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Tue, 02 Nov 2021
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UK government's callous underfunding of NHS increases operation waiting times by 50% in 1 year

NHS nurses pin
© Getty
The number of patients in England who have been forced to wait six months or longer for NHS treatment has risen by nearly 70,000 in the space of a year, official figures showed, as experts warned not enough is being done to tackle the backlog that developed this winter.

More than 211,000 people have been waiting since before Christmas for operations or treatment - an increase of 48 per cent on the same NHS England figures from 2017.

The Royal College of Surgeons said many of these people will be in "severe pain and discomfort" which could well be affecting their ability to work or cope with day-to-day tasks.

Over 3,100 patients have waited over a year, the NHS England figures show.

Comment: In the video below an NHS GP describes how 8 years of deliberate underfunding by the Conservative government has led to dangerous understaffing issues, stealthy fragmentation and and the encroaching privatisation of services which, after running successfully for 70 years, are now resulting in failures within the system. One need only look to the abject failure of the privatised railways and water suppliers to have an idea of the bleak future that lies ahead for the UK.






USA

DHS: Migrants are intentionally leaving their children in government shelters and taking advantage of asylum loopholes

immigrant arrest
© John Moore/Getty Images
Many Central American migrants slated for deportation are choosing to leave their own children behind in U.S. government shelters, says an official at the Department of Homeland Security.

"We're seeing many of these [migrant] parents who have been removed decline to take their child," said Matthew Albence, the Executive Associate Director of Enforcement and Removal Operations division at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

He continued:
I will say that for the vast majority of the individuals [who leave their children]... it is because they completed the smuggling act. Their goal when they paid their smuggler, the criminal organizations, these cartels, $5,000 or $6,000 to smuggle themselves into the country, their goal was to get their child here. They've accomplished that goal. So if they return on their own [to their home country], they are willing to do so and leave the child here because that was the intended goal of their illegal entry in the first place.

Fire

I was the mob until the mob came for me: Tale of an ex-social justice warrior

man with head erased
I drive food delivery for an online app to make rent and support myself and my young family. This is my new life. I once had a well paid job in what might be described as the social justice industry. Then I upset the wrong person, and within a short window of time, I was considered too toxic for my employer's taste. I was publicly shamed, mobbed, and reduced to a symbol of male privilege. I was cast out of my career and my professional community. Writing anything under my own byline now would invite a renewal of this mobbing - which is why, with my editor's permission, I am writing this under a pseudonym. He knows who I am.

In my previous life, I was a self-righteous social justice crusader. I would use my mid-sized Twitter and Facebook platforms to signal my wokeness on topics such as LBGT rights, rape culture, and racial injustice. Many of the opinions I held then are still opinions that I hold today. But I now realize that my social-media hyperactivity was, in reality, doing more harm than good.

Comment:


Light Sabers

The war on curiosity and the role of confirmation bias

protesters
Last March, protestors at Middlebury College in Vermont sent professor Allison Stanger to the hospital with a neck injury. Stanger's crime? She had the nerve to ask the protestors to allow the conservative/libertarian author Dr. Charles Murray to speak, and then to engage in a debate after his speech.

According to news accounts, after about 20 minutes of protestors shouting down Murray's ability to speak, "Professor Stanger then took the microphone and asked the students, 'Can you just listen for one minute.' Many in the audience replied, 'no.' She added that, 'I spent a lot of time preparing hard questions.' Finally, she conceded that, 'You're not going to let us speak.'"

Stanger is a liberal professor who chose to combat Murray's ideas with words, not violence or the heckler's veto. This was simply unacceptable to the protestors.

Comment:


Black Cat

Proposed 'unmasking' law has left-wing Antifa terrorists 'freaking out'

antifa
© Jason Connolly/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
The left-wing terrorist organization that calls itself Antifa is "freaking out" over a proposed law that would enhance penalties for anyone who "injures, oppresses, threatens, or intimidates any person" while wearing a disguise or mask.

Throughout our country, and for a number of years now - and primarily because the establishment media fantasizes about, promotes, enflames and approves of the violence committed against the right (naturally, HuffPo opposes the unmasking law) - Antifa has been allowed to run rampant, committing countless acts of violence against everyday, peaceful supporters of President Donald Trump.

Antifa has also been responsible for untold amounts of vandalism and property damage, and targets the alt-right.

Heart - Black

Sick sleight of hand: Pedophiles attempt to rebrand themselves as 'Minor Attracted Persons' to gain acceptance

pedophile
In a disturbing attempt to normalize pedophilia as a mainstream "sexual orientation," pedophiles are rebranding themselves as "Minor Attracted Persons," with the hope that they will be accepted as part of the LGBT community.

A website has been established called "The Prevention Project," which sports the tagline "Everyone deserves support," and attempts to push two disgusting ideas-that there are different classes of "pedophiles" for different ages of children that should be accepted by society, and that "non-offending pedophiles" should be praised for the fact that they have yet to molest a child.

