they could easily send drugs via OFW all over the world. 

Duterte is now being criticized because he made pals with Putin, but the back story of this is that the US stopped a shipment of small arms to the Philippines to punish him for "human rights" violations, i.e. shooting druggies and pushers for resisting arrest (/s) and as a result the Islamicists took over a city in the south, and the Philippines lacked weapons, which were then promised to us by Russia. 

but since ballot box stuffing and outright fraud in voting machines is suspected to play a part in the next election, it is uncertain who will win the next election.

Our area backs BongBong Marcos, because Leni is seen as a snobbish upper class lady whose main claim to fame is that her popularist husband died in a plane crash a couple years back. Which is why the Smartmatic voting machine fraud may come up again if things go to her.

but it is the local elections that could turn murderous: our maid attended a political meeting this morning but won't talk about it because "it is dangerous". 

Dr. Ito call your office. Things are still dangerous here.

Sigh.

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

in other news: Yes, rabies continues to be a problem.

often they hold clinics for free rabies shots for dogs, but the virus has messed everything up, so I suspect a lot of dogs never had their rabies shot. And there are stray dogs thrown because their owner's can't afford to feed them: Although after two years of covid related poverty, most of the strays have disappeared.

Sigh.

One of our farmer's wives needed help to pay for rabies  vaccine. The dog is a neighbor's dog, and he was too poor to get him a rabies shot. True, one could wait and see if the dog died, but rabies is fatal so no one wants to take the chance. We get one or two requests for help to pay for rabies shots each week.

The mayor had a program for free rabies shots, but apparantly they ran out of money. The treatment is three shots and each costs 7 dollars (or more? The farmer's wife said it cost her 13 dollars but that might have been for the antibody shot that you get first, and then you get the slower vaccine that takes a couple weeks to work)... this is not a lot of money for Yanks, but here it the minimum wage is 7 dollars a day, and farmers, who sell their crop, often run out of money about this time, because they need all their money to plant the next crop. 

It is also considered hunger season, because this is about the time the farmers run out of their rice stores.

so employees will be asking for loans. And there are expenses to fix the farm machines, buy fertilzer , get good quality seedlings, etc.

There is a huge increase in the price of fertilizer right now

To harvest 100 cavans, up to 8 bags of urea fertilizer should be applied. This amounts to P20,000 per hectare in costs on urea alone. But farmers should also apply phosphorus and potassium containing fertilizer. The farmer will spend about P30,000 per hectare on fertilizer alone. At P15 per kg per unmilled rice, this translates to about 2,000 kg or about 40 percent of the value of a one- hectare yield at 5.0 tons per hectare. That is for fertilizer alone. What about land preparation, seeds, labor and harvesting costs? This simple calculation suggests practical action by the farmer—cut down on fertilizer use or not plant at all, as some farmers had done. inquirerdotnet on Twitter | inquirerdotnet on Facebook

Blame the European Union, the cut back of petroleum production by Biden's anti fracking/drilling policies, and the dirty little secret is that the Russian Ukrainian war won't help because Russia, Belarus and China are major sources of fertilizer.

The dirty little secret is that most famines in today's world are not caused by lack of food but by wars, or because the price is so high that the poor can't afford to buy enough to stay healthy. 

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

in family news:

I just cashed in another long term investment, but alas most of it is gone to help with the farm expenses, (the lady who buys Kuya's rice every year without any problems in paying is now sending us bad checks, so I have had to lend him money for the next crop.) I also had to pay to fix up the shop/apartment we have in Manila, which is getting a new tenant. The cheap pipes and the electric wires and the roof need replacement. 

Sigh.

Oh well. God will provide. 

So hey, move to a tropical paradise and you won't have to worry, except for earthquakes, typhoons, floods, covid, and Dengue fever, add the worry that war (or shortages from war) might make things worse for us.

A pinch of salt can change history

 History is full of wars and big shots who start them. 

But I am working my way through books about the history of food, and commerce, and spices/condiments.

most folks have a vague idea of how the spice trade inspired western expansion/imperialism into South and East Asia, but that was not the only condiment that could inspire wars and revolutions.

Salt not only added flavor to your meal, but let you dry/preserve your food so it didn't rot so fast.

so one of today's podcasts from medievalist.net is about a Chinese salt rebellion in 870 AD began in a response to the Chinese government establishing a salt monopoly so they could tax salt to replentish their empty treasury. The rebellion failed but caused so much economic damage that the Tang dynasty fell soon afterward.

More links from that blog about salt:

Salt trade and warfare in early medieval Transylvania

Evidence for medieval salt-making by burning Eel-grass (Zostera marina L.) in the Netherlands

Organization and modus operandi of the Byzantine salt monopoly

,,,,,cue to more modern times, when Gandhi's salt march against the British monopoly on salt led to the establishment of an independent India. 

....

An easy to read book on the history of salt throughout the ages is Mark Kurlansky's book Salt...

LINK2

here in Asia, salt and salty condiments like Patis/fish sauce etc. are used lavishly. Which is why there is so much high blood pressure here in East Asia.

Universal ID? We haz that

The Biblical conspiracy theories are that there will be a mark of the beast, where everyone will be forced to use it to buy or sell anything. In effect, it allows the government/banks to control you under the threat of financial ruin.

In the USA this is believed by a lot of people, and it's not just the fundamentalist types: Privacy groups are worried too. Because if you post the wrong thing, not only can you be censored from the social media, but in the near future this could mean your bank account will be frozen. And with a universal ID card, it is easy to find who you are and where your money is. 

Pushing digital currancy should be no problem: after all we use credit cards, don't we? And they are safe, aren't they? What could go wrong?

UhOh: Justin Trudeau just had the banks close the accounts  of the Bouncy castle protesters showing how easily this could be done. True, he reversed it in a few days, but it showed what could be done.

In the USA, they never had a universal ID card and in the past they even forbade using the Social Security number for identification for this reason (not true now: every other form of ID asks for either the SSN or part of the SSN to confirm who you are).

