Regina's Rants

“Piggy!” he called an accredited White House journalist.  He meant it as an insult, but calling someone “Piggy!” is proof of envy.   From time immemorial, Piggy! has meant abundance, fertility, and prosperity.  Piggy! also implies knowledge,  intelligence, dedication.   Piggy!man represents none of that.  Piggy! deserves our kindness.  Piggy!man doesn’t.

It’s understandable for the media to neglect Piggy! at this hour of international anguish, but we need to keep our perspective crackling.   As the American novelist Sherwood Anderson has said, “There’s a pig in all of us.  Only those who grunt, know it.”

So, let’s grunt.

Circe and her Hogs  

Pigs treat us as equals.
Winston Churchill

Hogs go way back into Greek mythology.    Circe was a sorceress daughter of Helios, the sun god, and Perse, an Oceanid nymph.  Circe inherited her sun-ray shooting eyes from her dad.  From her mum she got her encyclopaedic knowledge of herbal enchantments and a talent for transforming people into animals.  Circe’s pastime was falling in and out of love.  She had already fallen in love with King Picus, who in turn was in love with the nymph Canens.   Rejected and enraged, Circe transformed Picus into a woodpecker. Then Circe got distracted with Odysseus. 

Perhaps to ask for directions, Odysseus disembarked  from his ship carrying forty-five melancholy men at Circe’s gorgeous Mediterranean island Aeaea.  They had returned from the Trojan Wars full of laurels and loot and dreamed of docking at Ithaca, their home port.  It didn’t take long for Circe to fall in love with Odysseus.

But Odysseus was not having any of that, because he loved Penelope and he wanted to get home ASAP.   Circe batted her eyelids and said that he could sail after his good-bye feast.  She stuffed the feast offerings with transforming herbs, and Odysseus’ crew turned into wild boars.  Odysseus couldn’t man his ship with boars, so he was forced to stay at Aeaea.  With Circe.  Of course he wasn’t looking for it.  It just happened. It didn’t mean anything.  Of course it didn’t. 

The intrigue that followed included Hermes (not the French handbag-making guy, but the messenger god) helping Odysseus, but it still took them a year to win.  During that time Circe had three kids by Odysseus.  I understand a  sorceress does things differently to us, but she might have had an unqualified Brazilian doctor to help her out, I’ve heard they do miracles.

In the end, Circe tired  of Odysseus, so she turned the pigs back into men.  Circe’s transfiguration of pigs and men meant the pigs had kept their  human minds and knew exactly what was happening to them while pigs.  They carried their memories of total piggery, which I suppose taught them a thing or two, although I know not what.  These days it’s said that Circe’s pigs showed us mere mortals that the loss of self when moving from one place to another could mean the acquisition of wisdom.   I don’t know.  I’ve lived in six countries and haven’t lost much of my self.  But I’ve acquired a lot of self, to judge from my current weight, so I wonder if that can be called wisdom.

One thing I’m certain:  Odysseus’ men were the original Piggy!men.

The Bay of Pigs

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity;
and I’m not sure about the universe.
Albert Einstein

The Bay of Pigs was the Ouch! of American interventionism in Latin America, back in 1961.   The Bay of Pigs, as the Americans called it, or Playa Girón as the Cubans called it, was an invasion planned by and approved by the American Congress during the government of  Dwight Eisenhower.  He had already enacted an embargo (except for food and medicine, how kind), and cut off diplomatic relations with Cuba at the end of his presidency.   But John Kennedy’s government went ahead with the invasion  of a sovereign country that had not attacked the USA (like Piggy!man did with Venezuela, Iran). 

 Why?  That Fidel Castro, the new kid on the block, was a flea in American breeches.  The way he was linking with Socialist-Communist-and-other-ist countries all over the world, and taking American property in Cuba away from their American owners — Oh the USA would not put up with it.

The USA had a plan and they had to put their military to good (or bad) use.  But the plan was half-baked by many cooks, mainly Cuban insurgents living in the USA, supported by more insurgents living in Cuba, against Castro’s government. 

The USA provided airplanes, missiles, weapons, general supplies for the invasion, plus reams of brittle intelligence that underestimated the Cuban forces.  As a result, the Cuban government crunched the invaders and captured hundreds of prisoners.   

Then Castro put his feet up on his desk, puffed on his Cohiba, the cigar created exclusively for him, looked out of his window in the approximate direction of the USA, and said,  “We demand reparations!”  Eleanor Roosevelt was put in charge of raising the US$28 million (today’s US$303 million) demanded by Castro in heavy machinery, but she was unable to achieve that amount.  After zig-zagging through negotiations, Castro agreed to release the prisoners, and the USA agreed to pay Cuba compensation of  US$58 million (today’s US$628 million) in food and medicine.   I suppose some Americans grunted in delight, since those millions stayed in America:  big pharmaceutical and big food industries took home the bacon.

Now, I tend to think of Cubans as knowledgeable and brave.  Back in 2013 poor Brazilian regions in the confines of the country (e.g. the Amazon region) were suffering a shortage of  doctors.  There were enough doctors in the country, but few Brazilian doctors worth their opiates wanted to work in the Amazon region, curing and preventing disease and earning  a pittance in cupuaçu (a fruit), fresh piranhas, and coarse cassava flour, when they could have been living high on the hog down south.

As a way of meeting the country’s medical needs,  President Dilma Rousseff  signed an agreement  with the Pan-American Health Organisation  to allow Latin American doctors to come and work in Brazil. It was a success, and about 60% of the newly-arrived doctors were Cubans.  These days Cubans form 10% of the medical body in Brazil.  Among others, they have helped bring infant mortality down in the state of Amazonas from 60/1000 live births in 2013, to 14/1000 live births in 2022. 

