Happy Birthday USA

Human rights issue that will be cancelled in one... two... three

 this is a follow up to an earlier blogpost about the use of children in the Philippines for the sex trade: Not just street kids being exploited, but the fact that the computer savvy Philippines is the world leader in cybersex.

But why do I say it will be cancelled? Because all the non PC people are trying to point it out, and hey, that means it's being pushed by evil right wing bigots, right?

Sigh.

and don't forget the interview with the (other) ragin Cajun on EWTN, who has been obliquely criticized by the big guy in rome for not following the designated propaganda that this pope is wonderful and should never be criticized.

Well, anyway, here is his interview:

Most of the countries where this is going on are helpless against the criminal gangs behind this human trafficking, and it is not something ordinary folk back (although, like here in the Philippines, the victims are seen as being exploited because they are poor, so yes, here the grass roots left is not backing the US pro sex agenda because they know that the poor are victims of the rich in this).

In the meanwhile, the US State department continues to push the gender agenda that weakens the family: the latest is Biden pushing trans genderism. Hey, our trans and baclas and tomboys are usually seen as part of the extended family so no problem. 

But the US is not pushing accepting gay people as people: because it is backed by forces that have an extreme agenda of complete acceptance of any sexual act and hatred of any restrictions or criticism: an agenda that would destroy the family, the churches and any believer who won't go along with the agenda (read how this is spun by CNN and you see how it is twisted to demonize believers). By the way: this extreme agenda is quietly opposed by many ordinary gays who just want to be left alone... so alas one of the casualties of this aggression is that the "live and let live" attitude is starting to be rejected. 

One reason for the anti gay laws in Africa is that the US/EU promoting of sexuality on various levels is seen as a way to allow exploitation of kids by gay tourism and expats working there, and a rememberance of how the problem sons often were settled in the colonies where they could indulge in sexually exploiting locals of both sexes. 

And of course, here in the Philippines, one reason that the left succeeded in closing the US bases years ago was not just nationalism but because they were behind the huge exploitation of women in nearby towns. 

How bad is the problem here? Well it even has it's own Wikipedia page. Read it and weep.

Sigh.

Musical interlude of the week

 

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the funny thing is that I suspect few who were born in the last 30 years would have been familiar with old manual typewriters. 

Ironically, with computers, the old bell and having to stop to move to the next line was no longer needed, and spell check meant you could go back and fix the mistakes a lot easier than using whiteout to fix the spelling.

I leaned to type in high school, but since I was in precollege I had to come in a hour early to take the class as an elective. Because if you knew how to type, you could always find a job.

the irony? Back then, often girls, even those with BA degrees, could not find jobs: boys with a similar degree would enter into a low level executive job, so they could work their way up into the company, but girls stayed as secretaries.

But my classmates knew how to type. So when these companies started using computers, it was these intelligent secretaries who had learned about the business in a hands on fashion and also knew how to touch type and therefore could use the machines, and with women's equality, the companies realized the women could do the work better than many of the men.  Voila, women in business.

more here in the history of typewriters.

SpaceX changing the price of space exploration and telecommunication

 while the woke are attempting to destroy STEM, and the trust in the medical system has fallen due to it's it's willingness to push propaganda, and pushing inaccurate information while censoring those who wanted to discuss problems, it is nice to see some science is still working.

Falcon 9 launches the @ESA Euclid mission on a trajectory toward the Sun-Earth Lagrange point 2 - nearly one million miles away from Earth! pic.twitter.com/Y3QRi7QbOo

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 1, 2023

So the European Space Agency has had SpaceX launch it's satellite to examine the puzzle of dark matter and dark energy..

.Euclid will observe billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years to create the largest, most accurate 3D map of the Universe, with the third dimension representing time itself. This detailed chart of the shape, position and movement of galaxies will reveal how matter is distributed across immense distances and how the expansion of the Universe has evolved over cosmic history, enabling astronomers to infer the properties of dark energy and dark matter.

 

This is about theoretical science, but not all space projects are an esoteric exploration of God's universe: 

in mid June, SpaceX launched a telecommunications satellite for Indonesia. LINK

this satellite will be in a stable orbit and allow internet communication in rural areas of that country. This seems to be similar to the internet satellite (and TV satellite) systems we used years ago when we lived in isolated area on Indian reservations.  

The satellite will occupy the orbital slot above Indonesia's eastern Papua region. It has a throughput capacity of 150 gigabytes per second and will provide internet access to 50,000 public service points, the Indonesian government said.The project is a public-private partnership between the government and Indonesian satellite service provider PT Satelit Nusantara Tiga.

StrategyPage has a short essay about this satellite launch and about how SPACEX, with it's reusable rockets, has lowered the price of launching satellites......

The less expensive SpaceX SLV launches have made it possible to put a lot more of these communications satellites in orbit over areas with little or no affordable communications services, including broadcast video as well as Internet service.

One big difference since we moved here is the availability of telecommunications: everyone has smart phones (using cellphone towers) and  all the kids are able to use the internet.

We are still on wired intenet by PLDT, but Huawei is putting up 5G towers all over the place (Kuya turned them down when they wanted to put them on our rice land) but Joy has a Huawei internet connection for her business.  So far, China  don't have a monopoly but you can see the problem if half our internet coverage is being run by China who could hack it or shut it down in case of war or just to pressure us not to complain about their stealing our resources in the West Philippine Sea. 

Back in 2006, the internet cables that go by Taiwan got cut by an earthquake . So if China decides to cut internet cables to isolate Taiwan (something they have already started to do.) this could isolate the Philippines. It could be just one more way to pressure the Philippines not to let the US/Japan/Australia/Korea use the Philippines in their fight to stop Chinese  aggression in East Asia.