So how does one prove one's identity in the US for something like cashing a check or getting on an airplane? Ironically, to get on an airplane most people use their drivers license which are issued by states, not the federal government, since few have passports. 

And the refusal to use a universal ID is not limited to the rabid Republican right: Indeed, worrying that someone will figure out who you are is one reason that the Democrats, who represent the poorer classes in the USA, have opposed requiring ID cards to vote in elections. 

Of course, getting a fake ID is easy, but that's another story. But if it is easy in the fairly honest country like the USA, just think of what will be going on in more corrupt countries.

which brings us to this article that I found in today's Inquirer:

PH must step up digital shift for better cash aid system – WB....

 

The World Bank (WB) has urged the Philippine government to ramp up digital government-to-person (G2P) payments, mainly by tapping other financial services providers like e-wallets, to speed up and ensure the efficient distribution of “ayuda” (cash assistance) during a crisis. 

... “The lack of identification documents is one of the reasons for being unbanked in the country where only 29 percent of adults have a bank or mobile money account...

but what about rural folks, when the ATM or bank is 20 km down a dirt road?

To address these financial inclusion gaps, especially in remote communities, it urged the government to partner with financial service providers other than banks, like mobile wallets.

Now they have me lost. I have used credit cards for years, but I rarely use them here because I distrust them, and they are easily stolen. So I would also distrust a digital wallet linked to a cellphone that is easily stolen. This is not true of the younger generation: Kuya and his daughter use them all the time, just as they buy stuff via e-commerce, wheras I usually go to the Palenke or mall and pay cash to get what I need.

My suspicion of e commerce is a generational thing: Lolo didn't even use credit cards, but would pull out a couple of $100 dollar bills to pay for groceries etc. in Walmart. And don't get me started on crypto currancy and bit coin, which some countries like India and the Philippines are looking into right now. Some say a crypto currancy backed by gold will replace the dollar in the near future, and this may explain why gold based currancy is being pushed by China who is buying a lot of gold.

Something to remember if China decides to regain their long lost province of Luzon...

 --------------

update: another reason I am skeptical of the internet control of everything is that the internet infrastructure here was affected by earthquakes that wiped out a major cable, and because we have had typhoon related floods cause no electricity etc..

So what could go wrong?

using entertainers to push cultural understanding

 I am old enough to remember during the cold war when the US and the USSR sent entertainers to each other to help increase understanding between countries as a way of softening the hatred of each other. Yes, propaganda, but in a good way.

Article about sending Porgie and Bess to Europe and the story is in Maya Angelou's book LINK

however, sending artists and entertainers as a way of promoting cultural understanding is not new:

while reading up on the Manga version of Isabella Bird's travels in Japan, they discuss Japanese street artists and mention a famous Japanese juggler who toured Europe and the USA.

Japan was closed to much of the world until the US forced them to open ports to western interests in 1853

if you scroll down the blogpost on Matthew Wittman's blog, he discusses  the American circus performers who went to Japan (1864) and how the Japanese decided to send their own jugglers to the world to improve cultural understanding (1867).

and he includes and Edison film from 1904

Youtube has this video showing traditonal Japanese juggling.

this is being posted under my "Factoid of the day" topic, since it is something I know nothing about but am trying to increase my own knowledge.

And you thought Covid was bad

 TeaAtTrianon has a link to an article on the Sweating Sickness, an epidemic during the early Tudor era in England, that might have killed Prince Arthur, and almost killed Ann Boleyn.

it killed people within 24 hours.

There are only a few known diseases that will do this: Among them cholera, Meningococcal meningitis, and the pneumonic form of bubonic plague.

More here.

unlike other epidemic disease, the historians still haven't identified the cause, but it may have been a virus related to the Picardy Sweat (a similar outbreak 100 years later in France).. Some historians think the outbreak, which hit mainly young adults, might have been a form of Hanta virus. However, the actual cause has never been found.

estimates of deaths might be exaggerated, since the article notes that unlike the Black Death/bubonic plague, there was no drop in the population.

I am familiar with the Hanta virus only because when I was working in the IHS, there was an outbreak in the nearby Navajo reservation. The medical epidemiologists found that native healers remembered previous outbreaks.

the preventive measures to stop outbreaks was about getting rid of rodent droppings (and using a mask when you clean up the house) since the way you get the disease from rodents is by inhaling or injesting the droppings of the vector. 

We had posters and pamphlets on how to do this correctly,

the article notes 

The earliest description of hantavirus infection dates back to China, around the year 900 AD.

although various forms of Hanta Virus have been found on all continents, it also is a public health problem in China: LINK 

From Wikipedia: 

It is estimated that about 1.5 million cases and 46,000 deaths occurred in China from 1950 to 2007. The number of cases is estimated at 32,000 in Finland from 2005 to 2010 and 90,000 in Russia from 1996 to 2006.

and then the big question: Were the Cocoliztli epidemics in the 1500s that depopulated Mexico a variation of the Hanta virus?

Although the major way to stop the spread is control of the vector (usually a rodent) there is a vaccine that has been developed for some strains of the virus, including the strain found in China and Korea.

This article (2019) goes into the complications of making a vaccine for this virus, and also has a technical discussion of various anti viral drugs and monoclonal antibodies being used to treat cases. 

 However, so far there are no anti viral medicines that seem to work definitely (i.e. there are studies that say they worked, but no good double blind study. See my earlier blogpost with Dr. C's video on placebo and double blind studies).

Hanta virus is serious, but since it is a vector spread disease, and not person to person as in Covid, there are various ways to stop the spread once the cause is identified.

My worry is that, with the huge increase in rodent population among the homeless, especially in California, that rodent spread disease might cause outbreaks in the near future. LINK2 

In some ways the world is lucky that the covid epidemic was so mild: yes it killed millions but mainly high risk folks.

