Society's ChildS


Brick Wall

John Ioannidis: Another shutdown would do more harm than good

fisherman's warf san francisco
© Paul Morris/BloombergPeople wearing protective masks walk on Jefferson Street on Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Monday, June 22, 2020.
The following is adapted from the opening remarks made by Dr. John Ioannidis and Andrew Noymer in a Munk Debates podcast. The resolution debated: be it resolved the reintroduction of shutdowns needs to be considered in U.S. states where COVID-19 infections are surging. Listen to the whole episode at munkdebates.com/podcast/lockdowns.

There's no doubt that we are dealing with a major health crisis with reverberations across our society. We need to act decisively, we need to act promptly, we need to act with precision. We need to act in a way that will optimize our chances of saving lives and also minimize the harms, both from the pandemic and from the measures that we have to take.

Shutdowns are an extreme measure. We know very well that they cause tremendous harm — for people's lives, for their health, for their mental health, on their ability to get the best care for major problems like heart attacks, like cancer care. Shutdowns can take a major toll on employment, they can take a major toll on people who are disadvantaged, leaving them even more disadvantaged.

Comment: More from John Ioannidis:


Bizarro Earth

NHS patients will soon be asked to book a spot at A&E

A&E NHS
Patients will be asked to book an A&E appointment by calling 111 this winter, NHS bosses have been told. Pictured: St Thomas Hospital, Westminster
Patients will be asked to book an A&E appointment by calling 111 this winter, NHS bosses have been told.

The plans, revealed in a board meeting for NHS England and NHS Improvement yesterday, are set to be put in place before December.

But hospitals will not turn away patients who turn up without calling ahead of their visit, it was claimed.

Pilot studies of the ring-ahead scheme at casualty departments in Portsmouth and London have reportedly produced good results.

Comment: Note how the waiting time graph above has only recently become problematic, a similar chart can be found showing NHS trusts account balances sliding into debt following government meddling. One can presume this is just the latest attempt to degrade, defund and dismantle the UK's NHS, with the goal of eventually privatising it to be sold to the highest bidder:


Pistol

Best of the Web: Carlson rips lack of coverage of DC mass shooting, claims media silent to help Biden campaign

'Dead bodies don't count unless they are politically useful dead bodies'
mass shooting washington DC
"Nothing to see here, move along please..."
"The single biggest U.S. mass shooting of 2020 occurred over the weekend in Washington, but because the story didn't "help the Biden campaign," it went largely unreported on, Tucker Carlson said Monday.


Comment: That's Monday last week, in reference to this mass shooting in DC on Saturday August 8th.


"Twenty-one people were shot in this single incident ... more than half of them were women. One was a D.C. Police officer. It was the single biggest mass shooting in America this year and yet you probably heard nothing about it," the "Tucker Carlson Tonight" host said.

"Members of Congress didn't lock arms on the House floor to demand an end to the gun violence, CNN didn't book a procession of weepy teenage gun-control activists ... news organizations barely touched the story and when they did, they moved fast," Carlson continued. "It wouldn't help the Biden campaign to talk about it, so they didn't talk about it."


Comment: Can you guess what color the perps were? Not even Tucker would mention that.

Once you figure that out, you have your answer for why you didn't hear about the 2020 Washington DC mass shooting before now.

But that wasn't the main thing Carlson spoke about in this segment. He spoke about a 'demographic shift' taking place in the US; people (mostly white people) are packing up and moving out of the cities because of the explosion in (mostly black) crime/rioting.

In short, American cities are becoming no-go zones.

Here's the full transcript to go with the above video:
CARLSON: Craziness, but it seems now almost normal. Violence is a feature of daily life at this point in the nation's capital. Over the weekend, 21 people were shot in a single incident in Washington. More than half of them were women, one was a D.C. police officer.

It was the single biggest mass shooting in America this year, and yet, you probably heard nothing about it.

Members of Congress didn't lock arms on the House floor to demand an end to the gun violence. CNN didn't book a procession of weepy teenage gun control activists or extended Town Hall meeting.

