Wednesday, August 14, 2013

The reducto ad absurdium of government health care in Nova Scotia

It would be comic if it wasn't so tragic. This week a series of errors were revealed in Nova Scotia cancer treatment. highlights include one person getting a needless mastectomy while another who was supposed to didn't get the operation. Also there was apparently a mixup around biopsies between two other people and someone got scheduled for another person's procedure.

The whole thing is pretty unsurprising, given the money line from the article "no one will be disciplined as a result of these incidents". yep see you tomorrow, hey it's just cancer and everyone dies eventually of something so whatever.

the quote was hardly necessary. the media has been so passivized and cowed by the monopoly health care system that I haven't seen a single call for accountability for this or anyone to be fired or even disciplined. not in the herald and not on atv news either. just vague calls for more spending.

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

Picked it up at a yard sale I happened by with the kids one day. The guy wanted $2 for it. I offered a quarter. He said I could have it for free.

I'd heard of it but never read it. It was interesting. Only 35 pages and not too hard to read. The major points seem to be the workers seizing control of the means of production, abolishing of private property, and ban religion.

In chapter 2 there's a 10 point plan for the proletariat. Interesting that at least some of those items have been implemented.

In chapter 3 there's a survey of various other socialist and workers parties at the time of the writing in 1848. Later in a forward to a 1872 English translation Marx and Engels point out that "... the progress of history has swept from off the earth the greater portion of the political parties there enumerated". That remains true to this day. Marxism undeniably lives on while political parties and even countries have come and gone.