What will kill more people in the next few years is hunger. The price of fertilizer is going up, the price of growing food is up due to increase in oil prices, and the danger of war is very real here in Asia.

________________

update: From Instapudit:

LIFE IN THE BLUE ZONES: The rat problem in D.C. is so bad, two people got hantavirus.

ArsTechnica article here.

Luckily it is the weaker Seole strain.

Audiobook of the week

 no video but a fan read audiobook.

More here...

and it can be found at Internet archives 

link2

This was one of the books that I was told to read to learn how people in different cultures actually think and believe differently than Americans (something I sort of knew, since I grew up in a multi ethnic multiracial neighborhood).

the passivity, the idea you are not in charge of your own life, the belief in the supernatural as part of life: this is true even if you don't live in a religious country like India or the Philippines, or in Africa, but even in atheistic countries like China and Japan where customs and folk beliefs are still strong.

Ah, but the literary types prefer "passage to India" which is actually about rich white Brits and teaches you little about India. Or The God of Small Things, which my granddaughter was given in literature class in high school: Where it depicts many cultures in India but you don't really learn about the nuances: it could be set in American suburbia because they all seem to belong to the same culture and have the same way of thinking.

===========

update: The internet archives includes scans from the Library of India, where a lot of modern classic books can be found.

History lesson for today: K Pop rules

 After WWII, the west just wasn't willing to keep their armies mobilized, so Stalin saw an easy win if they took over the entire Korean Peninsula.

the UN did something to stop aggression. 

And the overlooked factor: Mac Arthur. He thought outside the box, and when Pusan was surrounded, pulled a "ScipioAfricanus"* manuveur on them by hitting their supply lines: he invaded in the north. (bad news? He suggesting nuking the invading Chinese army so Truman fired him).

Here is a SP podcast about the two Koreas.

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

 

One of their comments is about K Pop and K dramas, which are forbidden in the North but are smuggled in and show the propaganda the people are being fed are all lies.

K dramas have a lot of gritty plots, but their popularity, not to mention the popularity of K pop, is big here in Asia.

And that has geopolitical implications in Asia, as is noted in the StrategyTalk I posted above.

Popular culture does affect the way people think: one does see the popularity of Bollywood films in  South Asia as a push back against the rabid Islamicist ideas (spread by Saudi funded schools) and how rock and roll helped influence the popular rejection of communism in Europe: By spreading ideas that go against a rigid philosophy.

Right now, China is trying to ban the "girly girl" fashion of the boy bands in K pop. They worry about the effeminate role models for boys (in a cultures where men out number women and some women don't want to marry at all).

the irony? In Korea men have to serve 18 months in the miltary, so most of the K Pop idols have had military training. 

and the KDrama/KPop fans are not above using their influence in politics even outside of Asia.

I remember the discussion on the  KDrama fansites like Dramabeans where fangirls helped keep people from attending a Trump rally in Oklahoma by coordinating a fake ticket buy out.

In Colombia, the k-pop memes helped push against the right wing government.

Unlike the USA, where you make your own band and fight your way to the top, the K Pop is designed so that they train singers etc for years before they become stars. It's a top down business.

,,,,,

* Most people know about Hannibal, who is supposed to be so great because he destroyed a Roman army led by nincompoops. Ah, but he was destroyed because Scipio Africanus did a long term strategy and hit base in Spain, so he couldn't get reinforcements, and then later attacked Carthage so Hannibal had to go home.

by the way: destroying the  supply lines was a military tactic also used by Admiral Yi against the Japanese invasion of Korea, using the tides to help him destroy their navy so they couldn't get supplies (in the same way that the Greeks let the Persian fleet collide and sink each other at Salamis).

and of course, Russia used similar tactics against both Napoleon and Hitler, using the weather to help them.

science lesson for today:

  Science lesson for today: What does a double blind study mean and why is it important (because placebo effect is so potent that it makes it hard to decide if something makes a difference).

.....

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

Behind the headlines

Understanding war has ongoing discussion of the strategy and logistics of what is going on in the Ukraine.

or you can follow twitter threads or the most recent update on youtube.

The problem: the fog of war.

I know nothing about what is going on in the Ukraine, except that we figure that China is getting the message that they need to attack before Trumpieboy is reelected.

One comment I made in the past was the danger of hacking the internet, and that if Taiwan is attacked, one major internet cable from Asia (including Singapore and India) could be cut and slow things down as it did a couple years ago.

Article from 2019 about this, includes this illustration.

the internet is also valuable in war time, which is why Russia attacked the internet in the Ukraine... but there is now an alternative. Elon Musk is letting the Ukraine use his satellite internet service. the problem: maybe not enough receivers.

Many years ago, we used satellite TV and later satellite internet services because I tended to live in remote areas of the USA. At the time, the federal gov't was discussing funding of putting in expensive internet cables to remote areas of various Indian Reservations while what was needed was satellite dishes.

It sort of reminds me of back in the early 1990s, when I had a (rare) cellphone because I needed it as a rural doctor, but it was only beginning to be used by the public.

I was on an airplane and talking to a lady returning to her husband in Thailand. His job was constructing cellphone towers in remote ares. When I questioned the expense, she pointed out that wiring was vulnerable and expensive, and that the towers bypassed this difficulty (although in mountainous areas, there remained dead spots).

One of the least covered stories in the world is the cellphone revolution.

30 years ago, a charity was collecting money to send cheap computers into rural Africa. But then came internet cafes, and then came cellphones, internet commerce, and the ability to talk to your family.

When we had a major typhoon a couple years ago, we were offline and had no electricity or water for two weeks, and a lot of the roads were slowly being cleard... we were okay: we could use our own generator and waterpump. But what the neighbors actually asked us was to charge their cellphones so they could get in touch with their relatives. Soon, shops and kiosks were set up with signs: Cellphone charge 25 pesos (fifty cents US). Priorities: You can use candles and bottled water, but hey you need to check on grandmom and check your facebook page.

and with the virus, even we are using E commerce to buy stuff that might not be in a shop here.

update: I just told kuya to fix an old diesel Jeep we have stored in our garage, just in case an EMP type weapon takes out computer chips in our newer cars.

