Tolerance morphing into destroying culture: Walang hiya?

 As I noted in the past, here in the Philippines, trans, baclas and tomboys are accepted because they are seen as part of the family. But like second wives, the sexual implications of their choice is hidden: hypocracy? No Hiya. Shame. What they are doing is looked down on by society, so they keep it secret.

A person who openly breaks the customs is the outcast because walang hiya: without shame, Because the dirty little secret is that in poor countries, it is the family who supports you, not the welfare state.

So the presence of baclas etc is not seen as a threat to the family because they acknowledge the importance of their family and the family accepts them. For example. that is why, when a USMarine killed a trans prostitute when he found she was a he, the news (except for the US activists who manipulate the news here) didn't stress homophobia, but the fact that this person was supporting her extended family by this work.

In contrast, in the USA, the gender revolutions (later feminist trends, and the hedonistic fringe of gay rights) are tainted by an open hatred of the institution of the family, which they see as limiting their right to be free of any restraint or disapproval of their conduct.

italics mine. Traditionally, gay sex was once seen as something one did: now it is supposed to define you and be the center of your life, as who you are. Not work, not family, not partner: as if promiscous sex is the be all and end all of life, and the hell with anything that interferes with one's pleasures.

The anti family part of this agenda is why even the pro gay Pope Francis has condemned the gender theory as cultural imperialism that could destroy the family and family oriented culture of poorer countries. Because without behavioral restrait, the family bonds of trust become unstable.

The problem? In the USA, personal freedom is a major cultural icon. And in recent times the sexual revolution, with the help of reliable contraceptives and a welfare state, has used this idea to enhance the freedom of the individual in the sexual realm. But at what cost? Divorce, children without fathers, abortion, and a lonely old age...

no, the destruction of the family didn't start with gay rights, and the request for gay marriage was about gays wanting a family life, not about destroying family ties.

 Unfortunately, that request morphed into a way for the anti family pro freedom activists to destroy their main enemy: Churches and individuals who hold a belief in traditional morality.

Not everyone believes in the idea of a free but isolated individual. As I have pointed out elsewhere, over 40 million Americans are part time or full time unpaid caregivers of their family or friends. 

in most countries, this emphasis on family members helping one anothr is even more true.

In the Philippines, this LATimes article on Philippine culture notes that this is similar to the Confucian idea that you are not an isolated individual but part of the family and this includes family obligations to help each other.

the expectations her family has are rooted in the cultural value of utang na loob, which translates to “debt of gratitude.” It refers to reciprocity and doing what’s good for the collective. In a listening session with 16 Filipino Americans from across the U.S., the majority of participants shared similar experiences about the pressure of putting family first as a common source of tension.

the article is essentially a hit piece saying that this tension of individual rights vs family obligations causes depression. Alas true. And this theme is a common plot in K drama that are so popular in Asia. But what they don't notice is that it works both ways: yes caring for each other means they also care for you.

I see this here, where I took early retirement to move here to care for my husband but stayed ... and now, after a bout with severe Dengue fever, require the family to help me.

Well, back to the culture wars:

It seems that in the USA, the idea that Heather has two mommies (and tolerance for same sex couples living together as a family) has now been replaced by activists who promote things like drag queen story hours by drag queens who don't look like women but look like diabolic visions from hell.

And then I read about books with explicit pictures and themes promoting sex of all sorts of stuff. This is indeed grooming children: And the parents are starting to push back.

One doubts if parents would object to children's clothings supporting gay rights as one of many designs on the shelf: But putting it out front promoting it was different.

And I wonder why no one noticed the reason the tuck friendly women's bathing suits were controversial: Hint: it implied that it was okay that fully functional men could now go into women's changing rooms. Hint number two: Perverts are much more common than trans folk.

so instead of seeing gays as part of the family, and accepting gay families, these activists are pushing anti family themes, and themes that encourage promiscuity as normal, and ridiculing you if you object.

Which upsets a lot of gays who just want to settle down quiety and raise their kids.

So what is the next step? Ridiculing religion.

Because conservative Christians still hold to traditional morality. And not just those Christians: GetReligion blog notes that the Muslims are also opposing this sexualization of children and teaching non Islamic values to children who attend public schools.

One doubts that major institutions would promote and reward people wearing black face in minstral shows, but now we not only are doing this to those who ridicule women, but those who ridicule religious women who have done so much to establish schools and hospitals that aided both Catholics and non Catholics.

Yes, Dodgers and California, I'm talking about you.

The day they plan to celebrate anti Catholicism is a minor Catholic feast (of the Sacred Heart, an icon that stresses the love of God for man). So it is a double insult.