News organizations barely touched the story, and when they did, they moved on fast. It wouldn't help the Biden campaign to talk about it, so they didn't talk about it.

As far as we can tell, neither CNN nor MSNBC even mentioned it today. Twenty one people shot in a group in our capital city and they acted like it didn't happen, but it did happen. We're showing it to you on the screen right now.

Twenty one African-Americans shot by a gunman, yet the media spent all weekend telling you about how Simon Cowell fell off his electric bike in Malibu, because really, Black Lives Matter. MSNBC wants you to know that. It's grotesque.

But it's now the rule. Dead bodies don't count unless they are politically useful dead bodies.

Last month, the gang members shot 15 people outside a funeral home in Chicago. It looked like Fallujah. We played some of the video of it on the show. It was very upsetting.

The other channels did not play it. None of the primetime hosts on CNN or MSNBC even mentioned the shooting. They didn't care.

Politicians didn't care either. Muriel Bowser is the Mayor of Washington, D.C. Bowser claims to care about black lives very much. She ordered the slogan Black Lives Matter in fact painted in yellow on the road leading to the White House just to underscore how much she cares.

So how did Muriel Bowser respond when 21 African-Americans were gunned down in her city? Well, she talked about her coronavirus lockdowns.

Bowser has banned gatherings in the city of more than 50 people and apparently there were more than that at the cookout where the shooting occurred. This enraged Muriel Bowser.

Here's what the Mayor said about the shooting yesterday, quote, "It's important as a community that we have zero tolerance for this kind of activity," end quote.

Now to be perfectly clear, Mayor Bowser was not talking about the mass shootings. When she said we need zero tolerance, Bowser is happy to tolerate violence, she does every day. She often encourages violence.

What Bowser won't put up with is citizens violating her lockdown orders. Bowser's Chief of Police, a man called Peter Newsham reiterated that point, quote, "We can't have these large gatherings in the city," the Chief said.

In other words, shootings are acceptable as long as the police don't commit them, but disobey our corona decrees and we will come for you.

The media wholeheartedly agree with this, of course. Violence does not bother them. They encourage it regularly. Disobedience bothers them.

This weekend, motorcycle riders mostly on Harley-Davidsons from all over the country gathered in Sturgis, South Dakota for their annual rally, the Sturgis Rally. Some of them forgot their masks. This outraged our news media.

The people on motorcycles were too masculine and too patriotic, and therefore too unlikely to vote for Joe Biden to go un-criticized. So the media spent a lot of the weekend trying to shame the bikers into disappearing.

In other words, as some of the poorest people in Washington bled onto the sidewalk, this is what your news anchors talked about.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIM ACOSTA, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: A bike rally is drawing tens of thousands of people to a small town in South Dakota for what doctors warn could turn into a coronavirus super spreader event.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Not seeing a lot of masks there. Very little social distancing is what we're hearing from our team on the ground.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tell people what the odds are, tell people what the risks and the dangers are and let them decide and expect them to be responsible.

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: To others, that event, a reckless affront to commonsense and a likely coronavirus super spreader.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Oh, super spreaders. In other words, men who are unapologetically male. They hate that.

Meanwhile, the City of Washington back in the real world continue to spiral toward chaos. In Georgetown, one of the richest, most liberal neighborhoods in the city, certainly, in the country, a group of thugs marched on residential streets in the middle of the night to make certain that no one was sleeping.

People who live there must have been confused. In Georgetown, Black Lives Matter yard signs are about as common as designer dog breeds — it is very common.

The residents apparently thought they bought themselves peace by paying their indulgences with the correct political slogans, but they hadn't.

The fact their neighborhood is still safe is now considered a crime and the mob made that very clear.

[VIDEO CLIP PLAYS]

CARLSON: Did you see that footage on CNN? Oh, you didn't. You saw footage of super spreaders at Sturgis. How dare they ride motorcycles without masks?

Meanwhile, back in Georgetown, again, the real world, just in case the residents here didn't feel sufficiently threatened, the mob then barricaded a key bridge, the Francis Scott Key Bridge. That's the main artery from Georgetown out of the city.