During WWII, they used ethanol to fuel jeeps etc, but an alternative would be to run the jeeps etc on biodiesel.

and of course we still have one aging waterbuffalo so we could plow the fields if needed.

place your conspiracy theory here

The conspiracy theories are all out there in force.

But as the joke goes: What is the differnce between a conspiracy theory and the news? Answer: About 3 months.

The problem is that so many conspiracy theories came true that no one trusts the news anymore. 

So is the plan of the World Economic forum and the global leaders to make everyone get a health card digital passport? Forbes article here. 

While the United States government has not issued a federal digital vaccine pass, a national standard has nevertheless emerged. To date, 21 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico offer accessibility to the SMART Health Card, a verifiable digital proof of vaccination developed through the Vaccination Credential Initiative (VCI), a global coalition of public and private stakeholders including Microsoft, Salesforce, Oracle, the Mayo Clinic and other health and tech heavyweights.....

hey it's easy and lets you get into places without a hassle. And it only requires your date of birth...

and hey it gives you power over your own data, so why worry about it. And at the end it notes that this will be in place in case we have another epidemic.

and hey it's going world wide 

 so why worry? 

NSFW link NSFW link2 discusses why:

The core hypothesis here is that western democratic governments (which in normal times have personal privacy constraints) can leverage the emergency to mandate a digital identity and proof of vaccination with associated QR codes and cell phone-based contact tracing in the interests of “public health”...

The logic apparently is that the western democracies, ... can both economically and politically benefit by implementing a universal social credit system akin to that which has been pioneered and gradually implemented ...in the People’s Republic of China by the Central Communist Party..

there are rumors on NSFW sites that the reason Justin Trudeau stopped his banking shennanigans because it opened a lot of people's eyes to the power of the government to deny you your money.

 update: the covid crisis was used as an excuse to push for digital identification.

So what happens when herd immunity hits, they find the vaccine doesn't stop the virus, and people just get sick and tired of obeying stupid rules?

Place conspiracy theory here. Lots of hype on conspiracy sites pointing out how Trudeau used the banks to shut down cash to the protester and (what is worse) those who dared to send donations to the protesters. 

he has now reportedly pulled back from that decision:
One conspiracy said that he caused a run on the banks and they companies. Anther said that the NWO types stopped him because they planned to use Canada to push digital currancy etc. and that this would cause people to oppose the plan since they would realize how easy it would be to punish them for badthought.

 So Trudeau's shennanigans might end up increasing opposition to the vaccine, and especially opposition to the vaccine passport idea.

and the omicron is not stopped by the vaccine or masks, but has a lower death rate, and if you survive, you will be immune to all forms of covid: i.e. herd immunity.

As for the latest conspiracy theory by Russian trolls is that they were taking out the US funded "biowarfare" labs in the Ukraine.

Probably, like Sadam's biowarfare labs, these labs are to make vaccines and do research on organisms so that they could make vaccines (which is what the Wuhan lab was doing)...  but could easily be converted to make bioweapons (or accidentally release germs that are bioweapons).

LOL. The real reason is that Russia wants it's empire back, and needs a Black sea port and Ukraine's wheat, but never mind.

The dirty little secret is that Putin is doing it because he can. (italics mine). 

Trump was seen as crazy enough to start a war if you pushed him, so he was scary. But Biden is seen as weak, and Europe has been slacking in their own defense for years. They did didlysquat to stop the war in Yugoslavia and will probably do nothing now, although Poland and other eastern European states might help, knowing they are next.

The problem is, of course, the world's sluggish push back to Putin sends a green light to China to attack Taiwan... and that would have huge implications to the computer industry world wide (they make the best chips).

And if Taiwan goes, will Luzon be far behind? 

Probably not an invasion: the last time their poxies tried that they lost. But they could use their economic power to make the Philippines a puppet for them, i.e. by denying ports to the USA and denying access to the US navy to keep the sealanes in the West Philippine sea open (for shipping to Korea and Japan). Not to mention that the main internet cable from Asia to the Americas goes south of Taiwan (when an earthquake cut it about ten years ago, we were off line for weeks... all internet traffic had to go west through India and the Middle East.)

Which is why the up coming election is important for the USA.

By the way: I am hearing planes going over at low altitude again. One big base is near us, and yup. The Philippine special forces  are doing training exercizes there with the Special forces of the Yanks: but not it's not about China, it's just an annual training exercize that goes on all the time. ABSCBN article here.

As for the Ukraine: one way to guage how serious things are is to see if the OFW are coming home. Right now, about 30 out of the 300 Filipinos working there are arranging to come home. So it's serious, but not a major catastrophe yet.

something not being discussed: The MSM seems to be reporting as if this is a conventional war. But of course Russia not only could deny Western Europe their natural gas to stay warm, but use cyber attacks to shut down the infrastructure all over.

StrategyPage analysis here.

Stinger missiles and an armed populace caused problems for the Russian invasion...and they are being helped by Mud Mud Glorious Mud:

The outcome of the invasion will be more obvious within a week. Much depends on the effectiveness of the local resistance to Russian forces and the roads they use. It is currently the “mud” season in Ukraine where most of the snow is gone and replaced by weeks of mud, which limits off-road travel by wheeled vehicles.

Lots more there to put what is going on into perspective.

----

Synodality? Smidodality. Drop the jargon guys

 I usually read the Catholic Thing, which has essays by intellectuals who usually can write about complicated church things in a way that I can understand it.

So today's essay is about the univesity and the Synodality stuff the Pope is pushing.

He notes that the average Catholic, except for the Karens/church ladies who run the parish, have a suspicion or distrust or don't care attitude or think the whole thing is just silly.

Yup. Sounds about right.