Well, anyway, in recent months, the Catholic bishops have been promoting Eucharistic processions: Where the Catholic faithful march singing hymns and saying prayers, led by a priest who carries the Eucharist.

  So guess where Bishop Srrickland plans the next one?

hmm...wonder if anyone will show up?

Strickland is already in deep doodoo with some in the Vatican for being a Catholic, so I guess he figures it can't get worse. 

Cardinal Sin call your office. They need your inspiration.

Family news

 yesterday, Luzon had a google blackout, so no blogger or youtube or facebook, but twitter was working so I found out about it there.

They fixed it so it's okay now.

The typhoon missed us but there has been a lot of rain from the monsoon, which is good for flooding the fields etc. to prepare for planting rice.

This is the "hunger season", where farmers lack money for food and it's too soon for the next harvest. Lots of beggers from the provinces. Also, with the rain/thunderstorms, some older people dying from "asthma" (usually heart failure from ASCVD from diabetes or high blood pressure). My energy level is low, so if I drop dead of old age, no problem (I wrote my will when the covid epidemic hit).

Ruby and Madeline are happy: They just went to the Taylor Swift concert.

ah to be young again.

Happy anniversary to Chinese freedom fight

 

the background (BBC from 3 years ago):,,,

...

Censorship? Yup. More information coming out

 Docemet productions has a long post about how censorship slowly increased, from blocking jihadi plans to censoring doctors. 

How and why an agency created in the wake of September 11 to target foreign jihadists came more than 20 years later to (i) train its sights on everyday Americans’ Tweets and Facebook posts touching on mail-in ballots or COVID-19’s origins – treating them like something approaching domestic digital terrorist attacks; and (ii) serving the censorship system as something of a “nerve center” aimed at “neutralizing” such attacks, is as shocking a story as it is a critical one to understanding the perilous state of our republic.

a lot of information on how government entities essentially directed the press and social media sites like facebook and Twitter to censor information on various subject is available after Elon Musk got some old fashioned liberal reporters who still believe in free speech to check out what was going on. 

But when I googled about a summary of the numerous findings, all the news stories on my search engine seem to be from Dec 2022 or Jan 2023. 

The BBC calls this censorship the STOMP reflex.

 

As the coronavirus has spread, many governments around the world have sought to tackle the pandemic by broadening their powers and abilities, according to data collated from the Covid-19 Digital Rights Tracker and Civic Freedom Tracker. 

A total of 32 countries have used militaries or military ordances to enforce rules, which has not been without casualties. ... To monitor rule-breakers, 22 countries have used surveillance drones. Facial recognition programmes have been expanded, internet censorship has occurred in 28 countries, and internet shutdowns in 13. At least 120 contact-tracing apps are in use across 71 states, and 60 other digital contact-tracing measures have been used across 38 countries. 

 Many of these are examples of emergency powers: exceptional actions that states can invoke during a crisis to deviate away from existing laws....

My opinion is that the early reaction and lockdowns were okay, but when they continued for two years, destroying the economy, this was overreach. And with all the riots allowed unchecked (while shutting down schools and churches) it suggests that the public health authorities were making decisions based on politics.

and indeed, the BBC notes this slippery slope:

 If left unchecked, these emergency powers are prone to abuse, and what started as an exception can frequently become the norm. This is not an argument against swift, dramatic and often beneficial actions such as lockdowns and travel restrictions.

but did this need legal sanctions, or just teling people to be cautious? 

indeed one recent study shows that nearly 50% of the reductions in transmission came from behavioural change before government imposed lockdowns were introduced. Instead, there is an argument that by stomping down through greater surveillance, strenghtened security forces and expanded powers, governments risk making disasters worse.

And (right wing site Hot Air) discusses a recent court case about government pressuring certain social media sites to censor information.

One wonders: If it wasn't for Joe Rogan, would people even know about the covid censorship?

The story of government censorship is now breaking out of the box: the latest miniseries thriller RabbitHole is a confusing mess, but is mainly about big shots controlling the message to manipulate the public, echoing a common theme in films 

but my question to leaders of the medical establishment: Why did you allow censorship of those questioning these things? 

Because the result will be similar to the response of the Philippine people to learning there were major problems with the Dengue vaccine: a distrust of all vaccines.

and one of these days, I'll post about the exaggerated government pushing transgender stuff all over the world, pushing porography in schools that go against the religious beliefs of the kids' parents, and the marginalization of religious opinions for saying certain activities are wrong. Then I might go on to rant about climate change policies that are shutting down farms that produce methane, including the war on rice paddies and fertilizer, that will result in millions of unnecessary deaths.