Blocking main arteries out of cities is an obvious threat to public safety. It's far more dangerous than any over attended cookout. But police didn't stop it, they helped the mob. And once again, the media collectively ignored all of it.

And what exactly did the liberal passive heavily elderly residents of Georgetown do to deserve this kind of abuse and harassment from a mob of Joe Biden voters? That's the core question. But no one on television wanted to talk about that. So again, they just ignored the entire thing.

They're doing it all over the country. Story after story, ignored, disappeared down the memory hole because it is politically inconvenient.

In Los Angeles, for example, a City Council member called Mike Bonin voted to slash the LAPD budget by $150 million. He is very opposed to the police, but that didn't stop him from calling the police.

Since April, it turns out that cops have been called to Bonin's home eight separate times, often to deal with — surprise, surprise — protesters.

Bonin's defense is that he didn't make the calls. No. Somehow the LAPD with collusion from rightwing elements made the calls.

Does that make sense? No, it doesn't make sense. But it's good enough for the newspapers in Los Angeles. They're not covering the story. It's not a story. Right.

A guy who votes to defund the police calls them eight times to keep the lunatics from coming through his front door? Not a story. Okay.

Last Thursday, meanwhile, in Portland, Oregon, a city that effectively no longer has a government, rioters threw paint on an elderly woman. What was her crime? She made the mistake of trying to stop them from destroying a building.

Here's why this is so interesting. As the mob attacked her, they explained their agenda, quote, "This isn't your world anymore," they shouted. "Put your mask on." Boy, does that tell you everything.

Meanwhile, in the City of Chicago, rioters have dropped any pretense of ideology. Sure, they'll vote for Joe Biden, obviously, but this isn't about the election. They just want to steal things.

And in effect, authorities there, as they are in so many places, are allowing them to do that.

Early this morning, caravans of looters sacked stores in downtown Chicago. Here's part of it.

[VIDEO CLIP PLAYS]

CARLSON: What country is this? And what's the justification for that? There's always a story at the bottom of these things that the media repeat, allow them to believe it was justified.

The pretext for that theft and destruction you just saw was a false report that a teenager had been executed by the police. It was a lie as it turned out, it usually is a lie.

In fact, a 20-year-old had been killed after shooting at the police. Whatever. We're so used to violence justified by lies that few people seem to notice the difference, and speaking of, just this weekend, Joe Biden honored Michael Brown. That was the man killed in Ferguson, Missouri after he violently attacked a store owner on tape, and then a cop.

Joe Biden apparently doesn't remember that part. He seems to consider Michael Brown a martyr.

It's hard to know who in America still believes these lies. Most people no longer seem to believe anything they hear from politicians. When everything is political, we learn to trust nothing.

But one thing that is real and will always be real is the debris left behind. Bullet holes are real. So are burnt store, so are boarded up windows and terrified neighbors. That will always be real — and we have it.

So what will be the aftermath of all of this? What are America's cities going to look like a year from now? There's no question people flee Georgetown. They may have BLM signs in the driveway, but it doesn't mean they want screaming BLM lunatics on their streets. They don't. Nobody does, actually, no matter what they tell you. No matter what color they are, no one likes that.

That's true for people in Georgetown, in Portland, Oregon, in San Francisco and Chicago, New York — any other place where order and decency have disappeared.

People will not live long with chaos. No matter what they tell you. No matter what signs they put in their yard, they will leave and many of them have already left.

We are about to see one of the great demographic shifts in American history. Unless the insanity stops and soon, our biggest cities will revert to what they were 50 years ago — broke, dirty and dangerous.

On the bright side, we'll have resolved the gentrification problem. So a lot of college professors pat themselves on the back.



Megaphone

Belarusians pay tribute to man killed during post-election protests, large anti-government rally held in Minsk

belarus
This image taken from the Associated Press footage filmed on August 10 shows a protester identified as Alyaksandr Taraykouski with a wound during a rally in Minsk after the Belarusian presidential election.
Taraykouski's family urged protesters not to attend a funeral church service and instead gather near the subway station where he died.