(and not just internet: some local solons worry they could hack and shut down our electric grid too.).

the newer internet Starlink is going to be available in the Philippines in the near future also. Which is nice in case the infrastructure starts blowing up (from war, sabotage, earthquakes, volcanos, or typhoons)

Conspiracies: It didn't start with the Maga types

 So I was watching Neil Oliver who has a podcast on British history, and today's lecture was on the Irish potato famine.

the British elite saw the Irish as inferior, and Oliver notes that these elites felt that it didnt matter if they starved, He also notes that food was available but was exported from Ireland. He doesn't mention the economics behind this: this grain was not just to let landlords to make a profit, but was used to cheaply feed the factory workers in England who otherwise mightinsist on higher wages He also leaves out the ideas of Malthus, that giving help to poor people only encourages them to have children and so will make the problem worse, and that starvation was mother nature's way of correcting this overpopulation by inferior races.

this is not an isolated incident, and it has geopolitical implications in today's world: 

For example, as Oliver notes, the Irish civil war and IRA resulted from this action. 

and of course, one reason behind the Ukrainian Russian war is the Holdomor, when Stalin killed the Ukainians to get rid of uncooperative peasants. 

Starvation by imposing sanctions as against Iraq or to punish rebels, as in Biafira, Dafur or Ethiopia, or during wars by blocking grain imports as was done during WWI is rarely seen as a man made tragedy. 

war allows such man made famines to be overlooked: and even the much revered Churchill made the policies behind the man made Bengal famine caused by exporting grain to feed British soldiers, so food became too expensive for locals to buy.

In times of so called peace, one can see starvation from bad policies because no one dared to point out what was going on: the massive starvation from Mao's Great Leap forward happened because Mao's bad agricultural policy led to crop failure, and the Chinese party bureaucrats preferred to obey the rules than to admit it caused massive starvation. 

If imposing radical policies that destroy food because of a political agenda to make utopia sounds familiar, maybe it is sort of like the globalist policies to stop meat, cut rice production, and get rid of fossil fuel needed to farm: because all of these things produce greenhouse gasses, and are forbidden under the elite policies aiming to save the planet (and if they kill a couple million poor people, well it's not their fault...they will simply blame the deaths on global warming).

Well, anyway, I have youtube on automatic flow to the next video, and voila:

Youtube automatically followed Oliver's videos with this video:

Yes, that's Bill Moyers in 2014.... when it was liberals who warned us about big business/government and bureaucratic tyranny that would limit our freedom. 

and a lot of what they are saying is echoing what Trump was saying about the deep state.

The irony is that Trump is portrayed as a rabid right winger. He is not. But neither is he a Country club republican: he is a Kennedy Democrat. And his hands-on working in NYC with unions workers etc. mean he knows the blue collar/union and working class Yanks who usually vote Democratic and who are now his biggest backers.

To understand working class Amerian culture, you have to realize that many of us remember why we or our ancestors moved to America: some to escape war or starvation, others to escape tyranny, or get religious freedom, but still others because the country of origin is an oligarchy where ordinary folk can't get ahead and become prosperous.

that is why so many of the immigrants, both legal and without proper papers, who moved to America because they are uncooperative might not become willing low wage slaves for the country club elites but add their voices to those who the elite call deplorables.

Noodles (and sphaghetti) in Space

 AnnAlthouse has a link to an article about scientists discovering gravity waves, which is apparantly a big thing.

But what caught my attention is this part of the WaPost article (behind paywall) that ends with this comment:

[T]he newly announced waves are not one-shot wonders, and theorists are noodling the many potential explanations for why the cosmic sea ripples in such a fashion....

italics mine.

Noodling?

In Oklahoma, that word means the practice of digging into the mud with your bare hands to catch a catfish.

or does it refer to noodles? 

Or is it because the word noodle resembles the word google (the oo sound is similar in both words) and googling meaning to search on the internet for something

So I did google the word

That apparantly is a new word, because the Cambridge dictionary defines it as: 

to do or think about something without giving it full or serious attention:

wordnik adds these definitions:

Noun: The practice and sport of noodling (fishing for catfish using the bare hands).

 

Noun:Musical improvisation.

 This isn't the first time I ran into a food word used as a scientific description: In an earlier blogpost I did note the use of the word Spaghettification, which means a stretching an object into long noodles as it gets sucked into a black hole.

well, anyway, here is a video explaining why discovering gravity waves is so important. 

and one irony about this is that it was found partly thanks to the now destroyed Arecibo radiotelescope. 

Why destroyed? It collapsed in 2020 Because no one apparently was doing proper inspections of the supporting cables

The UKGuardian noted:

a socket holding the auxiliary cable that snapped failed in what experts believe could be a manufacturing error.

italics mine. Bought from the lowest bidder?

or was maintanance the problem? Steel corrosion is a problem in a damp environment where hurricanes happen all the time. 

The National Science Foundation, which owns the observatory that is managed by the University of Central Florida, said crews who evaluated the structure after the first incident determined that the remaining cables could handle the additional weight. But on 6 November another cable broke.

and after two of them snapped, they took their time to fix it, so the whole thing collapsed. DUH.

a Nature article from 2015 notes that the lack of funding was a major problem for the telescope even then. 

The article ends with a quote about seeking outside funding from private donations (instead of the NSF) and in view of what happened is ironic: 

Efforts to find an outside donor have been ongoing for some time, to no avail, Nolan says. Users can be expected to pay for telescope time, but “someone has to pay for the base operations — keeping the grass cut, keeping the big steel structure from falling out of the sky,” he says. “And that’s the part everyone’s finding too expensive.”

italics mine. 

or as the saying goes 

 For want of a nail socket the shoe cable was lost. For want of a shoe cable the horse telescope was lost. 

and the loss of an expensive telescope points to a larger problem:

Regular cable inspiection is an important  issue for bridges that are not being inspected and repaired.