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UPDATE 

 

Video of the week

We just finished watching the classic miniseries A Town Called Alice.

someone posted it on youtube: it's a bit fuzzy but the plot is mesmerizing so watch it before the copyright cops find it.

it is also posted in three parts on Internet archives. LINK1 LINK2 LINK3

The audiobook is also posted on youtube:

it was partly inspired by true events (the women for example were moved around for three years, but by truck, and didn't walk like in the movie) and the last part is about rebuilding one's life and community.

the author, Nevile Shute, is most famous for his anti war book On the Beach, but most of his books are about ordinary people.

Few of his books alas have been made into films, but this one is an old classic: about an absent minded scientist who was studying the problem of metal fatigue in airplanes.... 

LINK:The concept of an airliner suffering catastrophic failure due to metal fatigue after a certain number of flight cycles, as outlined in the 1948 novel and this 1951 film, came true with the failures of the de Havilland Comet in 1954. There are a number of eerie parallels between the fictional account and the later actual events.

update: another of his novels that hasn't been made into a film is available on Internet archives as an ebook: Trustee in the Toolroom.

And the days pass

.....

Stories to worry about

 WTF is going on in the Ukraine?

the US press is rejoicing that (presumably Ukrainian) drones are bombing Moscow. 

uh, isn't this excalation? And if the drones were provided by the USA, isn't this essentially an act of war by NATO against Russia?

But the possibility of a nuclear accident in that area might be the real danger. Russia is in control of Ukraine nuclear plants, but if one was destroyed (by Russia in revenge, by the Ukraine in a false flag incident, or because of an accident/carelessness), well, that could be a bit of a problem for Europe.

I am old enough to remember Chrernobyl, and so is Dr. C. who now risks being banned by Youtube etc. for mentioning it could be a problem.

Dr. C reports from a public health standpoint: Buy Iodine tablets.

and there are rumors in pro Russian blogs that there could be a release of pathogens from those US funded biolabs in the Ukraine. (is this true, or just a threat, or propaganda to cover a release of biological weapons by Russia).

the only good news coming out is that the agreement to let the wheat from the Ukraine be exported might continue. This wheat feeds people in the Middle East.

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In other news: Anti religion actions in China that is usually ignored by the MSM in the USA.

here is the China show about how China is erasing Islam. Note: There are two major Muslim groups there: one is the Uighars, a Turkish ethnic group, where a genocidal fight against them is going on with little notice (except that the propaganda film by disney, Mulan, that was made with the help of the guys jailing the Uighars). 

But there is another Muslim group: the descendents of the Muslim traders who married local girls, and they are called Han Muslims. 

Well, now the China show reports that this group is being erased too, and there have been riots against it. (first half hour in the video discusses this; the rest is about AI and propaganda methods in general)>

China has already arrested now retired Cardinal Zen for helping pro democracy demonstrators who were arrested, withoug any complaints by the present guy who is pope, while the new Cardinal of Hong Kong actually defends the take over of the church there. (letting the government chose bishops and then the Vatican has permission to approve which ones they want... except now the Chinese government is appointing bishops without bothering to ask the Vatican).

what can go wrong?

The question behind this is if the church is a puppet of the state, or should be independent of the state (Separation of church and state, Render to Caeser the things that are Caesar)  Pope Gregory VII fought against this, and it is the reason that Thomas Beckett was killed, and later was the reason that the Pope refused to let Henry VIII run the church. So it's not like the Catholics are not aware of the problem.

for background, you have to realize that religion has been seen as a danger to the state for a long time... not just Christians, but Buddhists, Muslims, and various sects. Lots of rebellions were inspired by religion, (the Taiping rebellion killed as many people as World War I) so they do have a reason to see religion as a source of independent thought that can endanger the emperor.

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finally, the US and the multinational corporations are increasing their push to have other countries normalize the gender/promiscuity is good for you agenda.

Well, now multinationa corporations are pushing gay themed commercials in Asia. Not much of an outcry yet, but give them time.

This does not make the USA popular in societies that recognize traditional laws that protect the family, which in poorer countries is the main protection of the sick, the poor, women and children.

One example of pushback against what is seen as western imperialism is the passing of an over the top law outlawing homosexual acts in Uganda. Biden is threatening that country for doing this, because unlike Iran or Saudi, Uganda is a weak country. But don't ask about the cultural reasons of why that country did it. 

Gays (and trans) in much of Africa, like Gays here, often are married with kids and are part of the family. Their proclivaties are not approved of, but hey they are family, and the fact they are baclas or tomboys or gays doesn't change that: because tolerating them does not threaten the instution of the family.