Despite the plea, hundreds gathered outside the church service waving flags and photos of Taraykouski.

Hundreds of others entered the hall where the ceremony took place to lay flowers and wreaths.

At least two people have been killed, hundreds injured, and thousands detained in protests since the controversial August 9 election that saw Lukashenka, in power since 1994, declared the winner.

Comment: More coverage of the continuing protests from RT:
Anti-government sentiment shows no sign of quieting down in Belarus with tens of thousands attending a protest in the capital, Minsk on Sunday. Hours earlier, a pro-government rally was held in the city.



The demonstration is taking place exactly one week after the controversial presidential election in Belarus. The outcome, which gave incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko his sixth term, was rejected by the opposition, who accused the government of rigging the vote. A police crackdown launched against them angered the general public, with mass protests and walkouts held throughout the week.


Sunday's protest in Minsk is focused around a memorial to the fight against Nazi Germany, which is located near a war museum and that has a lot of space around it.

Some estimates say as many as 100,000 people or even more may be attending, which would be an impressive achievement for the opposition since Minsk only has around two million residents.


Smaller but nevertheless massive rallies were held in other Belarusian cities like Grodno and Brest.


The demonstrators demand that Lukashenko stand down, while calling for justice for the victims of police brutality which occurred in the days after last week's vote.

Lukashenko rejected all calls to review the results of the election, and has repeatedly referred to his critics as troublemakers trying to oust him in a foreign-orchestrated campaign.

Earlier on Sunday, a pro-government demonstration was held in Minsk with hundreds of thousands of people attending. The president appeared at the rally to thank his supporters and to declare that he would not bow to the pressure because doing so would mean forsaking his country.

Opposition media reported that many of the participants of that rally were brought from outside the city and made to participate under duress.
See also:


Brick Wall

Proud Boys march devolves into violence as group clashes with counter-protesters in Michigan

proud boys kalamazoo
© samueljrob (Twitter)
Members of the right-wing group Proud Boys were met with angry counter demos at a march in Michigan, with the clashes between the two sides growing so heated that riot police stepped in to clear the area.

Videos from the event show a large group of Proud Boys marching in Kalamazoo on Saturday, most holding American flags and being confronted by counter-protesters who tried to break up the march. As the two groups start mixing, several fistfights and pushing matches can be seen breaking out.

Comment: See also:


NPC

The Floridian Inquisition

inquisition
I'm an attorney representing a professor at the University of Central Florida who is being subjected by the university to what can only be called an inquisition after expressing opinions on Twitter that led to widespread calls for his firing. UCF is a public institution — an instrument of the state — and is now bringing its full power to bear against a man who dared to question the prevailing orthodoxy that has quickly descended over so many of this country's institutions. I cannot bear witness to what the university is doing to this man without speaking out against it. If we do not challenge this egregious abuse of power, things will only get worse.

Professor Charles Negy is a wonderfully eccentric man, someone who teaches extraordinarily controversial subjects — Cross-Cultural Psychology and Sexual Behavior — with bluntness and humor. He is exactly the kind of professor you want in college: someone who is passionate about his subject, who will challenge your deeply-held assumptions, and who encourages free and open discussion in the classroom. Negy's bluntness has occasionally ruffled feathers over the years, but throughout his 22-year career at UCF he has received consistently superior performance reviews. For the past four years, for example, he has received an evaluation rating of "Outstanding" for his instruction and advising.

In June, however, things changed overnight for Negy after he posted a characteristically blunt tweet to his personal Twitter account:

charles negy tweet
Immediately, #UCFfirehim began trending on Twitter and people began to protest both on UCF's campus and outside Negy's home.

Comment: See also: Florida University investigating professor who tweeted 'black privilege is real'


Attention

How would you feel about a nationwide mask mandate that forced you to wear a mask in public at all times?

masks mother child window
© Getty Images
I think that this headline is going to upset a lot of people, and it should. Personally, I believe that if you want to wear a mask you should be able to wear a mask, but if you don't want to wear a mask you should not be forced to wear one. And I also believe that we should be respectful of the choices that others have made. I have seen so many instances where a crazed individual has viciously gone after someone else for either wearing or not wearing a mask, and that should not be happening. Why don't we all just chill out and let people deal with this pandemic however they want to deal with it? To me, that makes a whole lot of sense. Unfortunately, many of our control freak politicians want to micromanage our behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic, and that includes the Democratic candidate for president.

