May 16, 2021

 

I have the solution to the Israeli Palestinian problem.  Blow up the Knesset. Ha.

I get infuriated when I hear Netanyahu talk about beating the hell out of the Palestinians in the name of law and order. He, the Israelis, have been ignoring international law for years now and continue to build more apartments in the West Bank, against international law…. It just continues.

   Now Netanyahu blames the obliteration of Gaza on the rockets coming from Hamas. As I see it, the provocation was the other way round, when the Israeli settlers were evicting Palestinians what had legal title deed to their properties, and then the Israeli police going into the Al Aqsa mosque, a sacred place, to me, was the last straw provocation of the Hamas boys to start shooting rockets into Southern Israel, not the other way around.

    It is useless to expect the Palestinians to stop fighting as long as the evictions go on, and as long as the Israel settlers continue to build more houses in the occupied West Bank. Get the Israelis to stop evicting and building and the Hamas may consider stopping rocketing Israel. It is unrealistic to expect Hamas to one-sidedly stop the rockets when the Israelis continue to break the international law.

    Unfortunately, it is sad that the Palestinians can’t get their act together and act as one, and I wonder about Hamas, how long they will continue to throw rockets at Israel, knowing that the Israelis will continue to bomb, and maybe even invade, Gaza until “not a stone is left upon a stone”. Maybe they should consider some other ways of dealing with the Israelis.

    I support Biden when he says that the Israelis have a right to defend themselves, but  I don’t support him when he doesn’t recognize the fact that the ordinary Palestinians have a right to protest against oppression, and the Israeli continued breaking of the law. UN resolution 446, among many others, regards the occupation of the West Bank anEast Jerusalem, as illegal. And Netanyahu dares to talk about law and order.

 

But let me change the subject now and talk about my health. Many people ask, how are you doing? Well, here is how I am doing.

   My last BP reading was 144 / 61 (not  bad for an 85 yr. old)  No diabetes. General good health.

But when it comes to the knee replacement, it is a different story. It continues to  bug me. The spasms continue though the medication seems to have helped to calm them down somewhat. I was at the orthopaedic surgeon’s last Wednesday, May 12^th. I had a 3:15 appointment in the afternoon. He got around to seeing me by about 3:30. He didn’t finish till  5:15. I have been finding it harder and harder to walk with my one elbow crutch. I am beginning to think that there is a trade off involved here… less pain but more instability on the knee which affects the walking (not sure when or if the knee is going to collapse at any time) The doctor compared three x-rays that had been taken previously, including one that was taken a year ago, all showing that the op was perfect.  The one taken last Wednesday seemed to show a small gap between the bone (maybe it receded a bit) and the metal of the replacement. I said he should just put some cement in there and close the gap. The suspicion was that perhaps that gap was causing the knee to wobble a bit . Inconclusive.  However, he explained that if we wanted to do some repairs on the knee, it would mean removing the replacement (which would not be very easy as it was pretty much pounded into the bones) and putting in a new replacement, and there was no guarantee that things would be better after the repaired replacement. Plus, at my age, it was more risky than, say, a 20 yr. old. So I guess that it answered my question, do I have to hobble around like this forever. The answer is…yes. Breaks of the game. The spasms are part of a different equation. But, he said to come back in 6 weeks (at the end of June) and we would check another x-ray and see it there was more receding from the bone and see where we would go from there. Ah, the joys of old age.

   Otherwise, I still take services at Savannah Park every Sunday and at the Hospital on Tuesday and Friday (the crowd is never more than 3, or 4 o4 5), but it keeps up my relationship with the hospital and it gives me a chance to pray for MY hospital, the staff and patients. It is my commitment to the good (spiritual) health of the hospital and its patients and staff.

   Blessedly, I can still drive and the spasms leave me alone there. Amen to that. Now that the virus has been a bit more quiet lately, I have taken advantage of that, and if the family agrees, to visit several families. I say I am having withdrawal symptoms, I need people. We still observe social distancing, masks and sanitizing, but are not too paranoid about these things, just common sense.

     I think we over 60’s are supposed to be getting our vaccinations this coming week. But, there could be crowds and crowds, so we will have to see how they plan this thing. We may go in a group from here, as we did for the test for positivity or not. We shall see.

      It is getting close to my bedtime so I had better bring this scintillating report to a close. Good night. Try, like me, to avoid corona at all costs. And stay or get well. Love and peace, Cas.

 May, 10, 2021

I think  that this may help people to understand a bit better the discussion / debate about Biden's being a

good Catholic or not.