 But the US, the EU, and now the multinational corporations have started to push perversion as normal and good and teaching this to young children instead of teaching the morality of their parents religious beliefs. And much of this hints that normal people are bad, biology is unimportant, and that families are bad because traditional families are supported by the idea of the yin/yang of sexuality.

But the disgust of this type of gay activity is easier to understand if you know the history of Africa: Slave trade, POW rape, sexual abuse of employees and students....So what the average American sees as a human right issue is seen as removing laws that protect people who lack power, and a way to allow sexual abuse of children/students/employees or the exploitation of street kids by sexual tourists or rich expats.

And anyone reading the MSM from the USA can see how quickly the "let gays marry in peace" idea has evolved to pushing trans to first graders as normal, and not just denying there is a difference between men and women, but denying that there is any reality in the link between biological sex and marriage and children. (trans is about one's desires, not about living peacefully in a family, as was the argument for gay marriage)... ...update:V

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finally, I didn't watch it, but the miniseries Mrs Davis posits a world where AI (the computer Mrs Davis) controls everyone and makes them happy. The plot, which is a fantasy about the grail, is nonsense, but the world of peace with everyone hooked into AI echoes what some people are worried about.

Some crazy sites are proposing AI is the new anti christ, or the beast that can talk (something about this in the Bible if I remember correctly).

Elon Musk is worried about it LINK.. like most new inventions, it mixes good and bad depending on who is in control.

Sigh.

That about says it all

 Randall Smith at the Catholic Thing has an essay about the absurdity of the synodality nonsense (that the big shots in the Catholic church are spending oodles of money pushing)

“The North American Synod Team” says they “heard through the synodal consultations that our people are asking for more robust formation” in synodality and in going out to those on the “margins” of society.

 

It’s odd because I am hearing different voices: from people who want to know how to raise their families; how to live in a society that is increasingly antagonistic toward them; how to ensure their children are getting a good education and formation in the faith. The last thing they want to deal with is Church bureaucracy. They want that part of their lives to just be there for them so they can focus on other things. What to do with a sick elderly parent? How to take care of a disabled child who their Catholic schools won’t take? How to deal with children poisoned by the toxic culture? The document fails to touch on any of these concerns.

italics mine 

A lot of us figure this is a "top down"way to manipulate people in the pew to accept the reformers (such as those in Germany) who have an agenda: And if you object, they can say you are against the Holy Spirit.

But as the author points out: It has little or nothing to do with Jesus, God, or the faith of ordinary Catholics.

And every time I hear PC language about inclusivity etc I am reminded of Gresham's law: bad money drives out good money.

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In other news, I am reading about an incorrupt (i.e. intact) body of a dead nun found in the central USA when the sisters of the Monastery she founded was expanding their buildings, and they decided to rebury her bones inside the church.

But when they did this last week, they were astonished to find her body intact. 

One of them mentioned it in an email, and soon the rumor went around and oodles of folk started traveling to their monastery to view this "miracle"

Here is a short snip about this.

One can almost hear the eyerolls of good Protestants and unbelievers who think the whole thing is a sham at best or just a fraud to raise money.

Behind what is going on here: There is a Catholic idea that sometimes saints bodies remain intact, as a sign by God that they are holy.

This is not just a Catholic idea: Buddhist monks come to mind. But of course, just finding an intact body doesn't mean that person is a saint:  mummies in the desert and the bog bodies and bodies found in ice like Otzi or the Peruvian human sacrifices come to mind.

The experts undoubtably will find a "scientific" explanation of it, and it wouldn't bother me a bit: Because God often uses natural methods to make a point.

So what would the point of this absurdity?

Well, like most good Catholics, a lot of what we call might call miracles is just coincidence. We are in need, and someone just happens to come to help us. When I was in Africa, and took time off to attend medical lectures, I worried about leaving the hospital with no physician. The nuns assured me I shouldn't worry because God knew I was gone, and it was his responsibility. And so, sometimes a medical emergency would occur five minutes before I left, or five minutes after I arrived back from the conference....

Coincidence? Or a sign that God is in control?

so there is an intact body of a nun...is this a miracle or just a natural phenomenum. 

Both. And believe me, I am sure the bishops are gnashing their teeth at this inconvenient occurance.

But what I find interesting is the timing of this happening... coincidence? 

Well, first of all, the nun was African American. Critics laughed at this and I have seen comments saying cynically I guess the US needs a Diversity saint. 

But it does remind people that there are indeed African American Catholics, and Sister Wilhemina taught in Catholic school for years before she left to found this monastery to pray full time.

But at a time when the Pope is busy shutting down convents that do nothing but pray for us sinners, it also could be God (or the nuns) sending him a message to let them alone.