According to the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, there are 171.5 million crossings per day on over 45,000 structurally deficient U.S. bridges—a significant number of which have bridge cable corrosion issues.

italics mine.....some back story here and here.

 

Rescuing girls: we haz that

like all poor countries, in the Philippines, street children of both sexes are frequently abused by sex tourists. 

But the modern world has a new variation of the problem: cybersex.

and the Philippines is the world leader in cybersex.

This article in AsiaNews is about some local Sisters who rescue these girls

The Philippines, like the rest of Southeast Asia, ranks high in terms of sexual exploitation of women and girls; its extreme poverty helps the most vulnerable fall victim to trafficking, particularly in rural areas.

According to Sister Corazon, poverty and neglect drive young women, teenage girls, and children, some as young as eight, into the sex trade, where they are exploited and in some cases even killed. The Sisters use a two-pronged approach. First, they try to free the girls from slavery; this is followed by the attempt to provide them with an education and training so that they can reintegrate society through employment which allows them to live in dignity.

Seen as “angels of mercy”, the Sisters walk at night in the dark alleys of red-light areas looking for girls in need. “We rescue girls and victims of sex trafficking who are into prostitution,” Sister Corazon explains. “Minors wait for customers for a tiny payment to help supplement their family's subsistence,” she adds.

of course, they are not the only organization doing this: the Catholics have a long history of helping the poor and rescuing street kids, but many evanglical church organizations and secular groups do this also.

the problem is poverty.

So excuse me if I get sarcastic at people insisting get rid of fossil fuels (which will make people poorer) and eco theology instead of fighting poverty? Because here it is headline news if the price of LPG or diesel goes up one peso: because it means it is more expensive to travel to work, to cook one's food, and for those of us who are farmers, more expensive to grow food (diesel for farm machinery, shipping organic fertilizer from the source, or making it from natural gas,  drying, packing and shipping rice all require fossil fuel.)

which is why I get so frustrated with the self righteous SJW, the Catholic ecobishops and this pope: They promote an agenda that will kill people in the name of saving people 50 years from now, maybe. And they ignore corruption that is behind a lot of the poverty.

So what can one do?

 One, personal help for these children. Check your church first, or google for other charities working with street kids or the rural poor.

 two: Promoting living a life serving God, because corruption is one of the major reasons behind poverty here. Again, churches are traditionally the way to do this.

Three: promoting industry, and efficiency in farming, and education to get a decent job.

Poverty is the problem.

My (adopted) son told me a story of their birth mom stealing a fighting cock from a local big shot to feed her kids. They explained: mom, sometimes you just need to eat meat. 

And hungry children are vulnerable to be tempted to steal, to take and sell drugs, and of course, to be exploited for sex. And alas sometimes their pimp is a relative.

Sigh.

Of course, this is a world wide problem.

A film about sex trafficking of children is due to be released over the weekend in the USA:

>>

musical interlude of the week

a high school band from Japan.

Fansite:

“The Kyoto Tachibana Brass Band, which is full of energy, full of smiles, and full of dreams, is like a vitamin to modern society, where people tend to feel depressed. The attitude of trying hard gives hope and courage to those who see it. When you’re feeling down, watch Kyoto Tachibana’s performance and get an orange energy injection.” – Marching Navi, June 20, 2022

Family news

 Joy is returning back from her visit to the USA tomorrow morning.

She visited relatives in Texas and said: you know, Auntie, it is much hotter in Texas than in the Philippines. I laughed. (I never lived in Tx but lived in Oklahoma and New Mexico and it is hot in those places too).

Right now, it is not that hot, becaues of the monsoon rain/thunderstorms every late afternoon. Lots of asthma problems though so I tend to stay indoors with the Aircon running on dehumidify, and that also has a hepafilter to screen out pollution from the nearby street.

The news is crazy: lots of folks who traditionally hate war are cheering on the Ukraine war, while the Republican types who usually fight the war are saying WTF.

My take: not stopping Putin will send a message to China that it's okay to take over Taiwan and the west Philippine sea.

in the meanwhile, Pope Francis continues to try to destroy the Catholic church wity synodality nonsense and stressing a pansexual agenda, a  NWO government, and ecotheology... I guess he doesn't believe in Grescham's law: Bad money drives out good money.

but anyway the world is going to hell, but you know it isn't worse than the past,  when nuclear war, racism (the real type) was legal, and we had to live what is called minimalism and touted as the new way for affluent yuppies to feel superior to the rest of us, especially people who actually have kids and are trying to make ends meet...

Mercenaries as wild card

Right now there are confusing stories about the Wagner group turning against the Russian military.

 

BBC stories LINK LINK2 and a lot of people are following it on Twitter.

A lot of the civilian atrocities in the Ukraine are blamed on the Wagner group. I have no idea how much is true because the propaganda from that war is so confusing.

However, the Wagner group has worked as mercenaries in Africa, and were suspected to be responsible for atrocities there.

AlJ article from April 2022:

When abuses were reported in recent weeks in Mali – fake graves designed to discredit French forces; a massacre of some 300 people, mostly civilians – all evidence pointed to the shadowy mercenaries of Russia’s Wagner Group. 

 Even before these feared professional soldiers joined the assault on Ukraine, Russia had deployed them to under-the-radar military operations across at least half a dozen African countries. Their aim: to further President Vladimir Putin’s global ambitions, and to undermine democracy.