Cultural gap between US and Rome clear in recent reactions to Biden

• John L. Allen Jr.
  May 9, 2021
  EDITOR

In this May 3, 2021, photo, President Joe Biden gestures as he talks to students during a visit to Yorktown Elementary School, in Yorktown, Va., as first lady Jill Biden watches. Biden has met his goal of having most elementary and middle schools open for full, in-person learning in his first 100 days. (Credit: Evan Vucci/AP.)

News Analysis

ROME – Back in the pre-Covid days of yore, when there still was such a thing as a lecture circuit, one of the more popular talks I gave was titled, “Rome is from Mars, America from Venus: Navigating the Cultural Gap between the Vatican and Main Street USA.” Basically, it explored the different clusters of instincts, perspectives and assumptions in these two cultural worlds, which often lead one to misunderstand the other.

The topic comes to mind again this week, watching reactions to the Biden administration play out on both sides of the Atlantic. In the States, you’d think we’re getting set for an MMA octagon title bout; in Rome, you might think Biden and his Vatican buddies are BFFs.

In US Catholic circles, a debate is reemerging which has lain largely dormant since the last time the Democrats nominated a pro-life Catholic for president, which is the question of whether someone who identifies as Catholic yet breaks with Church teaching on the life issues, especially abortion, should be denied communion.

Last week, that debate was thrust back into the spotlight after Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco issued a pastoral letter calling on such political figures not to present themselves for the Eucharist at Mass, insisting that they’re breaking communion with the Church through the policies they advocate.

The fact that the message came from Cordileone means that that it carries relevance not just for Biden but also House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, another pro-choice Catholic Democrat, since her residence is in the Archdiocese of San Francisco.

The US bishops’ Committee on Doctrine is said to be working on a broad document about fitness for communion, though it’s unclear whether a draft of that text will be ready for the bishops’ spring assembly in mid-June.

This ferment is consistent with the tone the bishops have set from Inauguration Day, when Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles warned that the incoming Biden administration would advance “grave moral evils,” and that this presents a special conundrum for the bishops because the president is himself Catholic.

Meanwhile, this is not the conversation about Biden that’s prevailed here in Rome over the past week, where the top note instead has been praise for the president’s decision to waive intellectual property rights for Covid vaccines in order to speed up distribution to poorer nations.

That decision may be dividing much of Europe, with European Council President Charles Michel expressing skepticism Saturday that it’s a “magic bullet” and French President Emmanuel Macron saying that if the US really wants to help, it could end bans on vaccine exports and share technology to ramp up production.

Yet in the small piece of Europe represented by the Vatican City State, the reaction has been much more enthusiastic.

In a May 6 piece, L’Osservatore Romano said Biden’s decision marks a “before” and an “after” in the press for global justice.

“The ‘before’ was expressed in the request of India and South Africa, made as long ago as last October, to suspend the property rights to allow mass production of generic vaccines,” L’Osservatore wrote. “That request was sifted and resifted, with producer countries of name-brand vaccines against it and a group of seventy nations supporting it. It’s a ‘before’ in which Pfizer just posted earnings in excess of already high expectations.”

“The ‘after’ will be written beginning with the choice of the United States, which carries weight even though it may not have immediate repercussions,” according to L’Osservatore.

Yesterday, Pope Francis dispatched a video message to a Covid relief concert hosted by Selena Gomez and organized by Prince Harry And Meghan Markle. He lamented the “virus” of individualism that Francis said leads to indifference to the suffering of others.

The pontiff used language widely taken as an endorsement of the Biden policy shift.

“A variant of this virus is closed nationalism, which prevents, for example, an internationalism of vaccines,” he said. “Another variant is when we place the laws of the market or intellectual property over the laws of love and the health of humanity.”

All this is emblematic of a long-standing contrast between the US and Rome, one that reaches back to the Obama years and beyond. In the States, Catholic reaction to a political leader is heavily conditioned by the abortion issue; in the Vatican, many other considerations come into play, especially concerns about justice for the world’s poorest peoples and nations typically left behind.

That cultural gap tends to give rise to prejudices on both sides of the relationship. Vatican types sometimes assume American Catholics are fixated on abortion for political reasons, to promote the broader agenda of the cultural right. (That was the spirit, for example, of the infamous “ecumenism of hate” piece about the American church penned by two close allies of Pope Francis in Civiltà Cattolica in 2017.) American Catholics, meanwhile, sometimes conclude the Vatican is simply flabby and weak on abortion, unwilling to take a firm stand.

What Vatican personnel sometimes struggle to appreciate is that unlike Western Europe, the battle over abortion is still a going concern in the States, so the Church still has a chance to move the needle. American Catholics, meanwhile, often don’t appreciate that the mere fact something is a raging priority for them doesn’t necessarily mean it is for the rest of the world, and the Vatican has a global responsibility.