A lot of us noticed that these nuns wore full habits, and the monastery was founded by a group that supports the Latin mass, an act that upsets Pope Francis more than bishops trying to destroy that commandment about adultery.

And of course, all of this happened in a week when the PC Dodgers are planning to honor a hate group of drag queens who ridicule Catholic nuns... 

Coincidence?

Don't tell me God doesn't have a sense of humor about all of this.

Memorial day

 

.

..remembering one of my classmates who died in VietNam and received the Medal of Honor for his heroism

Michael Crescenz and a fellow soldier, base camp, South Vietnam, 1968. Photo credit Family photo

VFW Post 2819 was renamed in his honor, followed by the VA hospital a year later. In 2016, they erected a statue of him at Philadelphia’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial at Penn’s Landing. “This is for the sacrifice of Philadelphians from that war,” Joe said. “That’s why these guys did what they did; to honor Michael and all the other men that never came out.

He was buried near his family, but as his parents got older, and his siblings were no longer nearby, his family requested he be buried in Arlington Cemetary. So when his body was exumed, our class attended the mass in his honor, and then many of my classmates accompanied him, along with a escort of honor, to Artlinton from Philadelphia.

A lot of what people now remember about that war is written by the left. True, the government of Vietnam was corrupt  (ask the guys who fought there) , but the communist takeover was worse, because it resulted in a tyranny. 

Of course, in the USA, you never hear the other side of the story because those opposing it were affluent upper class types who opposed the war because it was trendy and it made them feel heroic, 

They never asked themselves what would have happened if the US hadn't fought there, nor did many of them help resettle the 3 million refugees who fled.

 How many remember the ethnic cleansing of the Chinese community and the Montagard people, religious refugees,  boat people (800 thousand), and reeducation camps (200 thousand at least)were pretty well ignored as they went on to later trendy matters.

UKGuardian notes:

'Around 800,000 boat people, as they became widely known, are believed to have fled Vietnam by sea. Many others drowned or were captured, raped and killed by pirates, particularly from Thailand...250,000 Vietnamese refugees admitted by the US and 60,000 by France. '

Yet because of the fight, Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines did not fall to communism. And as the children of the refugees remember the past, they will continue to influence America in many ways: By rewriting the history books, and by pressuring the USA to accept refugees from the wars going on at the present time.

The Gun problem is suicide, not death by cop

 CDC report on violent deaths in the USA.

Of the 66,017 deaths, the majority (58.4%) were suicides, followed by homicides (31.3%), deaths of undetermined intent (8.2%), legal intervention deaths (1.3%) (i.e., deaths caused by law enforcement and other persons with legal authority to use deadly force acting in the line of duty, excluding legal executions), and unintentional firearm deaths 

The suicide rate was highest in men over the age of 85, but more comon in males who had substance abuse or recent domestic problems. And ll the propaganda happy publicity pushing the idea the old should die when sick will make this worse.

The homicide rate was higher among young black males. And most women who were killed it was partner abuse. But the MSM prefer to point to the 1 percent of legal interventions that cause deaths because it sells newspapers and demonizes folks who just want their nieghborhood to be safe.

The ethnic groups with the highest suicide rate was AmerIndian populations, something we who worked with the IHS were aware was a problem. But many of them were hanging, not gunshot wounds.

add to this the drug overdose deaths (90 thousand a year) and the 13 thousand deaths from driving under the influence of alcohol and a lot of people driving under the influence of drugs where the statistics are not clear, what you have is a social epidemic.

Tonga volcano caused your GPS system to wobble and other science stories

it is not just solar flares that can knock out satellites etc.

 Science alert story about the eruption of the Tonga volcano in Jan 2022.

The volcanic eruption in Tonga in January 2022 was so large, it created waves in the upper atmosphere that constituted their own form of space weather. It was one of the largest explosions in modern history and impacted GPS across Australia and Southeast Asia. As we describe in our new study in the journal Space Weather, the eruption caused a super "plasma bubble" over northern Australia that lasted for hours.

the article has the technical details of superbubbles, that compare this to the designs you see when you add cold cream to your coffe.

More in this video...

No reports if the huge explosion would affect the weather (Mt Pinatubo lowered the world temperature for a year or two if I remember correctly).

Luckily the eruption only killed three people according to this report.

But there is another volcano that might cause a major disaster:...The UKGuardian has lots of photos:
...a lot depends if it just has local lava flows, or local pyroclastic flows... and of course, the dust and sulfur can cause asthma and the dust when it rains can collapse houses.

Sigh.

the problem about evacuation is that, if they evacuate and nothing happens, then the next warning will mean people will ignore the warning and stay put. Often most of the family will leave but leave one person to guard their possessions against looting, and of course the dust can kill farm animals and crops.