 Analysts estimate Wagner operates with only a few hundred to 2,000 mercenaries in a country. Many are ex-Russian military intelligence, Siegle said, but because it is a private force the Kremlin can deny responsibility for Wagner’s actions. The real price is paid by ordinary people.

 the Wagner Group has been active in the Sudan and is suspected to be meddling in the military coup there, but without neutral observers on the ground it is hard to verify this.LINK LINK2

a 

lots of folk in the west are aghast at claims of CIA interference in foreign countries, but they ignore that there are other folks doing this too.

sigh

This is cross posted from my Africa Blog.

Stories in the background

 Strategy Page has two stories about GPS. One is about jamming it by Israel and Russia, 

it's about stopping those missiles, and mentions other systems that by pass GPS.

and this essay is about a new system that will bypass the satellites.

or you could use the old fashioned ways: with maps

 

or with sextants:

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the anti vax nut Robert Kennedy is running for president. But if you want to hear his opinions, fugetaboutit because Youtube has removed the video of his interview with Jordan Peterson. However it can be found on Rumble, if you can stand actually going to that controversial site.

cue Joe Rogan.

And the pro vax scientist laments he is having his feelings hurt by these influential folks.

What I worry is that, like the lies about the Dengue vaccine here, that the lies about the covid vaccine will lead to a distrust of all vaccines, and lead to people dying of diseases like measles, whooping cough, tetanus, etc...even though these vaccines have been around for decades and have saved millions of lives. 

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In the meanwhile, I might get into trouble because I tweeted this report about the newest Covid vaccine to a local newspaper pushing folks to get the newest vaccine:

Among adults aged ≥18 years without immunocompromising conditions, bivalent booster vaccine effectiveness (VE) against COVID-19–associated hospitalization declined from 62% at 7–59 days postvaccination to 24% at 120–179 days compared with VE among unvaccinated adults. Among immunocompromised adults, lower bivalent booster VE was observed.

translation: it seemed to lower the death ratefor two months (!): (italics mine).

In time-stratified analyses comparing mortality rates among unvaccinated persons with those among vaccinated persons 2 weeks–2 months after receipt of a bivalent booster dose, mortality RRs significantly declined from 16.3 during the BA.5-predominant period to 8.4 during the XBB.1.5-predominant period, representing a modest reduction in crude vaccine effectiveness

so give it to grandmom, not your two year old kid. 

I should note: Someone needs to teach these folks to write clearly.

and not answered: Will repeated shots increase the rate of spike protein induced auto immune problems? LINK Immunology 2022 article wondered about this. 

and this article (Vaccines Basel) wonders if this mechanism means more vaccine shots increase your vulnerability to covid. 

and this 2022 article (Cureus) noted that the myocarditis in young men was increased after the second dose. but as this Korean study (Jan 2023 Eur heart journal) shows, it remains rare with 1.35 per 100 thousand, but much higher (5 in 100thousand)  in young men. 

the original covid virus, which killed mainly the eldelry but also killed the middle aged and young (several local businessmen died of it, and one of our friends' pregnant daughter and her baby died of covid: She refused the vaccine because of pregnancy.) 

But now, with the omicron varient, covid pneumonia deaths  which had a typical x ray. are rare,

Most of the deaths are with covid (of bacterial pneumonia, simlar to deaths with influenza), not from the virus causing pneumonia.

The problem is was not pushing the use of covid vaccines early in the epidemic. That was justified.

The problem was censoring alternative opinions, prolonging the lockdown, etc. And now the problem is continuing to promote their use on low risk people after omicron varient took over.

Dr Malone discusses (banned video).

His criticisms are a bit over the top, so he was banned, but the Streisand effect kicked in and the banning made his discussion with Joe Rogan pretty well explode the monopoly of the gatekeeprs. And not just to the anti vax types:

Joe Rogan Savagely Bullies Scientist By Inviting Him On Podcast To Explain His Position https://t.co/UMEtNaKS5o pic.twitter.com/K1bSQHoio6

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) June 20, 2023

 A lot of us got upset when doctors trying to give possible helpful medicines were threatened by losing their licenses... the problem was trying to give anti virals and medicines with few side effects like Ivermectin was now taboo despite contradicting studies  link link link

people who face a serious disease will often succumb to quack medicine of course. or sometimes just find a way to buy the medicines because they know that they could die wanting for the FDA to approve the medicine. Dallas buyers club anyone?

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the British scandal of party gate has MPH Dr Campbell and historian Neil Oliver angry. Apparantly the VIPs in the UK partied at a time when lockdowns prevented people visiting their loved one, etc.

Sort of like when BLM protests were okay but attending church or school was not.

Sigh.

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then we come to the censorship wars over controversial (banned in Europe) treatment of under age trans folk.

the MSM uses the trans vocabulary (gender affirming treatment, don't say gay) to push the agenda. 

Before if you posted anti trans stuff, (including medical studies that question the agenda) you were kicked off of twitter, facebook, youtube, blogger etc.

But now Elon is fighting back. But has he gone too far?

twitter will now stop you from using the newfangled word cis and cis gender because it is being used in a racist way to ridicule normal people. (In English cis suggests the word Sissy).

sorry: the term should not be banned. It should be criticized and ridiculed.

Like the term "white people", a racist term I first heard bandied about by NPR it is merely a term used by SJW to bully people.

I had to look it up, but it makes sense: in history one reads about Cisalpine Gall, and I always thought they used cis to imply bad white people (the Romans disliked the blond Celts aka Gauls because they once looted Rome).

 but of course in today's world, even the term normality is being banned.

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Rice: GM, organic, hybrid, or all of the above?

 we grow organic rice, and usually use hybrids from the local Philippine rice research institute.