On Thursday, Joe Biden stated that he supports "mandatory mask wearing" in every U.S. state...
Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, called for a nationwide mask mandate on Thursday, drawing a sharp contrast with President Donald Trump, who rarely wears a mask himself and opposes such mandates.

"Every single American should be wearing a mask when they're outside for the next three months at a minimum," Biden said at a press appearance in Wilmington, Delaware. "Every governor should mandate mandatory mask wearing. The estimates by the experts are that it will save over 40,000 lives in the next three months. Forty thousand lives, if people act responsibly."

Comment: See also:


Arrow Down

Possible serial horse killer in Texas after 5 found butchered

Horses next to the Rio Grande river
© HeavyHorses are seen next to the Rio Grande river in January.
Law enforcement officials in Texas are warning about a possible serial horse killer in Pearland. Five horses have been found slaughtered and officials are concerned this may be at the hands of the same person. Pearland is located within the Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land metropolitan area, mostly in Brazoria County. (The photo above is of horses in Texas in January; they are not connected with the Pearland cases.)

Here's what you need to know.

In a post shared on Facebook, the Pearland Police Department warned about a possible serial horse killer after discovering five horses slaughtered since May. The most recent horses were discovered on August 8. Police have said that the killings might be the result of a serial horse killer, ABC 13 reported.

The Most Recent Horses Were Found on August 8 on Hooper Road

The police shared that two horses found August 8 on the 14000 block of Hooper Road. This was the most recent gruesome discovery.

The horses' owner arrived at her property and learned that her horses were missing and part of her fence had been cut. The horses were found dead and butchered about half a mile away, Pearland Police shared. The police said that their "backstraps and hindquarters" were removed.

Comment: This has been happening almost daily in France for the last 6 months: 'Barbaric' horse killings put French countryside on alert


Newspaper

10 killed in Somalia in 'Islamic extremist' attack on Mogadishu hotel

mogadishu
© Facebook / Elite HotelFILE PHOTO: Elite Hotel
A Somali police officer says at least 10 people have been killed and more than a dozen others injured in an ongoing siege at a beachside hotel in Somalia's capital where security forces are battling Islamic extremist gunmen who have invaded the building,

Security forces have so far shot dead two of the attackers in the hotel amid fears of hostage crisis inside the complex, said Ismail Mukhtar, spokesman of Somalia's information ministry.

Military vehicles could be seen taking positions around the hotel amid the darkness of night, that officials worry could prolong the siege.

Capt. Mohamed Hussein told The Associated Press that the attack started with a powerful car bomb which blew off the security gates to the Elite Hotel. Then gunmen ran inside and took hostages, mostly young men and women who were dining at the hotel, he said.

X

Organizer, of Asheville 'Back the Blue' rally, received no support from the city or the media

Flags w bluestripe
© Newsbreak.com/KJN
The organizer of a "Back the Blue" rally in Asheville, North Carolina said he was astonished at the large turnout for the Aug. 1 event — especially since it was largely ignored by local officials and media.

Ed Browne said he publicized the event on Facebook and residents "reported about 300 bikers and about the same or more people in cars and trucks took part in the parade" totaling well over 1,000 people, The Asheville Tribune reported.
"As a disabled veteran and concerned citizen, I created the event on Facebook and posted it to several different sites locally to get people to stand up, put the keyboard down and do something that could change the dynamics and morale of our local law enforcement agencies. A few days passed and the event was being circulated and was gaining support on a viral scale locally."
Browne said the "Back the Blue" event (not to be confused with the national group which Browne said his event has no affiliation with) was held to
"promote support from the community for our law enforcement officers that stand in the door protecting and serving our communities daily. We want these men and women to know that their communities back them and are willing to stand for them loudly and boldly."