In the meanwhile, here in the Philippines, we are watching the typhoon that just devestated Guam that might be heading our way.

It is; very large which means the areas affected by wind and rain are larger. 

UPI says it could affect not just the Philippines but Taiwan, China, and Japan.

And it is traveling slowly, which means that the rains will last longer than if it travels quickly, and of course flooding is a major problem. It will probably only hit north of here but we are downstream from the mountains of northern Luzon so floods are a worry.

right now, we are having heavy thunderstorms every evening (the yearly monsoon rains) which is good because it means less of a need to pay for irrigation pumps to flood the fields to prepare them for rice.

But it also means the soil is saturated, so even if we only are hit by the edge of this typhoon, flooding as water runs downstream from the nothern mountains added to the monsoon rains, is a bigger danger.

Public Health initiative that saved millions of Africans

Bet you never heard about a program called PEPFAR.

Why? Because it was proposed by a Republican president. (and continued by the presidents who came after him).

But mainly because it only saved a couple of million Africans.

We probably had HIV when I was working in Zimbabwe, because we had people with Kaposi's sarcoma and people who died of what seemed to be a failure to fight ordinary infections in what should have been healthy people.

It wasn't until I had returned to the USA  in the 1980s, that they discovered that this was HIV. And for years, this slowly killed people in Africa. And even after there were medications that slowed the progress of the disease, it was simply too expensive for most people in Africa to afford.

Until President Bush decided to do something about it.

One of my friends in Zimababwe lost both her brothers, but later the wife and daughter of one of them was placed on medicine and survived. Alas, the daughter, who was in the first year of college, died with a different infection, but withouth PEPFAR she would have died as an infant.

Some criticized the program because it took resources from other programs, and the PC criticized the stress on abstinence (and polygamy rather than sharing prostitutes) as part of the program, being clueless that these were consistant with African customs.

Here is the CDC page on PEPFAR in Zimbabwe:

you have to test people, and test their contacts, and put them on treatment.

The hospital where I had worked had an outreach program, and our sisters had a clinic in Harare, until it was destroyed by Mugabe in his Operation Murambatsvina program which was explained as a way to clear out the slums, but in reality destroyed the areas that voted against him.

Right now, the international public health programs are getting a lot of hostility, much of it hysterical and political in origin. 

The coverup of the Covid origin and the initial denial of the WHO head that it could be spread person to person is part of the reason, as is the over reaction by governments to the epidemic that shut down the economy, something that will kill a lot more people than covid.

like the boy who cried wolf, the WHO has lost credibility and some see their plea (send us oodles of money ) as another power grab.

Yet it was the USA, not the WHO, who started the program to treat people with HIV in Africa. Public health is not a monolith, although groups do cooperate with each other in providing medical care.

Yet one does have to remember that this program has saved millions of ordinary Africans.

Happy Towel Day

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Family news

Ruby Graduates from college in the USA this weekend, and Joy has scheduled to fly there this weekend, and arrive the day before. The problem?
Another day, another typhoon.

It should enter the Philippine areas of responsibility Friday or Saturday, but it's not clear if it will hit us or not when it gets closer. But it could interfere with her flight.

Kuya is not attending: it is the start of the rice planting season. The irrigation water will be turned on June 1, so they can flood the fields to destroy weeds which are then plowed under using a handplow (large rototiller) or sometimes a waterbuffalo. Once this is done, the seedlings are planted by hand, but as the Philippines becomes more affluent, it is only a matter of time until we get machines to do this.

When you do this, you often analyze the soil so add the needed minerals to help the rice to grow.

So it will start being busy.

Typhoons are common here. No not global warming. El Nino or EL Nina cycle is the new way to designate the weather cycles. El Nino is named for the warm tides off of south America near the feast of the Christ child.

No, it is not a new a weather cycle but one that has occured for a long time and that can cause destruction as the Incas realized.

Another trust issue in medicine

The covid epidemic, and the over reaction to it by those in charge, has caused a lot of people to distrust the medical system.

But there is another reason that will soon be causing more distrust: No, not racism per se, but ableism: The idea that the old, the handicapped, and those who can't quite cope with life are looked down on.

From a talk by John Kelly, a spokesman for the disability group not dead yet , discussing how he has to confront the healthy minded elites who push assisted suicide but if you look more closely than the propaganda, (or watch what is starting to happen in Canada etc.) you might be more frightened: because the backstory is eugenic elimination of the unfit.

I keep thinking about Canada, where people like me – I’m a quadriplegic paralyzed below the shoulders, but I am not terminally ill – have become eligible for their so-called “aid in dying” program – and by aid in dying Canada means euthanasia 99.9% of the time.