In any event, fact of the matter seems clear: While America’s second Roman Catholic president may have an ambivalent relationship with the leadership of his church at home, here at the global HQ so far he’s getting a friendlier reception. If nothing else, that dynamic ought to make the announcement of Biden’s pick as his Vatican ambassador, which should come soon, an interesting one indeed.

 

April 25, 2021

   The “guilty” verdict came in from the George Floyd trial this past week. I thoughts revolve around the video that was taken,---by accident she happened to be their at the time---by a bystander, and I believe that it was mainly that video that convinced the jury that Chauvin was guilty of murder. By accident she happened to be on the scene and caught the horrible action on camera. By the way, the official report by the police, before the video was given as evidence was completely different, i..e. not finding him guilty….until visual evidence was presented that couldn’t be denied.  What about those times when there doesn’t happen to be a handy passerby to take a video what is really happening? How do you get to the truth when it is my word against his, the cop against the what….victim, criminal, scum, you pick the word. Whose word with the police department take, one of their cops, or this black whatever?

I guess we need more CCTV cameras around.

 

But the shooting of that 13 yr. old boy in Chicago makes me wonder. The fact that he was 13 yrs. old tugs at the strings of your heart. But he was in an alley at something like 2am with a gun in his hand that had been fire as the residue was still on his hand, one of the ones he raised up. In the video, you can see him with the gun in his hand and, of course, we who watch the video from the comfort of our homes, see it, I am sure, in a different way than the cop who is running down a dark alley, shouting stop…and then, as we can see in the video, the boy drops the gun near that open fence and starts to turn around to put his hands up. Now, as I see it, the cop doesn’t see it as clearly as we do, sitting on our couch chair. When the boy stops running, having dropped the gun, and starts turning around in this dark alley, the cop has less than a second to decide whether he wants to take the chance to lose his life or not.

I wonder what is a 13 yr. old -doing at that time or the morning with a fired gun in his hand. Where are the parents? And he was with an older friend too, who was also arrested. What was a 13 yr. old doing, hanging around with a friend in a dark alley at 2 am with guns. I had better stop.

 

April 5, Easter Monday

April 7, Easter Wednesday     No internet all these days. Frustrating. The mood to put something in the blog, I am afraid will soon pass is the internet doesn’t get connected soon. Happy delayed Easter.

 

April 11, 2021

Today is Divine Mercy Sunday—when Jesus came into the room without going through the door on the Sunday after Easter, the first thing he said is uxolo alube kini---peace be with you.  How could he be at peace with this bunch of cowards…..they all ran away when the police came to get Jesus and Peter, the leader of he gang even swore that he didn’t know the man, when the girl near the fire said, out loud, …you too are one of them. When he said,  peace be with you, what was implied is that he had forgiven them for abandoning him and for Peter even denying him, his best friends, he thought. So forgiveness was one of the topics today. You won’t ever be able to be at peace with yourself, if you still have ugly feelings for those who hurt you. It may take some time (I found that forgiveness is a process), even years, depending how badly one has been hurt, but inner peace won’t come until you resolve that ugly feeling. Enough preaching.

 

I had asked Fr. Tom Szura, our keeper of my J&P socio-pastoral account, to send $2000 to help the people here who have been pretty much wiped out by the lockdown that came with corona. Jobs lost (mostly too, very low paying jobs that people just managed to survive on), kicked out of where they were staying because they couldn’t pay the rent,  no money to buy food or pay for electricity, or water or even for some data to be able to use their cell phones. No money for transport, to the doctor, to the hospital, to the pharmacy, to the supermarket, etc. etc. etc. So that $2000 turned into about R30,000.00  I could help about 20 people with that. That was one thing that kept me busy.

  

Then I  helped Mpume with money to go to the hospital to get copies of all the interactions that she had with the doctors regarding the problem she was having with her eyes, having gone blind already in one eye and now the other slowly going blind too. She had to take someone with her to guide her so I had to pay for transport for 2, there and back. I had given her R1000 to be used for whatever expenses she might find and I thought that that should cover the transport and whatever else. Ha. She had 75 pages of reports that had to be copied. They wanted to charge her R24 per page. Holy moses. That’s R1800. She didn’t have that much so they let her go with whatever she had left after paying for the transport. That is all so that she can apply for disability grant so that she can survive. I don’t’ know how she is surviving now. I just try to help when I can.