I am old enough to remember the Population bomb, the book by Paul Ehrlich that insisted the world was going to see mass starvation in the 1970s.

The reason we didn't have the mass starvation that Paul Ehrlich predicted  is that an unsung scientists who developed hybrid grain that had increased yields.

these things were controversial: They required fertilizer and herbicides. High prices made some small farmers go bankrupt.And of course a lot of NGOs opposed the introduction because it meant changing the way traditional farmers worked, destroyed local culture, and the new seeds that had to be bought from big agri businesses displaced native seeds that although had smaller yields, did have biodiversity

Of course, one can do both things: Pay small famers to grow their heirloom varieties, while having larger, mechanized farms produce large crops to feed the many mouths in the large cities. 

This is actually being done of course, but the loud voices of the green idiots have replaced the realistic types who see the subtleties of things like: yes, this fancy way of growing crops causes problems, but the alternative is mass starvation.

But Agribusiness isn't the only one pushing green hybrids requiring fertilizer etc. to feed a growing population: China is also big on this, maybe because China has a long history of famines and one reason that people put up with a government that bosses you around is that the government also helps you from starving to death. So irrigation and dams (both of which are anathema to green extremists) have a 3000 year history in that country.

So what about the next step in feeding people? Big Agribusiness and China both agree: GM crops that don't need huge amounts of toxic chemicals but have high yields.

From Science Daily: 

Researchers have used the genome-editing tool CRISPR-Cas to create disease resistant rice plants, according to a new study. Small-scale field trials in China show that the newly created rice variety exhibited both high yields and resistance to the fungus that causes a serious disease called rice blast.

Guotian identified one with dark patches on its leaves... "He found that the strain was also resistant to bacterial infection, but it was extremely small and low yielding," ...He used CRISPR-Cas9 to isolate the gene related to the mutation and used genome editing to recreate that resistance trait, eventually identifying a line that had good yield and was resistant to three different pathogens, including the fungus that causes rice blast.

This will be the next green revolution: using crispr instead of slowly cross hybriding seeds. Of course this means the seeds will be sold by big agri companies to make a profit, (bad?) but it also means farmers won't lose crops to disease or insects and they will save on the price of toxic chemicals to stop these pests.

and in the meanwhile, we organic farmers will keep growing old fashioned crops for the growing middle class to eat

I repeat: I see no problem with this: after all a lot of American food is GM food. Hystrical types cry cancer, but hey, better cancer at age 60 than dying of malnutrition related diseases at age 10 or from TB at age 30.

and as I noted: We grow organic food, which is encouraged by our government here in the Philippines. Of course, the price is a bit high  but cheap non organic rice can be imported (as it has for 100 years or more) to feed the poor, while local farmers produce luxury goods to sell overseas for a profit. (in the past, this meant sugar, bananas, etc. but now we are looking into exporting our gourmet brown organic rice to more affluent countries).

But isn't this destroying the culture of our villages? Yes, alas. But the dirty little secret is that this is happening anyway. We had land reform a generation ago, and so the farmers could afford to educate their kids. The kids then got jobs either in the cities or overseas (ten percent of working age Filipinos work overseas or in the shipping industry). So the elderly parents want to sell their land because the kids simply don't want to work that hard to live in poverty. these plots are bought by the affluent in Manila as second houses, or by returning OFW as an investment, so they can hire tenant farmers to do the work. 

So over the last 20 years we have seen traditional farming by waterbuffalo and harvesting by hand being replaced with farm machinery, and often we have to import people to farm the land from poorer areas like the Visayas.

If I am ambivalent about the ecology movement, I am horrified at how some of the eco crazies are destroying farm output in the name of global warming.

the controvery resembles the luddites, who opposed the industrial revolution. Small weavers were displaced and the result was the terrible pollution of the textile mills, the demand for cheap cotten led to the slave trade and major economic problems in India, but on the other hand, the result was cheap cloth and women were freed from the task of spinning and weaving cloth.

Technology results in both good and bad things.

When it comes to rice, we are hearing rumbles from the green zealots at the WEF who think that rice paddies are producing global warming so should be eliminated.

(rice paddies drown the weeds, which rot and produce methane. Newer methods of limiting flooding produces much less methane, but produces another greenhouse gas, NO, which is even worse for global warming. The war in the Ukraine has resulted in the prices of fertilizer skyrocketing, which means our cheap organic fertilizer is in demand so that price has gone up also.

We worry that we won't be able to keep farming our organic crops due to the increased cost of fertilizer, farm machinery and diesel. So should we switch to non organic rice and make a decent profit, or risk bankrupcy, or having to sell some of our land to keep going?

And why do the WEF and the green idiots back shutting down rice that feeds people? flooding to kill weeds the natural way causes methane. We have already switched to limited flooding of our rice paddies, but this means more money to buy herbicides and more mechanical weeding. So they say replace rice with other foods. Fine. We are medium sized farmers, so could do this, but the small independent farmers cannot. 

and the ghost lurking behind the discussion: How green policies caused economic collapse in SriLanka.

These policies are still being pushed by the same green idiots who are destroying Farms in Europe and Ireland 

Taking lessons from Kafka

 Conservative treehouse dissects the spin on Trumpieboy, and it looks like a full court press to find a crime, not an honest request.

first he notes how the media is spinning the narrative, but not telling you where they got that information.

One of the ways you can immediately detect federal Lawfare deployment is to look at how media articles are written when they outline court filings without direct citation for review. ....

Notice both national publications talk about a DOJ court filing, presumably made under seal, that limits President Trump’s defense access to materials and documents used in the case against him. 

under seal means not public information. So how did the reporters get this information? An illegal leak? Or a leak to manipulate public opinion?