 I know, this last bit has nothing to  do with the Bay of Pigs, except the distant Cuban part.  Perhaps it’s my free-association with Latin America, my wish to see them working together and improving their lot.  Ah, and this is a Rant, I can write what I like within or without reason.

Following that not unreasonable thought, I read recently about graduates who had attended private medical courses, at university level, in Brazil.  It turned out that 30% of last-semester medical students  did not obtain the minimal grade to pass their medical board exams.  Thankfully, over 13,000 unqualified medical students didn’t get their medical credentials.  Now the brouhaha has ballooned, with people saying, on the one hand, that the exams were wrong or perhaps too pernickety, and on the other, that the private schools were incompetent, they were paid their fees and had failed their students.   Pass the defibrillator. Regardless, those students will remain students for at least another year and pay more fees to pass or not pass again.   Hospital-strength disinfectant doesn’t get rid of those pests.

With a few exceptions, the general consensus in Brazil is that if you attend a private university, you’re basically paying to pass each semester.  The universities worth their chalk are the government (federal) ones, and they’re free.  But students must take their fiercely difficult university entrance exams, and there is a limited number of places.

When I was growing up, only private schools were considered worth attending.  It was a given that private high school graduates would pass federal university entrance exams, and attend a trustworthy, difficult, and tough federal temple of knowledge.

So it seems too much to ask doctors with  years of tough training to use their god-like knowledge among the poor native Brazilians who live a five-day boat ride from a jungle hospital.  Hooray to the Cubans who confronted the USA and the jungle. 

I wonder how Cubans will  fare now that Piggy!man has threatened, “We could very well end up having a friendly takeover of Cuba.”  Again? Huh.  Does the friendly takeover involve bombing a girls’ school and killing over 150 students and staff?

Pigs and Medicine

The more I see of man, the more I admire pigs.
Mark Twain

The dire shortage of transplant organs has meant a surge of disturbing stories about mothers and fathers selling their organs to buy food for the family or arrange a dowry for a daughter.  Others had their organs snatched while they knew nothing about it.  Yet others have donated their organs.  Still, that’s not enough.

With that in mind, scientists have spent their overtime and overdraft to discover that pig’s organs are the nearest to human’s.  Genetically edited pigs’ organs enhance their compatibility with the human body, so transplants and treatments become easier for all concerned.  

These days, specially treated pig’s skin is used as skin grafts to treat burns, and porcine heart valves have been transplanted into human hearts.  Transplant teams at the Massachusetts General Hospital have successfully transplanted a pig’s kidney to a human recipient.    At the University of Maryland Medical Center, it was a person’s turn to sport his new, genetically edited pig’s heart. And I have it on good authority that all members of the transplant teams had their proper medical qualifications.

The blood-thinning medication heparin, which benefits so many, is extracted from pig’s  intestinal mucosa.  Synthetic heparin has been produced in a laboratory, but it will be a few years before there’s enough of it to substitute its porcine counterpart.

And nobody grunts about it.

Do Pigs Fly?

Never underestimate the power of a pig.
Anonymous

I present to you:

·       ANZUK – Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom

·       BRICS –  Brazil, Russia, India, China,  South Africa

·       BENELUX –   Belgium, Netherlands, Luxemburg 

·       PIGS –  Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain;  also used as PIIGS including Ireland, or PIIGGS including Great Britain

These are acronyms for international clubs whose members are countries with similar economic interests.  Together, club members feel stronger and exchange vows of eternal friendship and support.   They act as a well-defined whole, and stand up for their rights like best buddies against bad bullies.    

In the case of PIIGGS, the acronym was born along with its derogatory meaning due to  its members’ huge national debt and economic vulnerability in the 1990’s and even earlier. The acronym is not used much now, but once in a while economic analysts and illiterati resurrect its use with a knowing  wink.  

If memory serves, national debt is calculated as a percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP) which is the whole production of a country.  The European Union has set guidelines for national debt not to exceed 60% of GDP, but some countries find it difficult to stay at that figure.  When the percentage of national debt rises above 100%, the country is spending more than she makes.  It’s possibly a disaster for a country,  unless they’re borrowing money to invest in really important things such as health care, schooling, housing, and food for the population.  

The national debt changes at every second. On March 5, 2026, the PIIGGS countries had the following national debts:

Country	Debt (€)	% of GDP
Portugal	220     billion	77
Ireland	171     billion	32
Italy	3     trillion	145
Greece	333     billion	139
Great Britain	3     trillion	110
Spain	1.6 trillion	104

Polite Notice:  the United States’ debt is currently  US$39 trillion or 134% of its GDP.  

So here’s a first:  It won’t be long before PIIGGS is joined by the United States. It’ll then become PIIGGSUS, the porcine version of Pegasus, the winged horse of Greek mythology.    

It’s the irrefutable economic proof that pigs can fly.   

Conclusions About the Future of Piggy!man: 

1.      His Circe will transform him into a wild boar.  His  memory and mind will not change because they’ve always been that of a swine.

2.      When he meets his Bay of Pigs, nobody will raise money to save him from his fate as a prisoner.

3.      Neither man nor pig will ever donate him a heart or any other organ.

4.      Unloved, despised, and convinced that pigs do fly,  his last squeal will be at the hands of the sycophantic inhabitants of The Sty.   Piggy!man’s fate is sealed in lard.