 

I have decided to take some things like vitamin pills and other things to help my ageing body and also because we don’t always have a balanced diet. That has to come out of my pension money that is in the coffers of Mariannhill. It goes straight there so that I don’t even see it but I have an idea how much it is when I ask Tom Szura. What do I need at my age. No more night clubs, etc. Ha.

 

I give the occasional haircut. (my motto is, the only difference between a good haircut and a bad one is about 3 weeks.) I have been doing a good bit of reading and I scan the internet, when it works, for good articles that I can share with others. I send out, as I am sure that some of you know, reflections on the scripture readings for the coming Sunday . I think it goes to about 200 people. If you don’t get it and would like to get it send me your email address and I will put it on the list. And if you feel that you don’t really need it, let me know and I will take you off the list.

                                                                                                                                                                                     

Our Parish leader’s about 2  was broken into 3 times in about 2 weeks, once when we were at church. We had aluminum windows put in when some repairs were done to the house, and we discovered that they were very vulnerable for any clever thief who can put a thin blade up the inside of the window and push the handle up without having to break the glass, and with minimal damage to the window. We had to extend the ADT security coverage where the new window was put in and I had to ask my brother for $1000 to help pay for that. We thought that they would be able to sleep now but the third time they broke in it was though another of those aluminum windodws that we hadn’t thought of. Burglar bars are the only answer.

 

I was kept pretty busy preparing the Holy week services In English and Zulu. Lots of fun. Thursday, Mike Pillay, the leader, did the foot washing for me after I blessed the water since I am not supposed to kneel on my knee replacement (I think). And even if I could, I could surely get down, but I know that I wouldn’t be able to get up without a lot of help, and it would be a serious distraction. Friday, we had to adjust the service so that no one was going to kiss the foot of the cross as was the custom, so I just asked people to bow and say a short prayer to keep the protocol for the virus. (Of course, we all wear masks and use the sanitizer at the door (I think that sanitizer is going to become the new holy water….maybe I should bless it.) I knew about the two children but I was only told on Wednesday of Holy Week about the others. I like to prepare well (this was, again, in English and Zulu…..I need time to prepare) I never confirmed before because we were taught this was the Bishop’s job. However, I did remember that the Bishops’ Conference said that adult baptisms should include Eucharist (communion) and confirmation, as in the early days of the church. So many dioceses gave permission to priests to do that and it seems that Mariannhill was one of those dioceses. So I did it. The service is a long one (I won’t explain why here) and it lasted from shortly after 6 pm when we blessed the Easter fire and candle, and continued to bless the baptismal water and renew our baptism promises (when you see the ugly stuff that is happening in our world today….beheadings in our neighboring Mozambique, raping every time a traffic light changes, including even a 4 month old child, eeeeevil. Satan, personified evil is making this world a very dark place to live.) We finished with the baptisms and confirmations around 9pm. My spasm leg was killing me, paining like mad so that I really wanted leave and go home but I couldn’t abandon them in the middle of the service. I think my leg felt that it was being abused because it was standing for most of those almost 3 hours. I want to see the doctor if he or  do something to make the pain of the spasms be reduced or something.

 

 I forgot about Palm Sunday, which included the procession, but I stayed in church because I wouldn’t be able to keep up with them and would just slow them down.

 

I still go to the hospital for a very informal kind of prayer service and a blessing on Tuesday morning at 6:30am (changed from 6am to get more people) and Friday at noon. Even if no one comes I figure that this is my contribution to the heailng team at the hospital ….to pray that God protects them from the man virus , and their families and the patients. I even came to a non virus ward to anoint a sick patient and took the opportunity to remind the patients in that ward that there was no discrimination, I pray for everyone, not just catholics.

(Hey it is time for me to brush my teeth,, put in my eyedrops (glaucoma) and hit the sack.) see you tomorrow, I hope.)

 

April, 12, 2021

 

“Beijing won the right to host the 2022 Olympics in 2015, the same year it cracked down on lawyers and activists across China,” Chinese human rights lawyer Teng Biao wrote earlier this year. “Since then, it has detained journalists; harassed and attacked activists and dissidents even outside China’s borders; shut down nongovernmental organizations; demolished Christian churches, Tibetan temples and Muslim mosques; persecuted, sometimes to death, believers in Falun Gong; and sharply increased its control of media, the Internet, universities and publishers.”

Should we boycott their presence at the Olympics this year because or their disrespect for human rights?  This just came in this morning.

 

A big event… I took Retired bishop Lobinger, 92 yrs. old, to buy a pair of suspenders (braces in UK English). I found the store that sold a whole variety of them on the internet. When we got there, they said they only sell them on line. Bad luck. We went to several other stores with no luck. Finally a young man from one of the stores we had approached told us that there was a little store just around that corner that had them. We went and, sure enough, there she had a variety The store was about 15 feet by 15 feet but they had all kinds of things. So he now happily sports his suspenders.