At first, Canada legalized euthanasia/assisted suicide for people whose deaths were “reasonably foreseeable,” but then expanded eligibility. There have been documented cases of disabled people being offered euthanasia instead of services

In the US, proponents insist they only seek assisted suicide for people labelled “terminally ill,” meaning death is probable within six months, but there have already been calls to expand eligibility

the stories you hear has a cultural background and mindset of those affluent elites who claim to speak for the poor and working class of all ethnicities. 

...Ezekiel Emanuel, chair of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s medical school...noted that most of those who have used aid-in-dying laws are white, well insured and college-educated. “These are people who are used to controlling every aspect of their lives, and they want to control this aspect of their lives.”

But they seem unaware that there is a different way to look at life, especially by those who work hard and have struggles in their lives. 

And part of this is because these groups have a religious viewpoint of life: The idea that God is in charge, and this illness, or sickness, or problem is one of the struggles he has given us. It is also a knowledge, based on experience, that bad things happen, even to good people, but there is an ultimate reason for everything that happens, and that God, and family, and friends will help you in your need (remember even in the USA, which if you watch TVs and movies is full of selfish people with few family responsibiities, nevertheless has 50 million people who help family or a friend as an unpaid caregiver).

Without recognizing this cultural divide, such issues cannot be discussed clearly.

So it's voluntary, so what's the big deal? Well, because once giving out death is seen by personnel as a medical treatment, then some medical personnel will decide to give this treatment to those who don't want it.

Let me tell you a story. I was doing a temporary job at an IHS hospital on one of the Lakota reservations, when at change of shift, one of the regular docs came to the ER and asked if we could check an x ray for feeding tube placement on an older lady who was recovering from a stroke. 

The night shift ER docwas a locum from a professional group, and was a resident at a big hospital in the Eastern USA, and when he heard the request, he said blithely, well why don't you just sedate her HaHa. I was horrified, but knowing the my next door neighbor was in the AIM and would stop this fatal intervention, I stayed quiet to see what would happen.

 And to my relief, the staff doctor merely said: Oh, we don't do that type of thing here. And walked off to tell the nurses he would drive back later in the evening to check on the patients...(and later we made sure he would not be allowed to work there).

Incidents like this are why minorities often refuse to sign do not resussitate orders

and as Mr Kelly notes, it may be why the popularity of killing off the sick and handicapped are not as popular in much of America: not just among minorities but among the working class whose opinions are usually dismissed because they are "racist"and "deplorables" so are looked down upon by those in charge of the culture.

A 2013 Pew Research Center study showed that Blacks oppose assisted suicide by 65%-29%, and Latinos by 65%-32%. Majority Latino Lawrence, Massachusetts, voted 69% against the 2012 Argos question, while white working class towns like Taunton and Gardner also opposed. Wealthier Massachusetts towns voted heavily in favor.

Sigh.

That's a nice power grid you got... it''d be a shame if something bad happens to it

 Right now I am watching an ANC talk show discussing that China pretty well runs the electric grid here. They are wondering why why there has been a lot of brownouts recently. 

The franchise ends 2058 and they are discussingif the gov't can get out of the agreement because of all the brownouts recently. The alternative is to have the gov't run the electric grid, as they did in the past.

the problem? China owns a large percentage  of the franchise, the rest being owned by local businessmen

GMANEWS:

The 40 percent ownership of State Grid Corporation of China in the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) won’t pose a national security threat, the NGCP assistant corporate secretary told the Senate energy committee Wednesday.

.

Watch the whole thing. 

Wikipedia on the franchise.

and a lot of senators (May 21 2023) want Chinese investors to be removed from owning the power grid.

the power company says no threat at all, and insists that the technicians running the grid are local Filipinos.

Problem? the manuals on how to do this are written in Chinese. (other reports say no, they have been translated into English or tagalog).

And although the corporation insists that China couldn't turn off the grid remotely, reports from a few years ago said actually they could.

BBC Nov 2019

China's State Grid Corp has a 40% stake in the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) - which runs the country's lone power transmission line. It transmits electricity all the way from Luzon - the northern end of the country - down to Mindanao in the south.

On Tuesday, Senator Risa Hontiveros asked - given Chinese control of the NGCP - "Is it possible for our power grid to be taken down remotely?" ...(answer:)  "Given the technological advancement right now in the telecommunications as well as in software, that is possible," he said.

another problem: a lot of the technical manuals are written in Chinese (although this BBC article claims they have been translated).

many of the technicians back in 2015 were Chinese, but now we are assured that they have all left the country. 

what is going on right now is a lot of brownouts, so the politicians are busy blowviating that this is due to evil China. 