 That media context is a BIG red flag indicating the need to ‘create a narrative’ is more important than the actual substance of the evidence material underpinning it.

Because knowing General Milley wanted to invade Iran, something that Trump opposed (which is why he kept the memo: to show how the DOD was working against his policies)? Or was it because Trump stopped a possible nuclear war by North Korea by befriending that lonely guy, instead of provoking nuclear war? One missing document is the letter where President Obama warned him about NKorea planning to use nukes, and other missing items listed are the personal letters to Trump who befriended the NK President....(CTH posts source of this last item.) Hence, the leaks claim he was hiding nuclear secrets.

now let's get into conspiracy theories:

The DOJ wants to limit public knowledge of the material evidence, not because it would harm national security – but rather because the nature of the evidence itself would highlight to the nation how fraudulent the targeting is. This is the guaranteed DOJ motive, that’s why everything is under seal and even the media will not talk about how they are gaining their leak knowledge. This is LAWFARE narrative engineering at its apex deployment.

Sigh. 

Isn't leaking information a crime? 

Yes and no:

Daniel Ellsburg's leaks showed the lies about VietNam by the DOD. And despite the press silence about the Hue massacres and the horrors committd by the communist regime after the US left that war, he is considered a hero. 

However, Kathleen Kane's leaks to the press about corruption in certain Philadelphia politicians ended up with her going to jail, but the crooked politicans stayed in place.

It is hard to argue that Trumpieboy being a packrat is the same as trying to leak or sell information to designated US enemies, or even that it endangered anyone. 

Despite those photos of boxes, the actual documents cited were only a few dozen, and one suspects few had anything to do with present day US policies.

the dirty little secret is that there is no logical reason to make a lot of documents classified: and this is especially true if those items were a couple years old.

So cui bono? 

 is this part of a pattern of hiding government interference in the Trump administration and the last two elections?

if people don't think their votes count, does it mean they will just stay home and keep quiet?

there are a lot of implications about this prosecution: Because if they can destroy Trumpieboy on this minor charge, it means that no whistleblower is safe.

Sigh. 

so why did I cite Kafka?

Kafka's work is characterized by nightmarish settings in which characters are crushed by nonsensical, blind authority. Thus, the word Kafkaesque is often applied to bizarre and impersonal administrative situations where the individual feels powerless to understand or control what is happening.

Daniel Ellsburg call your office: 

new book to read

Right now I am listening to this on Scribd. this is an excerpt on youtube.

The medical part is accurate, alas but if you have a weak stomach don't read about the difficult childbirth scenes. And I thought that the syndrome was Wardenburg syndrome, but it's a congenital neurofibromatosis 2 syndrome causing an acoustic neuroma...something I read about in medical school but never saw a case.

Sigh

What's that noise? Agggh Lato Lato

Lato Lato has taken over the Philippines.

the secretary's kids (they live in our business compound) are playing this all the time.

and no, that cartoon is not an exaggeration:

On a lighter note, lato-lato craze continues—even in Albay!

Was doing a live report yesterday regarding the Mayon eruption when kids nearby played with their lato-lato! Can be heard in the background.

It’s everywhere! pic.twitter.com/Vi39bHOrLC

— Neil Arwin Mercado (@NAMercadoINQ) June 16, 2023

Behold the power of beer

....

 from Phys.org

It was a "bartender thing" in the city to take a few peanuts and pop them into beers, Pereira said."

Because the peanuts are denser than the beer, they first sink down to the bottom of the glass.

Then each peanut becomes what is called a "nucleation site". Hundreds of tiny bubbles of carbon dioxide form on their surface, acting as buoys to drag them upwards.

When the bubbles reach the surface, they burst.. The peanuts then dive down before being propelled up again by freshly formed bubbles,

more technical details at the link. 

the scientists now plan to study how this varies with peanuts of different shapes and with different beers.

By the way, this is not the first time Scientific discoveries were made by observing beer bubbles:

Don Glaser ...won the 1960 Nobel Prize for Physics for his invention of the bubble chamber at Berkeley Lab. He discusses how, inspired by bubbles in a glass of beer, he invented the bubble chamber and detected cosmic-ray muons.

experts who covered up covid origin will never be punished.

More and more articles are coming out that the covid epidemic was a lab leak, and that the virus was caused by gain of function research, funded by Fauci (because President Obama stopped this dangerous research in the USA) and yes it may have been part of Chinese bioweapon research (luckily they didn't accidentally leak a more virulent version).

shellenberger Twitter thread

Max Taibbi Racket news article

Public news at substack written by MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER, MATT TAIBBI, AND ALEX GUTENTAG

read the entire article and weep. Because this was all highly suspected for years, but the experts pushed back to stop these rumors. And major MSM and medical journals went along with the ruse to the point of punishing those who promoted these theories. But the Racket article ends hopefully saying that the MSM still has some honest reporters so maybe we will find the truth.

One reason that this story is appearing now: First of all, because Elon Musk allowed an investigation on censorship on Twitter.

Second, this article in the very liberal UK Times (behind paywall) LINK

this goes beyond China lying about it (heck, China lies all the time). It is about lies by experts in the USA who silence voices who dared to point fingers and say it needed to be investigated. And it is about major medical journals who went along with the propaganda.

For example, ecohealth funded the Wuhan lab research, but no one blinked when the head of ecohealth got a bunch of scientists to write a letter to Lancet to deny it was a lab leak very early in 2020.

and as the evidence continued to leak out, the slowness of the MSM continued.