I also became his doctor’s assistant. I saw a blood stain on the back of his sweater and thought that there must be something that he can’t see that is bleeding there. So I persuaded him to take off his shirt and sure enough there was a deep sore, like a bed sore, but about a half inch across and about of a quarter of an inch deep thee. How it got there is anyone’s guess but I suspect that when he once fell down, he banged his back against his backbone and that got it started. The doctor checks it out every week and I change the bandaid every morning with  a bit of anti something on it to speed up the healing. I am now an unofficially qualified doctor’s assistant.

Time to put this in the blog now. See you all. Easter means hope. When it seemed impossible, God came on the scene and look. Ha. Surprise surprise. They thought it was the end of the story but it was really just the end of an episode, and the story continues.

Take care. LOTs of love and his peace.    Cas.

 

March 20, 2021

I just reminded my friend ( I purposely won’t use her name) to remind her that I will come to bring some money for her as she has an appointment on Monday, March 22, at the big hospital here in Durban, Luthuli Hospital. This is where all the experts in their fields are. It is free is you have been referred by another doctor who explains that you can’t afford the expenses. Here’s the story.

She used to work for us here at MD as a kind of house mother. One day she came and when I went to greet her she told me that she couldn’t see out of her left eye, it was just black.  I piled her in the car and took her to an ophthalmologist who examined her (for free) and said that there was nothing wrong with her eye, it must be something before it gets to the eye, like a nerve or something. He phoned a friend who was a neurologist, who said that she cold come now now. But it was going to cost something like R500 for the visit, and if he found that  she had to be admitted to a hospital …..Well, that was way out of my range, so he wrote a note and I took her to McCord’s hospital, a hospital for eye problems. This is free (Americans would call it socialism). Once they put her into the system , she had to get in the queue for the doctor. It was about noon. I told her to phone me when she was finished and I would come and fetch her and take her home. She never phoned. So I phoned  about 4pm and she said there were still 5 people ahead of her. I told her again, when she was finished. But she never phoned. She made her way home on her own. That was about April of 2019. She made many visits to this hospital and from time to time to the big hospital. I was impressed with the care and cleanliness of McCord’s hospital. I also knew a young doctor there who could give me reports on her progress or lack of it. Her sight began to get worse, in spite of the care, and the other eye was also affected, so that now she could barely see at all. She needed to have someone accompany her if she wanted to go anywhere.

     So the situation was that she couldn’t work because she couldn’t see and we got a letter from my ophthalmologist to say so, But it wasn’t accepted by the government authorities, when she applied for a disability grant .(I think that the government has been tricked often by people who get their doctor friend to write such a letter…scam, so they want a government doctor, as though he or she can’t do the same thing)

   In any case for the whole year 2020 she was back and forth to the doctor at Luthuli and kept asking why her grant wasn’t forthcoming. Finally, about 2 weeks ago, I went to the person who handles all the stuff for those who are hired by the monastery, and she explained what this lady had to do, which was to get all the files of all the visits etc. from Luthuli, to present them to the insurance company to be able to qualify for a grant.

    The last time she was at Luthuli to get a copy of a one page document, they charged her R620. Wow. Now she needs a sheaf of documents about an inch (20cm) thick. God only knows what that could cost.

Now she says that the taxi fare from here to Durban is R40 and another R35 from there to Luthuli. That’s R75 one way for one person. She needs someone to accompany her, so double that. That’s R150 one way for the two of them. The return trip is another R150. That’s R300 just for transport. And she hasn’t had a salary for welll over a year. I really don’t know how she survives. When I get some money from overseas, it put some in her account to be used for food, rent, electricity, and transport, if she has to go to the doctor or to do some shopping.

   She phoned to make an appointment (as she was told to do) and was given an appointment at Luthuli for Monday the 22^nd of March. When she explained that she needed copies of all the reports, etc. for the insurance company, she asked how much that could cost. The lady told her to bring R800 with her. What? Where is an unemployed blind person who is applying for a disability grant supposed to get that kind of money? Anyway, I managed to scrape together R1000 to help pay for the transport and something for the copies. I will take the money to her tomorrow, Sunday 21^st so that she has something for transport on Monday to get started

   Bloody bureaucracy!