Except brownouts in May are normal, and may be getting worse, not beecause of evil China but because people are a lot richer than they were 20 years ago when I moved her. People are now more affluent and can buy airconditioners and the poor can afford electric fans and tvs and computers, and of course the population is growing. So there is a need for more electricity.

 And since 20 percent of our electricity is hydroelectric power, which means they can't produce as much electricity when the water level is low, such as now, the end of TagInit, the dry hot season from Feb to May,  before the monsoon starts in June.

But the backstory is that some politicians are seeing this as China sort of threatening the Philippines to stop them from helping Taiwan, and trying to intimidate the Philippines when we dare to defend our islands and fishermen in the West Philippine Sea as China becomes increasingly aggressive there.

and all of this is a minor footnote to the G7 meeting in Japan this week. 

Movie of the week

an old classic. Quick: watch it before the copyright cops find it is there.

cooking lesson for the week

Not all deaths are from fancy diseases: Malaria still kills

world Malaria Report.

how common is it? WHO reports:

Key facts In 2021, nearly half of the world's population was at risk of malaria. That year, there were an estimated 247 million cases of malaria worldwide. The estimated number of malaria deaths stood at 619 000 in 2021. The WHO African Region carries a disproportionately high share of the global malaria burden

there is a new vaccine that gives limited protection, and work is being done on controlling mosquitoes by releasing sterile mosquitoes or infecting them with a fungus that kills them.

But the older ways still work if done diligantly: draining mosquito breeding areas still work, as does spraying insecticide, insect repellant, covering up, and using mosquito nets.

that is why malaria is now rare in the Philippines.

WHO Reports:

Fifteen years ago, the Philippines reported 75 000 cases of malaria every year. No surprise, any talk back then of a Philippines free of malaria would have been thought fanciful. But now malaria has been delisted from the top ten leading causes of disease and death, and elimination of malaria is seen as a real possibility in the near future.. Indeed, the Philippines is a great example of how to successfully make progress to eliminate malaria – the subject of a new manual launched by WHO for World Malaria Day. Province by province the Philippines is being declared as malaria free and many more provinces have reached near-zero malaria cases. Overall, since 2005, malaria cases have dropped by 83% and malaria deaths by 92% in the Philippines.

 the main area where it still is endemic is the island of Palawan. The government aims to eliminate all Malaria by 2030. One wonders if spending a lot of money on covid might set back this goal, but so far that is still the plan.

 Village clinics or health workers that monitor for local breeding areas and diagnose and treat early cases can also help prevent the spread of the disease. 

 

The problem? 

There are several types of malaria, and the most virulent type, Falciparum malaria, is resistant to many antibiotics, and one of the scandals about counterfeit medicines is that they are often don't work, so people die of malaria, especially kids.

 Dr. Cambell often links to Andrew Wefwafwa's work in rural Uganda where he runs a clinic and a lot of preventive health services...Here he discusses his recent bout with malaria.

Been there, done that. albeit 30 years ago. Sigh.

weapons of the spirit

There seems to be a discussion about some guys trying to subdue a homeless man who was threatening people. A lot of people who didn't give a f//// about his welfare, and the city institutions that should have mandated jailing or treatment of the guy but didn't, are the loudest ones condemning this action.

One wonders how many of them are aware of the danger of using restraints, both physical or humans to restrain a violent person? Those who never worked with the mentally ill have no idea of how violent these people can be.

.It's sort of like a pacifist who I once had an email discussion with: Who said he would never violently harm anyone, even if he was being threatened. Fine, I said: But what if they were attacking your wife or daughter?

the terrible attacks against non violent missionaries when I worked in Africa was one reason that I stopped being a pacifist. 

there is a time of war, and a time of peace.

Yet there is an argument that using weapons of the spirit can overcome such evil because it could turn the heart of those attacking you. The problem of course is that this only works for those who have a spiritual grounding in prayer and tradgedy.

One film that I had in the USA, but didn't bring here with me (VHS different here), was Pierre Sauvage's film Weapons of the Spirit.

Alas even though this is PBS I cannot find it on line: maybe because it is being renastered for re release this year.

a short clip can be watched on Vimeo, and this is a 2 minute preview:

Although I can't find the video on line, the transcript can be found on Internet archives.

The point was the there were many individuals who risked their lives hiding the Jews, but that here it was an entire town who kept the secret, and even the Germans who were posted there to recover from wounds etc. knew what was going on but "saw nothing"...

What brought this us was a short clip from the latest Jodan Peterson discussion on the Exodus, where they discussed the dilemma of the midwives (Egyptian? Jewish?) who allowed the boys to live even though the law was to kill all male children.