All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

Houston hospitals turning away patients as coronavirus overwhelms ERs | The Texas Tribune

The increase in ambulance diversions, coupled with the spike in patients being held indefinitely in emergency rooms, are the latest indicators that Houston hospitals are straining to keep up with a surge of new coronavirus patients. ProPublica and NBC News have previously reported that a public hospital in Houston ran out of a medication to treat COVID-19 patients and that a spike in at-home deaths from cardiac arrest suggests that the death toll from the coronavirus may be higher than official statistics show.

Source: Houston hospitals turning away patients as coronavirus overwhelms ERs | The Texas Tribune

Trump commutes prison sentence for Roger Stone, convicted of lying to Congress – Los Angeles Times – (ROTFLMAO – #45 avoids getting run over by bus by letting “buddy” off the hook – no respect for law here.)

President Trump has commuted the prison sentence of Roger Stone, a longtime confidant and Republican operative who was found guilty last year of seven felony counts, including witness tampering and lying to Congress during the Russia investigation.

Source: Trump pardons Roger Stone, convicted of lying to Congress – Los Angeles Times

The Uprising of 60,000 Jamaicans that Changed the Very Nature of Revolt — Repeating Islands

This article by Tom Zoellner (Zócalo Public Square) is from May 28, 2020, but timely. In this essay, Zoellner reminds us that “the ways of resistance are timeless.” He writes that, “just months after the groundbreaking 1831 Rebellion, the British Empire abolished slavery.” [Many thanks to Peter Jordens for bringing this item to our attention.] […]

The Uprising of 60,000 Jamaicans that Changed the Very Nature of Revolt — Repeating Islands

Then, on the night of December 27, 1831, “the business” opened. The first signal fires were lit in the hills above Montego Bay, and soon plantation houses went up in flames across the richest West Indian colony of the British empire. White Jamaica found itself contending with its biggest insurrection ever. It took five weeks for a British military crackdown to restore quiet.

The rebellion’s end would not be a lasting defeat. Much of the British public was already disgusted by slavery—the price of maintaining it seemed to be endless wars overseas—and after the Jamaica rebellion, political pressure built. Within 18 months of the first fire, slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire.

Dataminr helped police surveil BLM protestors using their tweets

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AI startup Dataminr helped law enforcement surveil the ongoing protests against police violence by analyzing tweets about the demonstrations, the Intercept reports. The company accessed the data through Twitter‘s “firehouse,” a real-time stream of all tweets on the platform that’s rarely provided to tech firms. The alerts were sourced from both news reporters and bystanders watching or attending the rallies. According to internal documents reviewed by the Intercept, Dataminr also kept records of upcoming protests to help staff prepare their monitoring plans. Twitter prohibits the use of its data and APIs for surveillance, but it appears that Dataminr has exploited a semantic loophole…

This story continues at The Next Web

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Leading German Economist: “The Virus Must Be Contained Before the Economy Can Recover” – DER SPIEGEL

DER SPIEGEL: When the virus began spreading, the government froze large parts of the economy. Was the lockdown excessive?

Fuest: No. Experience from previous pandemics like the Spanish flu suggest that the economic damage will be smaller if the disease is fought with determination. As long as the spread of the virus continues, people reduce their economic activities on their own. They consume and produce less because they are afraid of infection. The virus must be contained before the economy can recover. The contradiction between health and economic interests, which has been frequently discussed in the corona crisis, doesn’t really exist.

Source: Leading German Economist: “The Virus Must Be Contained Before the Economy Can Recover” – DER SPIEGEL

Pelvic mesh scandal is what happens when men with power ignore women | Richard Vize | Society | The Guardian

At the heart of these scandals is a refusal to listen to the people who were suffering. Doctors simply would not believe women with mesh implants were enduring excruciating pain and many other consequences, including contemplating suicide. Much of this revolved around male doctors dismissing the concerns of middle-aged women.

This left the patients feeling belittled, ignored and above all disempowered. Any notion of shared decision-making was destroyed. This same dismissal of the voice of the patient is evident in the repeated failures uncovered to obtain anything approaching informed consent for treatment, with little or no information provided on options or risks. Astonishingly, Lady Cumberlege reports that even now hundreds of women are becoming pregnant and taking sodium valproate while unaware of the risks.

 

Source: Pelvic mesh scandal is what happens when men with power ignore women | Richard Vize | Society | The Guardian

‘Wildly inappropriate’: VOA purge continues as foreign journalists’ visas not renewed | Media | The Guardian

Pack fired all the station directors who had not already resigned, and dissolved the bipartisan managing boards of the broadcasting organisations, replacing them with himself and five other Trump loyalists.

Source: ‘Wildly inappropriate’: VOA purge continues as foreign journalists’ visas not renewed | Media | The Guardian