 

 

 

March 19, 2021

Anti-Christian persecution is one of the most dramatic human rights scourges of our time. Though statistics vary widely, the low-end estimate for the number of new Christian martyrs every year in the early 21^st century is around 6,000 to 7,000, while the highest-end accounting puts it at 100,000. That works out to somewhere between one Christian killed for the faith every hour, to one every five minutes. Whatever the actual number, it’s a death toll of staggering proportions.

Beyond fatalities, watchdog groups estimate that 200 million Christians around the world are at risk, facing daily threats of harassment, physical assault, arrest, imprisonment and torture.

Wow, even I didn’t do the arithmetic to see how drastic this is. I knew there was persecution but I didn’t realize it was so bad till someone did the sums for me.

March 17, 2021

I am wondering what is wrong with the people who suddenly are worried about this or that vaccine. Those that are being used have run through all the tests with thousands of people and have been OKed. It is clearly better that you have it than not. Here we are trying to get it out first to those who are on the front line, and then, us oldies, and eventually everyone. It is a bit slow but it is going. I am not holding my breath, but in any case, I wear my mask wherever I go, I keep my distance (but I am hardly anywhere where there is a crowd,) and I get sanitized many times a day.

·         Uber said it would reclassify more than 70,000 drivers in Britain as workers; they will receive a minimum wage, vacation pay and access to a pension plan.

This is interesting. Uber is getting to be something common here too when people are stuck for transport, but it is very expensive. When I had my service done after 15,000 km., I found out that the mechanic had to use Uber to get the materials because his own car was not working. We are a 1^st world, 3^rd world country. Most of the country is 3^rd world, but there are pockets of 1^st world, mainly in the cities and suburbs, and a few well to do commercial farmers.

Today is St. Patrick’s day. We used to do a Polish Polka in the seminary on this day to celebrate the great missionary, Patrick. Here is something that I just picked up this morning.

Putin ordered meddling in 2020 election

President Vladimir Putin of Russia authorized extensive efforts to interfere in the U.S. election to hurt Joe Biden’s chances, including operations to influence people close to Donald Trump, according to a newly declassified intelligence report.

 

The report did not name Russia’s targets but seemed to refer to Rudolph Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, who relentlessly pushed allegations of corruption about Mr. Biden and his family involving Ukraine. China considered its own efforts, but concluded that such an operation would fail, the report found.

The U.S. intelligence community also determined that Iran tried to aid Mr. Biden in the final days of the election by spreading emails that falsely claimed to be from the far-right group the Proud Boys. Unlike in 2016, there were no efforts by Russia or other countries to change actual ballots, the report found. Life gets more and more complicated. Cyber security is number one now, and there are always some who are more clever who will find a way to hack in and spread misinformation or whatever they want. It is scary.

 

 

March 11, 2021

Under the American Rescue Plan, direct payments of up to $1,400 will be sent to Americans and a $300-per-week supplemental unemployment benefit will be extended until early September. The bill also provides substantial benefits for low-income Americans, including an expanded child tax credit, and it funds pandemic priorities such as testing, contact tracing and genomic sequencing.

The measure, which passed by a vote of 220-211, cements one of the largest injections of federal aid since the Great Depression. Republicans have attacked the plan as wasteful and excessive, but 70 percent of Americans support it, according to a Pew poll. ( Seeing how the poor suffer here in South Africa….mainly Africans, but not all, I can sympathize with those who have lost jobs or will be evicted, or have been evicted from their accommodation, no insurance coverage, which went with the loss of a job. Of course, there will always be some wastage or finagaling, but for the good of the greater majority it means the difference between life and death)

 

Related: Merrick Garland was confirmed as attorney general with strong bipartisan backing. The vote was 70 to 30 in the Senate, with 20 Republicans in support. ( I was glad to see such bipartisan support for such a good man)

 

March 8, 2021

As president of General Motors, Mark Reuss made global headlines when the company committed to go all-electric with its vehicle lineup by 2035. Automakers around the world are following suit to phase out fossil fuels in favor of more efficient, zero-emission vehicles. Reuss joins Washington Post columnist David Ignatius to discuss what is needed to drive mass EV adoption and how GM will drive the transition. Join Washington Post Live on Thursday, March 11 at 11:30am ET.

It looks like electric is in and fossil fuels is out. Between 10 and 15 yrs. is not really a long time. But where is the electricity going to come from?

March 5, 2021

The metallic element is housed in a bulbous piece of aluminum, called a catalytic converter, that encases a honeycomb structure that filters fumes. National data is scarce, but news reports point to thousands of catalytic converter thefts over the past year, a crime wave that has risen with the price of one of their essential components: rhodium, a silvery-white chemical element that is a byproduct of the production of platinum and palladium, and is unparalleled in its ability to remove the most toxic pollutants from vehicle exhaust.