For example, this article in May 2021 in the WAPOST admits it could be a lab leak, and hey maybe someone should look into it.

so why didn't they? The article essentially say the reason it wasn't looked into by their intrepid reporters is because those trying to publicize the theory were Republicans. They even blame Trump because when he hinted this might have been the case,  " The Trump administration’s messaging was often accompanied by anti-Chinese rhetoric that made it easier for skeptics to ignore its claims."

by the way: the anti Chinese rhetoric was because he called it the Chinese virus, and because he stopped travelers from arriving from China at a time when the W.H.O. said it wasn't infectious and that one shouldn't stop travelers. That is why Nancy Pelosi encouraged Chinese new year celebrations that probably spread the virus (and the BLM demonstrations were allowed because they didn't spread the virus either)

OF course by then it was too late: already it was spreading in Italy (and spread to NYC) and was making people sick in Seattle etc.

But it points out another way the anti Trump obsession resulted in news stories that were not just inaccurate, but resulted in people dying because no one dared to question the experts (and those who dared were ignored).

And guess who was the first to point out the lab leak as the source: according to that WAPO article:

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) from the start pointed to the lab’s location in Wuhan, pressing China for answers, so the history books will reward him if he turns out to be right.

Yup. what the article doesn't point out: He is a practicing physician, but of course he was a Republican from Oklahoma so could be ignored.

So those behind this propaganda (that slowed the original shutdown at a time that might have saved lives) are the same ones who later proposed over the top lockdowns that were not needed, and vaccines to children who were not at risk.

and don't forget those who placed infectious covid patients into nursing homes.

 Governor Cuomo sometimes is condemned for this since he allowed it, but of course he was following advice from experts. And of course, we need to blame those experts who followed out of date Medicare rules to do this because the Medicare rules insiste that well trained staff (/s) in (understaffed) nursing homes could keep people safe. But will anyone  blame those who wrote those rules? Of course not.Nor will those experts who told governors this practice was safe be punished.

 Indeed,  Dr. Levine, who approved of this in Pennsylvania has actually denied reality and defending her actions, and denied that placing infected people into nursing homes caused deaths because as Newsweek points out she didn't do it (she merely ordered them to do it, but never mind).

(although) Levine serve(d) as the Pennsylvania secretary of health and was active in that position when the state's health department issued the guidance to nursing home facilities saying they can accept patients from hospitals and patients who formerly had COVID-19, that (fact) does not prove she placed coronavirus-positive patients in nursing homes or contributed to thousands of elderly deaths in the state.

so Levine was rewarded with a high government job, because hey, he is a she and can't criticize a trans person for incompetence or you will be called a bigot.

so why is it important to bring all these things up?

Because those who lied should not be left in power to lie again. 

and because of the "boy who cried wolf" problem: When a real epidemic starts, no one will believe them.

We saw this in the Philippines, when children died from an experimental Dengue vaccine, so some parents didn't trust vaccines that had been around for decades: They refused to get their kids vaccinated against routine childhood illnesses, so kids got measles, diphtheria, etc. and some of them died.

so now that some  of the problems the establishment covered up (such as the side effects of the vaccines) are being revealed, the conspiracy theorists are being believed by some, often in an exaggerated form.

But what is worse, is that the establishment types who were behind the coverup are being rewarded:

and very real questions on risky research are not being asked by those who should be discussing the risk/benefit problems.

according to Nature

NIH reinstates grant for controversial coronavirus research

EcoHealth Alliance lost funding during the Trump administration, but can now proceed with its research — under extensive restrictions.

yup. But did EcoHealth learn their lessons? Who will be inspecting these facilities? And why are only those evil Republicans  trying to stop them when distrust of Big Pharma is a traditional liberal position?

By the way: EcoHealth got a grant to put one of these labs into the Philippines...it's aim?

 REDUCING THE THREAT OF VIRAL SPILLOVER FROM WILDLIFE IN THE PHILIPPINES

and some here are not pleased. Inquirer editorial Feb 2023 insists that this needs to be looked into:

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency is a combat support agency within the United States Department of Defense (DoD) doing work on weapons of mass destruction, chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and high explosives. Isn’t this funding suspicious? This role of civilian and agricultural cooperation rests with the US Department of Agriculture, not with agencies within the US DoD, clearly. Will the DFA and DND ask US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin during his visit to clarify the US position?

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

update: UKGuardian opinion article on the UK investigation of the Covid response, and the complexity of deciding what to do

But it’s vital that the inquiry separates out what were scientific questions, that independent advisers and academics could provide data and input on, and what were leadership decisions. Policy measures such as closing gyms or schools or play parks, or the introduction of mandatory face coverings, were conveyed as “scientific” decisions, but they weren’t. Scientists could present the probable risks and benefits of certain policy options, but the final decision didn’t lie with them.

Trivia of the day: Tassels

Father Z has a post commenting on tassels. 

During my recent Roman Sojourn I was shown at the parish some beautiful sets of tassels for dalmatics. Traditionally, the deacon(s) and subdeacon wear tassels on their dalmatics that descend from their shoulders and hang down their backs.

 Tell you the truth, I had to look up dalmatics. (example the choir robe or the loose coat worn by deacons and by many pastors when they preach. It has sleeves, unlike the chasuble, the poncho like garment worn by priests at Catholic masses.).

Why do priests were fancy garments? That custom dates to antiquity, and is partly to distinguish what you are doing (worship) from everyday tasks.

 The Vatican mentions the official vestments warn for church descend from Greco Roman liturgical garments but the reason for the priest to wear them is not just to honor God but so that essentially his personal identity is hidden: because the mass is about worshipping God, not the personality of the one saying the mass.

Which is why a sinful priest's mass is still valid. As a doc, I understand this: I might be a lousy person, but in treating a patient I am first and formost a doctor, an instrument of healing, not a magical shaman healer who uses their personal magic power to heal. So the treatment (e.g.penicillin or surgery) works despite my beauty or lack thereof or personality.