The Prevention Project defines a "pedophile" as an adult who is attracted to pre-pubescent children, and claims that there are different classes of "pedophiles," based on the age of the child, which include infantophiles (pedophiles who are attracted only to infants), hebephiles (pedophiles who are attracted to pubescent children), and ephebophiles (pedophiles who are attracted to post-pubescent children).

The website then went on to argue that in the case of the fictional character "John," his sexual attraction to children, aged 6-12, was justified because he had yet to harm a child or to act on his sickening desires, and anyone who believed John was in the wrong was simply influenced by "religious beliefs." The Prevention Project stated:

Comment: If pedophilia is ever accepted as an alternative sexual choice by normal people it's curtains for civilization.


Airplane

Vaping Air China co-pilot fired after causing plane to plummet 19,600 feet

Air China
© Regis Duvignau/ Reuters
Investigators have revealed that passengers on an Air China flight endured a gut wrenching 19,600 feet plummet because the plane's co-pilot needed to get his tobacco fix.

Oxygen masks fell from the cabin ceiling as flight CA106 from Hong Kong to Dalian suffered the sharp loss of altitude on Tuesday. The plane started its unplanned descent about 30 minutes after taking off, and data from flight tracking website FlightAware shows it fell 4,200 (14,100 feet) in four and a half minutes.

Passengers were told the aircraft was in emergency descent due to cabin decompression. Once the plane reached an altitude of 3,000 meters (10,000 feet), it steadied and soon began to gain altitude again. Despite the terrifying incident the flight was able to complete its journey and landed safely in Dalian.

USA

Concerned neighbors report child trafficking, find out black site is run by government contractors

immigrant kids
When concerned neighbors called police because they believed dozens of children were being trafficked in their neighborhood, they learned that the children were actually being held in a black site prison operated by defense contractors.

A vacant office building with dark windows in a quiet neighborhood has become a subject of controversy after residents began documenting the dozens of children who were transported to the building in white vans, and then never seen again.

The building is not licensed to hold children or to act as a shelter, and it is owned by MVM Inc., a defense contractor that once provided guards for CIA facilities in Iraq and has made nearly $250 million transporting immigrant children since 2014, according to a report from Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting.

The company's website specifically claims that "the current services MVM provides consist of transporting undocumented families and unaccompanied children to Department of Health and Human Services designated facilities - we have not and currently do not operate shelters or any other type of housing for minors."

War Whore

Georgia police officers caught on bodycam 'flipping coin to decide arrest'

Cops
Two Georgia police officers have been suspended after shocking bodycam footage apparently showed the pair deciding whether to arrest a woman suspected of dangerous driving based on a coin toss.

Officers Courtney Brown and Kristee Wilson from Roswell Police Department in Georgia stopped driver Sarah Webb on suspicion of excessive speeding in wet conditions in April this year. When the pair pulled Webb over, the woman explained that she was late for work and pleaded with Brown to give her a speeding fine rather than arrest her on the much more serious charge of dangerous driving.

Bodycam footage then shows Brown returning to her police cruiser to consult with her partner. Wilson, who is heard off-camera saying "'a' for heads and 'r' for tails," then opens a coin-toss app on her phone. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the coin flip came up 'r' for release but the officers arrested the woman. Wilson is heard saying '23', the code for arrest.

Comment: More on Officers Courtney Brown and Kristee Wilson and the arrest of Sarah Ashley Webb:




Info

Skin in the Game: How a dictatorship of the small minority - or the most intolerant - wins

Tower of Babel

Tower of Babel
(Chapter from Skin in the Game)

How Europe will eat Halal - Why you don't have to smoke in the smoking section - Your food choices on the fall of the Saudi king - How to prevent a friend from working too hard -Omar Sharif 's conversion - How to make a market collapse

The best example I know that gives insights into the functioning of a complex system is with the following situation. It suffices for an intransigent minority - a certain type of intransigent minorities - to reach a minutely small level, say three or four percent of the total population, for the entire population to have to submit to their preferences. Further, an optical illusion comes with the dominance of the minority: a naive observer would be under the impression that the choices and preferences are those of the majority. If it seems absurd, it is because our scientific intuitions aren't calibrated for that (fughedabout scientific and academic intuitions and snap judgments; they don't work and your standard intellectualization fails with complex systems, though not your grandmothers' wisdom).

The main idea behind complex systems is that the ensemble behaves in way not predicted by the components. The interactions matter more than the nature of the units. Studying individual ants will never (one can safely say never for most such situations), never give us an idea on how the ant colony operates. For that, one needs to understand an ant colony as an ant colony, no less, no more, not a collection of ants. This is called an "emergent" property of the whole, by which parts and whole differ because what matters is the interactions between such parts. And interactions can obey very simple rules. The rule we discuss in this chapter is the minority rule.

Comment: For more on Taleb's ideas on asymmetrical influence, listen in: The Truth Perspective: Postmodern Trump Derangement Syndrome and Skin in the Game