A single troy ounce, which is slightly heavier than a regular ounce, of rhodium cost around $27,000 last week — more than a brand new Toyota Prius. That’s up from $1,700 three years ago.

Today Pope Francis flies to Iraq. May God protect this man of peace.

 

March 3, 2021

Electric cars: Volvo Cars said it would convert its entire lineup to battery power by 2030, phasing out vehicles with internal combustion engines faster than other automakers like General Motors. The automaker, based in Sweden, is owned by Geely Holding of China.  (That’s only 10 yrs. from now. I may even still be alive. But. By that time, I think I might be worrying about other things, like eternal life. Ha.)

 

One of my favorite speeches comes from Robert Duvall in "Second Hand Lions":

"Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things that a man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good. That honor, courage and virtues mean everything. That power and money, money and power mean nothing; that Good always triumphs over Evil; and I want you to remember this: That Love, true Love never dies. Doesn't matter if any of this is true or not. You see a man should believe in these things because these are the things worth believing in." #favoritemovie

(What do you think? This was sent by a friend from Southern Indiana)

From Nickle and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich, about 2001 (These clothes were being sold in Wal Marts)

34   In 1996, the National Labor Committee Education Fund in Support of Worker and Human Rights in Central America revealed that some Kathie Lee clothes were being sewn by children as young as twelve in a sweatshop in Honduras. TV personality Kathie Lee Gifford, the owner of the Kathie Lee line, tearfully denied the charges on the air but later promised to give up her dependence on sweatshops.

 

March 1, 2021

(retired former Pope) Benedict also commented on Joe Biden, the second Catholic president in U.S. history: “It is true, he is Catholic and observant. And he is personally against abortion. But as a president he tends to present himself in continuity with the line of the Democratic Party … And on gender politics we have not yet fully understood what his position is.” (This was in a recent interview in Rome)

 Feb. 17, 2021

 South Africa will distribute unused doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine to other African nations after a small trial failed to show that the vaccine could prevent mild or moderate cases caused by the local variant of the virus.  (good news, sharing, not wasting)

 

L’Opzione di Dio is, of course, a terribly misleading representation of the Catholic Church. For every Machiavellian prelate willing to stop at nothing to attain power – and, make no mistake, such figures aren’t entirely fictional – there’s probably a hundred quietly heroic missionaries, and pastors, and nuns, and lay activists, all pouring out their lives to serve the vulnerable and forgotten people of the world.

Feb. 20, 2021

Just a few words about what is coming. First, the government has relaxed, a bit, the restrictions of the lockdown, so that church services are allowed again, but not more than 50 inside and 100 outside. (that is not a problem with us at Savannah Park because we are a small community in any case.) and the restriction on buying alcohol totally has been modified to be Mon. to Thurs. 10am to 4pm. (Hospital staff were complaining of alcohol related cases clogging up their hospitals when they needed every bit of time and space for virus patients.)

So, I will be starting this Sunday, 21 Feb., with services at Savannah Park. We will combine ash wed. with first Sunday of lent. (most people here have to either walk or take public transport at night to come to an evening service, like Ash Wednesday, and they are being told to stay at home so as not to spread the virus, and they don’t have to be told at night because it is dangerous for those who have to walk as there are tsotsis (muggers and thieves)  along the way. One little girl, a student, was robbed of her cell phone and laptop and was stabbed in the process. She is a university student and needs these things for her studies. She is traumatized, and doesn’t know where to go to get help. Without her laptop she can’t do her studies. I have run out of funds to help people like her so it is just a tough situation.

I will also start with informal services at the hospital next week….Tues. 6am for the early birds and Friday 12 noon mostly for the admin. Staff. I told them I will also bring ashes for those who want.

The new liturgy that came from Rome for ashes says the priest prays a blessing  over the ashes, sprinkles with holy water, says the prayer over all present,…remember that you are dust and unto dust will return…..or…..repent and believe the good news (gospel). Then, so as not to touch anyone, instead of making a cross on their forehead with the ashes, he will sprinkle some on their heads. (ha, no consultation with the laity, especially women…. Some wear hair pieces, others, here in Africa, wear something like a turban called a duk. There is no way they can undo it to receive a sprinkling of ash. So, we shall see how we deal with this situation. Ha. I will let you know next time.

As for the pandemic, we have received some vaccines from India which have already started to be jabbed, and more from somewhere, Johnson and johnson, also being administered, starting with those on the front line. We, old timers, are waiting our turn, but I am not holding my breath. I know that we are streets ahead of other less developed countries and have some excellent doctors and scientists who will be trying to come up with a vaccine out of our own labs. Remember, the first heart transplant op was here in South Africa. It is further down the line in the health ministry where  there is chaos.