And yes, we have a uniform: A white coat with stethoscope draped around our neck, altough lots of other people use a similar uniform.

When it comes to fancy churches and liturgical garments, I am tempted to say: Sell them and give the money to the poor, said Judas, and Christ admonished Judas when he said this, maybe realizing that much of that money for the poor was being diverted into the pockets of the do gooders, whereas investing in public beauty will inspire people for generations.

if you get rid of beauty, the world becomes impoverished spiritually on many levels, and the poor you always have with you. See Roger Scuton's BBC program about the need for beauty in the public space.

and yes I know: Jesus also corrected those who spent money for decoration and fancy garments to pretnd they were pious.

We need both beauty and altruism. I tend to be palagian, i.e. stressing good deeds, but I live with a bunch of artists, who do nothing "useful" but make the world  better by spreading beauty.

and of course the Lord God agrees with Father Z that garnents used in formal liturgies were important. And so he instructed the garments to include tassels.

from Wikipedia:

In the Hebrew Bible, the Lord spoke to Moses instructing him to tell the Israelites to make tassels (Hebrew tzitzit) on the corners of their garments, to help them to remember all the commandments of the Lord and to keep them (Numbers 15:37-40), and as a sign of holiness.

The religious Hebrew tassel, however, bears little resemblance to the decorative one which appeared and eventually became popular in Europe, especially France and Spain.

 Wikipedia article on Tzitzit.

Tassels of course are pure decoration. Do they serve a purpose? I suspect like fringes on garments they started as a way to stop ropes from unraveling, and then got fancy.

But tassels for decoration are ancient.

the Warka Vase (3000 BC) from ancient Uruk shows tassles for example.

Warka (Uruk) Vase, Uruk, Late Uruk period, c. 3500-3000 B.C.E., 105 cm high (National Museum of Iraq)

and let's not forget China. 

Chinese tassels are often lumped together with Chinese knots. 

Some of the earliest evidence of knotting have been preserved on bronze vessels of the Warring States period (481–221 BC), Buddhist carvings of the Northern dynasties period (317–581) and on silk paintings during the Western Han period (206 BC–9 CE).

and photos of PreColombian textiles show similar tassels link2

there are all sorts of videos about tassel lore, both ancient and modern.

tassels on those graduation caps?

.......Tassels in Islamic dress:

................tassels on Chinese swords

.........Tassels on loafers (shoe) (at 4:50)..

...........Norigae......if you watch K dramas, this is often given to the heroine as a gift....

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

Musical Interlude of the day

 

Yellow fever and mockery

Many years ago, when I visited relatives in Augusta GA, my uncle pointed out a statue of the Madonna in a garden next to a mansion. 

At that time Georgia was virulently Anti Catholic, and he was amazed to see this obviously Catholic statue there. Then he found out the reason: during the civil war the mansion was a hospital for the sick and wounded, and some Catholic nuns were among the nurses. And the nuns put a statue of Mary in the garden, so they could take a few minutes to relax and pray.After the war, they left, but the locals left the statue in it's place as a reminder of their deeds.

Nuns nursing in wars (5000 in the Civil War) and epidemics, or just founding hospitals in the middle of nowhere is nothing new. 

What is new is that their sacrifices and work has been ignored or written out of history, while it is de rigueur to ridicule them: we even are seeing a major league baseball team lauding those who ridicule these sisters with little outcry.

the ridicule is just another version of trendy AntiCatholicism, of course. 

But although their ridicule is aimed at Catholic sisters, it also is ridicule of non Catholic sisterhoods, such as the Anglican orders and Deaconesses.

What brought me to post about this was an article in the Anglican site Virtue on line, which mentions that the Anglican orders are facing the same problems of loss of members as their Catholic counterparts.

But then I ran across this paragraph:

In 1878, five CSM Sisters responded to the yellow fever epidemic in Memphis, Tennessee. Four of the Sisters and two Episcopal priests got the dreaded mosquito-borne disease and died. They were: Sr. Constance, Sr. Thecla, Sr. Ruth, Sr. Frances, Fr. Louis Schuyler and Fr. Charles Parsons.

They are now considered the Martyrs of Memphis and their commemoration was added to the Episcopal Church's Lesser Feasts and Fasts in 1981. Their feast day is celebrated on September 9.

so at least the Episcopal church remembers their sacrifice.

But of course, they were not the only ones who fought that epidemic that killed over 5000 people: This site (historic Memphis) remembers the numerous doctors, nurses and others who helped nurse the sick

and this film gives an overview of the epidemic but while lauding the work of the heroic doctors, barely discusses the sisters and others, including the local black nurses, who died because they stayed to nurse the sick.

,

https://historic-memphis.com/memphis-historic/yellow-fever/fever-5_small.jpg

MacnamarasBlog notes:

Between 1873 and 1879, nearly eight thousand people died during Memphis’s Yellow Fever epidemics. While ministering to the sick, some thirty-four physicians lost their lives, along with twenty-four police officers and twenty-four firefighters, two dozen Catholic priests, and fifty women religious. In Memphis’s Calvary Cemetery there stands a monument to the priests, but none to the Sisters.

Italics mine.

Sigh

As Ms Mueller writes: 

The world has turned its back on the Sisters of St. Mary and many other faithful and prayerful Sisters-in-the-Veil -- Catholic, Episcopal or Anglican -- yet embrace the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence as the Los Angeles Dodgers prepare to bend their collective knee to the rainbow-colored Pride altar.

Shame.

''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

Update: A history of New Orleans yellow fever epidemic is portrayed at the end of the film about Mother Henriette, whose sisters nursed in the Yellow fever epidemics of 1853