Because you know two things about all these meetings: They will be run by church ladies aka "Karens" who run everything in the parish, and they will manipulate the meetings so that the correct agenda will be decided on, with little imput by the rest of us.

I suspect these will be touchy feely meetings, like  the "encounter group" fad of the sixties, where people got together and bared their soul to each other in the name of fake fellowship... but don't dare go against their agenda: they'll silence you by manipulating what you are trying to say, or do a faux sweety nicey criticism to shut you up.

Again from the Catholic Thing:

true synodality is far from a silly diversion from the evangelical mission of the Church; it is essential to it.

but what do you mean by synodality? Define please. 

Nor is the work of synodality accomplished simply by talking about it. It requires an intentional choice to foster and practice a genuine sense of shared mission.

So what is a "shared mission"? Define please. What is our mission, and who do we share it with?

It requires praying together, listening to Scripture together, listening to one another, discerning together, and, yes, “walking together.”

with whom? so we leave home and go to meetings at church where we discuss abstract concepts with fellow church members who are into this type of thing. Right.

Why do I doubt they mean reviving family prayer, something we did before Vatican II?

In the past, it was the custom in the Philippines for the family to say the rosary together each evening. But somehow I don't think that is what they mean because family is not mentioned in most of the stuff I am reading (nor is Jesus or Mama Mary, because since Vatican II the rosary and popular religious customs are no longer encouraged).

Synodality means meeting with like minded people belonging to our exclusive church group run by the ex nun church ladies who run everything in modern parishes, and we are told that this is supposed to encourage Evangelization. 

So what does that mean? Spending our time going door to door to convert our heathen neighbors?

so let's go to the US Bishop's stuff.

What is Evangelization? - Go and Make Disciples

... evangelizing means bringing the Good News of Jesus into every human situation

So bring the good news of Jesus into every situation suggests it means we inject Jesus talk into what we do.

Excuse me, but in the good old days, we were taught that even the smallest thing we do, we can offer it to God as a prayer.  But this is not the same thing as "bringing the good news into every situation": there is a subtle difference. In one, you are doing the action as an excuse to push Jesus talk to the captive audience. 

and seeking to convert individuals and society by the divine power of the Gospel itself.

 

 more nice stuff written here, but notice it also implies the only real job for a Catholic is doing stuff that falls under the definition of SJW. 

The validity of our having accepted the Gospel does not only come from what we feel or what we know; it comes also from the way we serve others, especially the poorest, the most marginal, the most hurting, the most defenseless, and the least loved.

so work at the homeless shelter, you lazy person. Or join in demonstrations so you can feel self righteous.

again what is missing is the old fashioned idea of family and neighbors. 

In traditional Christianity, this meant caring for your family and friends, taking cassaroles to the sick or to help the survivers after a death in the family, baby sitting so they can shop without a toddler, driving them to the clinic to see their doctor so they don't have to drive themself, or helping the single pregnant teenager in the family to bear her child and raise him until she is able to cope on her own.

for old folks like myself, it means praying for those around me and trying not to bitch too much when I feel pain, but to offer my aches and pains to God as a prayer.

the rest of the Bishops' essay is similar nicey nice stuff. Aimed at upper middle class sophisticated types, which leaves me out.

Well, isn't it better here in the Philippines?

nope. They again are pushing the encounter group idea:

As dioceses gather together in small circles in parishes, schools and basic ecclesial communities in the coming months, he said, the Church will look within and also at how it is together with the entire human family.

, .. like the Pope, they are using sociological jargon, which is the latest fad in teaching church stuff.

(Pope Francis) pointed out that ‘communion’ and ‘mission’ can risk remaining somewhat abstract, unless synodality is concretely expressed at every step of the synodal journey and activity, encouraging real involvement on the part of each and all”. “All the baptized are called to take part in the Church’s life and mission.”

But what does this mean for those who are not church ladies or into such things?

What does this mean to ordinary folks just living an ordinary life?

Sigh.

Film Review: Belfast, Bill Clinton, and remembering the Troubles.

 The movie Belfast is up for an academy award.

It is a quiet movie about a boy's normal growing up in a time when chaos and violence is getting worse all around him.

Here is a discussion about the film.

One problem: How many folks under the age of 50 actually remember the troubles in Northern Ireland? 
I had Irish friends who gave me the background: That if you were Catholic, you would be kept out of available jobs, which would be given to Protestants.

the Catholics were seen as dirty uneducated superstitious drunks. Sound familiar? Just peruse any chat room in the USA, where Republicans say such things about Blacks and immigrants, and Democrats say this about the Trumpite Deplorables...

It is often blamed on religion, but it is actually a tribal thing: the ScotIrish in the North were brought there deliberatly after 1609 to keep those nasty Catholics in the south in line after genocides depopulated the area.

The ruling Brits however made sure they were rabid Protestants and encouraged religious/tribal prejudice against the local Cathlics in a way that reminds one of how rich southern planters in the USA encouraged red neck Southerners to hate the local blacks: keep them fighting each other and they won't see the big shots who are benefitting from keeping them poor.

Wikipedia has a page about "The Troubles" as that time was called.

The conflict began during a campaign by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association to end discrimination against the Catholic/nationalist minority by the Protestant/unionist government and local authorities.

The government attempted to suppress the protests. The police, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), were overwhelmingly Protestant and accused of sectarianism and police brutality. The campaign was also violently opposed by loyalists, who said it was a republican front.

Increasing tensions led to the August 1969 riots and the deployment of British troops, in what became the British Army's longest operation. "Peace walls" were built in some areas to keep the two communities apart.

Some Catholics initially welcomed the British Army as a more neutral force than the RUC, but soon came to see it as hostile and biased, particularly after Bloody Sunday in 1972.[39]

By the way: although this is often pointed to as an example of religion being evil, that ignores the nuances of what was going on, especially the movement of various Christian groups to stop the violence. Betty Williams won a Nobel Peace prize for her efforts to unite believers, which alas failed because of sectarian strife against the group.