We had a president who, much like Trump, ran the country into the ground with some of his not well thought out new policies and appointments, and we are not trying to get back on some sort of normal track again, but it is difficult because he, like Trump, has his loyal followers, who refuse to accept the facts, coming from a special commission, that show clearly that he is guilty in many ways for the dire situation we are in now in South Africa.

Trump and Zuma are running on parallel lines here, both trying to discredit the normal institutions, like the constitutional court, for example, the constitutional court gave a decision that said that Zuma (the ex-president) must make himself available to the Zondo commission on the dates mentioned and is not allowed to keep silent, as this is necessary for the commission to get to the bottom of the allegations made against him or his administration when he was president.

He says, 1.   He doesn’t accept Zondo, the head of the commission, number two on the constitutional court (whom he himself appointed when he was president) because he is biased against him (without presenting proof---sound familiar?--) and he refuses to abide by the decision of the constitutional court, for the same reason, because it is biased against him—again with no proof….but going on to say that he respects the concourt but not the judges. Now what does that tell you. But, like Trump, among his followers, he is sowing seeds of doubt about most institutions in the country, the main one being the concourt.

 

So There is a lot of drams these days, as in the States. The newly elected president (both of them from the ANC, Cyril Ramaphosa) is walking on eggshells. He was elected by a hair (Zuma thought that the had made sure that he would not be elected ) and, like Pope Francis with the Curia, he has to be very careful about all that he says and does since Zuma’s supporters and just waiting for him to make a gaff, and they will toss him out and take over to continue to run the country like the mafia. I will have to answer for these words one day as they become public as soon as they go into my blog.

As far as my health goes, I am A OK, except for the continuing spasms in my left leg which I just have to live with. BP is fine, no sugar, brain still works, more or less, can still drive (what a blessing), take a shower, get dressed, put my socks on (that can be an interesting procedure) and put my sandals on (I don’t wear shoes any more. I had to buy a pair when I went to my Aunt Rose’s 100^th birthday in 2019 in Chicago in Feb.—snow and ice, not good for sandals). They don’t have buckles but Velcro, which makes it easy for on and off.

 

Well, let this be enough for now. Poor Cruz, going to Cancun , sunning on the beach, when his constituents are burning their furniture to keep warm. A real  stupid move for an opportunist like him.

Have a fruitful lent, some serious housecleaning. Love and Peace,   Fr. Cas

 Feb. 4, 2021

Let me share some thoughts with your about the “bipartisan” offer made by the republicans to the Biden team. If I remember correctly,  a team of Republicans came up with an offer of doing a bipartisan thing by having an economic recovery bill of $600 billion. It is less than half the amount that the Biden team had thought was necessary to help people and get the economy going again with $1.6 Trillion. Quite a big gap between what the Rebs were suggesting as a bipartisan effort to help struggling people and get the economy back on track.

     I think I smell something. As I see it there are three things to be considered here. 1. Time…urgency   2. Bipartisan..The Rebs reminded Biden that he promised to try to work together with them and this is his chance.. 3. What to do to help people…( wasn’t there a bipartisan bill that was put before Trump when he was still president. A bill for $900 billion, that both the dems and the rebs agreed on…. A miracle.  Then Trump refused to sign it saying that the $600 that was being offered to people wasn’t enough, it should be $1200.   Well, then the dems, now that they had Trump on their side, decided not to settle for less than what the rebs leader had suggested, and the whole thing never got off the ground, because the rebs would neve agree to the increase. Maybe I am wrong but I thought that the bill was never passed so people are still suffering.

Then, some cash into the hands of those who were unemployed, had lost their jobs, and health insurance, etc. and couldn’t pay for food, or rent or electricity (winter—heating). Then they would be able to use this money to buy the necessities and the economy would begin to function again. But that would mean lots and lots of money, more than the rebs were offering in their proposal to the dems.

Because of the necessity for doing something now now, there was no time for having long discussions to see where the rebs intended to cut back on the spending. People need help now, even yestermonth.

So if Biden refuses the offer, he is made to look bad because he claimed to want to build unity and bipartisanship, and look , he just turned down the offer.

He also had promised to help the people to get back on their feet, so if he doesn’t do something, he reneges on his promise there. Another disaster.

It is a lose lose situation for the dems.

Then the nuclear option comes up to look them in the face.

Ai think it was a deliberate trick to make Biden look bad. Maybe I am wrong, but that is how I see it. I am waiting to see what they are going to do now. Time is of the essence since people are really at the end of their tether