The conflict continued on and off for years, 

Ironically, the conflict was finally settled officially in the mid 1990s with the help of Bill Clinton... for which he should have won a Nobel Peace prize but didn't.

as to the claim it was about religion:

Jimmy Breslin once quipped that it was not about religion, but it was the "catholic atheists fighting against the protestant atheists".... here he points out the anti Irish prejudice that was behind the troubles:

..

.an older movie that discusses the basis of the "troubles" is Bloody Sunday: about the 1972 Derry Massacre.

     

So yes, I enjoyed Belfast, but if you are not aware of the backstory, you are missing the point: That it is not just about a boy growing up, or Catholics vs the protestant hatred of Ireland: it is about the ability of a boy doing normal boy things despite the trouble around him, and about the dilemma of families who are faced with the choice to flee the violence or stay where they have ties with family and friends.

Now, take the story and change the location to El Salvador, or Lebanon, or Iraq or central Africa, and you can see why people who do have homes and jobs are desperatly seeking to migrate to safer areas. And this also explains why one family member will often migrate, get a job and then get the rest of their family to join them.

The problem of trust in medicine

 this discussion is about the lack of trust in the black inner city community and it is about a community outreach to get high risk black people to be willing to take the covid vaccine.

A lot of what she discusses is true, and we also faced the same problem in the IHS....which is why we had Indian preference in our employees, so that they would be treated by health care providers who understood their cultural nuances (e.g. no eye contact, too shy to ask questions, and no that isn't a grimace but because like Pinoys they point with their lips, not their hands)... and actually why the IHS was started in the first place: so that docs could understand the culture and stay long enough to get trusted.

Alas, in many areas the IHS is a mess because of red tape and understaffing and the difficulty in keeping within the budget. But that's another discussion for another essay.

in the video, the doctor mentions the Tuskegee experiment, which is still remembered in the American black community. 

The back ground is that when treating syphillis required a toxic treatment, should the doctors treat people without symptoms to prevent tertiary syphillis in 20 years.

The problem however was that when penicillin became available in the early 1940s, it was found to be a good and non toxic treatment. However, after this was known, instead of offering the "control" group, i.e. those not treated, a cure, the doctors doing the experiment just let them remain untreated. 

When I was an intern, I had a patient who had not been treated and he had a syphillitic aortic aneurism 

back then, open heart surgery was init's infancy, so essentially this could burst at any time and kill him: and he faced premature death because some scientist decided the experiment was more important than the actual life of the patient. 

This of course was not the only ethical experiment on minorities. 

When I worked in northen Minnesota, we had a patient on dialysis because of non treatment of a strep infection caused acute GN. some details here. 

an earlier epidemic was stopped by visiting and aggresively treating every single person with impetigo. But this time they only treated the cases where the impetigo was bad enough to go to the clinic (which in some cases was 40 miles away by dirty road)... so some of the mild cases of impetigo were not treated and caused episodes of acute GN...

In 1970, the Department of Defense awarded the University of Minnesota Medical School $88,7251 to continue research begun in 1954 on the biology and epidemiology2 of staphylocci and streptococci, the bacterial agents of the diseases impetigo and nephritis. This investigation involving hundreds of thousands of dollars has been carried on at Red Lake Indian Reservation. The Reservation residents were not treated as patients to be cured of bacterial infection but as a source of experimental data.

italics mine. 

And the article also seems to blame the victim for being dirty, whereas the problem was not just lack of running water to wash but because there was a genetic photo toxic ecsema in the tribe that got infected easily.

But minorities are not the only ones who faced such medical bias: The handicapped and those with mental disabilities also were seen as ideal patients for experiments. Forbes article on the Hepatitis B experiment at Willowbrook hospital for the retarded. The doctors justified the experiment because it was done to find about immunity to make a vaccine, but I also should note that in such institutions, that hygiene was a problem and most of the patients would have been infected with Hepatitis B anyway: But that doesn't justify giving the virus to these people.

another less publicized cases involved non treatment decisions for children with meningomyelocoel a severe form of spina bifida, a condition where the lower spine and spinal cord doesn't close, and the child is born with a sac on the spine, and often the child developed paralysis below the level of the lesion and hydrocephalus was another complication of the child if he lived.

At the time (1980s) some docs, knowing that these kids would be paralyzed and mildly retarded, started suggesting doctors not treat the lesion. BabyJaneDoe was one case,  and the press and alas the court system painted those trying to get proper treatment for the child as cruel and interfering in something that was none of their business. (i.e. the articles implied that the evil Reagan (/s) and Dr. Koop who took the parents to court, should have stayed out of the decision, and to the shame of the court sytem, the court agreed with the parents).

and I remember how the NYTimes had lots of articles and letters to the editor saying the government had no right to interfere with the parent's decision. 

Ironically, the baby lived and the sac made nursing difficult so it was removed. This 1990 WaPost article notes that the child was well and attending kindergarten, and that a lot of the press reports about her condition were exaggerated:

(the parents were told that) In grim sum, her quality of life would be so low -- the press implied -- that her departure would be a blessing to her parents and, of course, to herself.

The only problem with this prognosis was that a number of leading pediatric neurologists -- based on what they knew of Baby Jane Doe's condition -- told me it wasn't true. I talked with, among others, Dr. David McLone, chief of neurosurgery at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago. He said that his extensive experience with spina bifida children gave him confidence that if she were treated at his hospital, she would grow up to have normal intelligence and would be walking, probably with some bracing.

Sigh. Essentially it was the parents "decision" but what is not noted is that they were essentially deciding what to do for their child based on the doctor's information and those pushing the pro death agenda never let anyone hint that information might be biased.

Those parents were educated so could get several opinions, but this might not be true for lower middle class folk and especially with minorities whose basic medical knowledge is lacking (due to poor public schools, another problem that should be addressed but it out of my line of expertise).

How this works in reality is shown when a double blind study was done in Oklahoma City Childrens' hospital on which babies born with Meningocoels should be treated.

It was decided which kids should be treated based on certain criteria including the size and location of the lesion and also the educational and economic status of the patient's parents. 

Most of the non treated patients died within six months... and of course the treated ones lived but were paraplegic and mildly retarded. The study didn't make a big controversy at the time because a lot of doctors figured the death of a crippled child was a good thing? (nowadays, of course, we are more sensitive to such children; most are aborted in late term abortions where there is no legal problem).

So anyway, the OKC study was published and did not cause any controversy.... until....Years later, a black doc ran across the study and found that most of the patients in the non treatment category was minorities, mainly from the black community there. This article discusses the experiment.

Racism? The docs who made the criteria for "non treatment" would say no: they wouldn't say it of course but it seems they felt that poor minorit folk were too poor and too dumb to give proper care to a crippled child. And years later, when this was publicized, some of the parents when later interviewed said they were not aware that their baby would have lived if given a chance to get life saving surgery.

Sigh. 

and similar "non treatment"decisions are pushed on minority patients all the time, which is why so many in the minority communities refuse to sign a "living will".

When I was in the IHS, we had one patient with behavior problems from frontal lobe damage and sent her to be evaluated by a neurologist. Because the family was traditional, they brought a cousin who was a nurse to help in communication.

Ah, but the neurologist didn't spend any time actually evaluating the patient or asking about her problems: He spent the entire consultation trying to pressure the family to remove her feeding tube which of course would kill her. He used lots of "quality of life"arguments that presumably his affluent white patients would find logical.

The Objibwe family however said nothing, but on the way out, the nurse/cousin turned to the physician and said: That's the difference between us and you white folks. We don't kill our old folks.

Oh Canada: how did it go from nice to dictator?

Here in the Philippines we have a lot of revolutions, coups, etc.

But we learned after we saw Marcos impose martial law, he then started to arrest (and the illegal hit squads killed) the opposition. And then he let the military kill Ninoy Aquino, and thought he'd get away with it... until Cory came back and won the election unexpectedly, and when he tried to quash the news that he lost, General Ramos took the side of Cory, and when Marcos sent his goons to arrest him, a million Filipinos marched on the EDSA (Main street) and blocked Marcos' soldiers, who refused to shoot unarmed civilians who included women, children and clergy who were singing hymns (Marcos' soldiers explained their unwillingness to follow orders by saying they saw a "beautiful lady who said don't shoot my children"... which was probably one of the nuns in the demonstrations but they believed it was Mama Mary, and when asked why they didn't shoot they essentially said: hey you don't disobey your mama).

There have been other similar demonstrations here (e.g. forcing the resignation of Erap), and the left is always demonstrating in Manila, and there have been several military and civilan coup attempts, but it remains taboo to call for a general imposition of martial law here, because the country is aware of how quickly that can devolve into murders and dictatorship.

Elections coming up here in the Philippines, and it's getting crazy here

 We have an election coming up, and there is a lot of arguments out there in the press. I saw one sign for Robredo in a shop window but it disappeared. Thre was a report that the cops are removing illegal election posters, but I can't confirm that...Are they taking it down?

The cook says BongBong Marcos (BBM) is popular. She knows half the town including the local NPA who are now not very active but still could be if they get mad.

there is a PhilStar article on why BBM is popular: he doesn't do negative campaigning and has his popular positions publicized (he is a big social media presence in a country where internet cafes and smart phones are used by many: heck, even my maid has one).

ah but should you trust the tech giants, who also are censoring the news to influence your vote, not only in the USA but here in the Philippines?

At a Senate committee hearing on Feb. 2, fact-checking initiative Tsek.PH reported that based on over 200 fact-checks since January 2022, trends showed that a "substantial volume" of disinformation are largely positive of Marcos Jr. At the same time, Robredo is the biggest victim of disinformation or negative messaging.

Twitter has also recently suspended over 300 accounts that are supportive of Marcos Jr., after violating the company's platform manipulation and spam policy.

the author also claims BBMarcos has avoided mainstream media programs claiming bias/censorship by the elite press:

Inlong also noted the programs Marcos skipped are primarily consumed by the educated class, and much of the voting population would come from Class D or the masa.

so now we have to ask: Can you see the fingers of the CIA in all of this? 

This old article notes the obvious interference in the last presidential election, where the American girl got oodles of money from someone but lost because the hoipolloi knew Duterte would kick butt against the criminals who preyed on them, while trying to make nice with China, the Moros and the NPA, offering them a carrot vs a stick.

as a Yank, I can see why the US interests want to stop Chinese aggression in the area, but since it was Obama who essentially gave China a green light to steal the Philippine areas of the West Philippine Sea (by telling PNoy to go to court instead of sending out our tiny coast guard to stop them physically), one cannot be sure what is going on.

Duterte tried to make nice with China, but China screwed him so he is starting to buy ships and make friends with other Asian countries (who rely on shipping that goes through the area that China is trying to steal) to push back.

But the Chinese takeover of the WPSea goes way back: hey, GMA also almost gave the area away but failed when the scam was publicized.

Sigh.

But people get mad when countries like China or the US push the Philippines around. 

The social media here is full of Chinese trolls. But the US is trying to influence the Philippines in a more subtle way

  Background here.

Guess who funded a news site that opposed Duterte and maybe funded the press to overthrow the pro Russian president of the Ukraine awhile back, something that is also noted in this article.

To understand Filipino politics require one to recognize who is married to/related to or friends with whom... and where is their power base?

Since everyone is assumed to be corrupt, the common people will vote for the one that will at least try to help them economically, i.e. to get jobs and investments and send aid when disasters hit.

GMA is from Pampanga, so there has been a lot of development money to that poor area when she was president. 

And Marcos base is in the far north, not Manila. 

In the next election, it is again US vs China but popular opinon will stop any president from going too far to give away our sovereignty.

 Leni is pro American. So the Yankee money will go to her? check lower part of this article. So Robredo is the pro American candidate, but BBM, like Duterte, will try to make nice with China. So is China funding them, or are they just using their own money?

Duterte figures that we are too weak to stop China, and he will try his best to protect the country but knows that we would lose a war, and he isn't seeing the US trying to help much.

so will this election be another fight between the Chinese candidate and the American one? Who knows.

Marcos, of course, is related to the ex dictator Marcos, who went too far with marshal law fighting the various insurgencies and killing/jailing mere activists while he was at it. And of course, he got rich plundering the country of billions. Ah, but Marcos claimed his wealth was Yamashita's gold: Which if true was money plundered from Malaysia and Singapore when the Japanese stole everything in sight. 

Ironically, people figure BBM, like his father, is probably a thief, but hey, so is everyone else, so vote for the one who will actually be able to run the country.

As my husband Lolo used to say: They're all crooks

Finally, to confuse matters, there is the problem about outright voting fraud. 

After the "hello Garci" scandal, where it was suspected that Garci had lots of ballots hidden in the back room to push the election of GMA, the government spent millions to buy electronic voting machines which were seen as guaranteeing an honest election

The source of the machines is Smartmatic, who has sold their technology to a lot of small countries. They use blockchain technology to secure the vote.

So no problem with cheating, right? Uh Oh. The Manila Times headline (Jan31,2022):(author has links to China so be warned).

Smartmatic's global controversies: Follow the money..

BBM claims the company allowed him to lose the election for VP, which is now held by Leni.

Notice the author reveals links between the usual suspects named in conspiracy theory websites (Including Soros' money).

All of this makes my head spin.

Smartmatic based their sales on the idea that they used blockchain to keep things safe. (I'm to old to learn about bit coin and block chain, sorry).

But the article discussion Smartmatic does mention something that the nuttier Trumpite conspiracy theoriests tried to bring up after the last Election in the USA: the Venezuela link, which was ridiculed by the MSM as crazy.

But the MTimes article includes the history of Smartmatic and... wtf? Venezuela, the Panama papers, a  pro PNoy election official who got rich while trying to prove BBM was a criminal, Soros and the Open Society, and lots of other things that one usually only reads in conspiracy websites.

But here is the part about Venezuela:

Over two decades ago, three engineers, led by Antonio Mugica, began to develop a new election technology in Venezuela. After the controversial 2000 US election, they saw an opportunity. With funds from private investors, they incorporated in Delaware in 2000. One of the investors was Jorge Massa Dustou, Venezuela's richest man married to the sister of Gustavo Cisneros, a billionaire and Dustou's former boss. Reportedly, Cisneros bankrolled the failed 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt against Hugo Chávez....When Mugica's company got funds from the Chavez government, the US began to investigate Smartmatic's links to the Venezuelan government.

italics mine. 

And so, the software contractor quickly moved its headquarters to London in 2012. ...

place stuff about London and the SGO corp here: their chief asset was the Smartmatic machine. 

 

Malloch Brown's Philippine ties stem from the mid-1980s when the former Economist journalist became the lead international partner at the Sawyer-Miller Group, presidential hopeful Corazon Aquino's PR agency. After a poll controversy, Cory Aquino won, but tightly, and Malloch Brown formed a close relationship with the thankful family dynasty. Cooperation was re-ignited ahead of the 2010 elections, when Benigno S. Aquino 3rd became the first Philippine president whose votes were counted by Smartmatic despite persistent allegations about systemic vulnerabilities.....

in July 2015, Malloch Brown returned to the Philippines. Subsequently, Comelec's Bautista awarded Smartmatic contracts at a total of P2.6 billion in the 2016 election.

more info at the link of how they got Soros and his money machines into the plot. 

 Malloch Brown also joined the Soros advisors, ahead of the devastating conflict when the billionaire financed agencies cooperating with US authorities, such as Philip Goldberg — later US ambassador to the Philippines until his departure and alleged regime change plan in fall 2016, as The Manila Times reported at the time.,...When Malloch Brown stepped down as chairman of SGO in December 2020, he was made the president of Soros' Open Society Foundation. As Smartmatic's chairman, he was succeeded by Peter Vance Neffenger, a US Coast Guard admiral and President Barack Obama's head of transportation security and a member of Biden's transition team. Trained in Harvard and the US Naval War College, Neffenger was seen as the right man to protect elections worldwide (and to sell Smartmatic to skeptical Americans).

Smartmatic's origins are overshadowed by the election software contractor's odd associations and long trail of controversies, moral hazards, conflicts of interest and unexplainable fortunes in the name of "good governance."

as the MT article reminds us:

Perhaps sometimes those who speak loudest for "public interest, freedom and democracy" are but façades for private interests and oligarchies derailing the very democracy they purport to serve.

media matters is dismissing the story as a mere conspiracy theory.

Update (2/4/21): Smartmatic has reportedly filed a $2.7 billion lawsuit against Fox News, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and others. CNN's Oliver Darcy reports that the lawsuit accuses “Fox, Giuliani, Powell and hosts Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, and Jeanine Pirro of intentionally lying about Smartmatic in an effort to mislead the public into the false belief that the 2020 presidential election was stolen

all the US news assume the charges are baseless and ridicule them,so when you read stories that Sydney Powel and Mayor Guilliani are nutcase and that's why they are being sued by Smartmatic, just remember that Guilliani became mayor for going against the Mafia in NYC, and Trumpieboy knows where all the corrupt types hide their money. 

 but in contrast, the Filipino press looks at folks involved and wonders where they got all that lovely money while working for the government.

Mr Bautista call your office. There are questions they want you to answer.

Sigh. 

update: in case you think I am criticizing the Philippines for corruption, I suggest you look on how the politicians in the USA got to be millionaires. Trumpieboy might have done some slick deals in business, but his business deals were an open book, not like Pelosi, Clinton, Biden and others who became millionaires on the small salary they collected in government jobs.