UK Gives Up Last African Colony This Week, "Get Out Now Or You Will Die" -Tampa Mayor, FEMA Blocking Aid in NC--Credible Sources Confirm, Trading Warlord for WNBA Star Goes Bad (The Five for 10/08/24)
Hey, welcome to The Five.
One quick note before we begin …As of this month, I’m now offering ghost writing services. Currently, I’m penning a book with an ex-cocaine dealer (more on that later).
If you enjoy what I do and:
A). Want to write a personal memoir
B). Need to write a business book to grow your reach and profits
and/or
C). Realize that someone crafting expert communication (emails, blog posts…and yes, books) for your organization will help accelerate it’s growth, feel free to get in touch.
This Substack has maintained a 50% open rate over the last 4 years (a pretty staggering number in the world of email) and I’d love to help you do the same.
Email seth@manx.solutions to get the conversation rolling.
Now, let’s dive into the news.
[one]
Former UFC fighter and Special Forces sniper Tim Kennedy knows a thing or two about extracting people from deadly situations. Kennedy founded Save our Allies to help extract Afghan who had served the US, and were left behind after the fall of Kabul.
Kennedy was on the ground over the weekend in North Carolina, and describes an abysmal FEMA-led recovery effort, including FEMA blocking private citizens and nonprofits from delivering life-saving aid.
"What was clearly absent was the state and federal response. The men and women that showed up from FEMA, that is still woefully absent, there was no command and control. We were begging and pleading for the state to hand over command to the United States military… I wanted real leaders to understand a warlike scenario, this is what it is like to take control. It was absolutely broken," Kennedy, a former Green Beret, said.
"The men and women on the ground were doing the best they can. But FEMA has every priority wrong," he continued. "They didn’t know what to do or where to do it or how to access these mountains. They were turning people away trying to deliver funds. They're telling helicopters to land, the president's coming in and creating a no-fly zone while we’re doing airborne evacuations. None of it made sense…for FEMA to come and start impeding the efforts of organizations like ours trying to get into deliver goods. It is unconscionable."
This was corroborated by Elon Musk, who took to X to give an update on delivering free Starlink service to the area.
As of last night, the Associated Press reported the death toll in North Carolina at 227, but Kennedy believes that number will double when the bodies are all recovered.
It may never be clear how many of those deaths were due to the poorly executed rescue efforts.
[two]
Hurricane Melvin doesn’t make landfall in Florida until tomorrow, but the Mayor of Tampa has a pretty important message for residents, which she shared on CNN.
And I can say without a doubt, Any dramatization whatsoever. If you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you're gonna die.
It’s a 10 to 12 foot surge. I mean, if this takes a jog to the south, That's going to save us from the storm surge, but it stays on the track that it's projected to be on right now. Or if it goes a bit north, would be even worse. Some of the predictions are saying that Pinellas County to the south of us, the entire county is going to be underwater.
So, this is something that I have never seen. In my life, and I can tell you that anyone who was born and raised in the Tampa Bay area has never seen anything like this before. People need to get out. And your message is just this isn't survivable. This if we have that predicted storm surge, it is not survivable.
[three]
Gender reassignment surgeries and puberty blockers for minors are big, big business in hospitals these days.
U.S. hospitals charged nearly $120 million over five years for sex-change procedures performed on around 14,000 children, according to new data compiled by medical watchdog Do No Harm.
The first-of-its-kind database, which logs sex-change procedures given to children nationwide between 2019 and 2023, catalogs a total of 5,747 minors who underwent sex-change surgeries, along with 8,579 who obtained puberty blockers or cross sex hormones.
Do No Harm believes the problem is likely even bigger than the data shows. The numbers, which are drawn from insurance claims data across all 50 states, do not include self-pay, charity payments, internal Veterans Affairs claims or patients covered by Kaiser Health Plans.
To create its dataset, the watchdog group matched gender-related diagnosis codes with codes for procedures related to gender transitions, such as body modification surgeries, cross sex hormones and puberty blockers.
The term “profit motive” often gets thrown around by the political left…and I have no idea why half the the political spectrum can’t seem to apply it here.
In 2022, a video leaked from Vanderbilt in which a hospital administrator describes trans patients as functional ATMs for the medical system.
Some of our BUMC financial folks in 20, in August of 20, I'm sorry, October of 2016, so it's already a couple years ago, put down some costs of how much money we think each patient would bring in.
And this is only including top surgery. This doesn't include any bottom surgery. And, um, it's a lot of money. These surgeries make a lot of money. Um, so females and males, chest reconstruction. Um, patient just on routine hormone treatment, who I've only seen a few times a year, can bring in several thousand dollars.
That requires a lot of visits and labs. It actually makes money for the hospital. Now these I got from the internet, um, but it's from, uh, the Philadelphia Center for Transgender Surgery which has, um, does a lot of, um, surgery for patients. And I just wanted to give you an idea of how much these bottom surgeries are making.
...They require a lot of follow ups. They require a lot of OR time. And they make money. They make money for the hospital.
Nobody (ok, ALMOST nobody) is going to step in and tell a consenting adult what they can and can’t do with their own body.
However, with trans surgery regret rising in minor patients…the fact that there’s a LOT of money in this is certainly worth noting.
[four]
The United Kingdom just gave up it’s final African colony.
Yes, you read that right.
The UK has agreed to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, ending years of bitter dispute over Britain’s last African colony.
The agreement will allow a right of return for Chagossians, whom the UK expelled from their homes in the 1960s and 1970s, in what has been described as a crime against humanity and one of the most shameful episodes of postwar colonialism.
However, there will be an exception for the key island of Diego Garcia, which is home to a joint UK-US military base, and which will remain under UK control. Plans for the base were the reason the UK severed the Chagos Islands from the rest of Mauritius when it granted the latter independence in 1968 and forcibly displaced up to 2,000 people.
There was a mixed reaction to the announcement from Chagossians, not all of whom are happy that sovereignty has been handed to Mauritius.
But Olivier Bancoult, chair of the Chagos Refugee Group, who was four years old when his family was deported to Mauritius, welcomed it, describing it as “a big day”.
“This has been a long struggle lasting more than 40 years and many of our people have passed away,” said Bancoult, who had mounted a series of legal challenges over the sovereignty of the islands in the UK courts since 2000. “But today is a sign of recognition of the injustice done against Chagossians who were forced to leave their homes.”
He said it was not yet clear how many Chagossians would like to return to the islands, many of which are uninhabitable. While acknowledging that those born on the largest island – Diego Garcia – would not be able to return, he expressed hope that Chagossians could be prioritised for jobs there.
[five]
And finally, remember that guy we swapped to get WNBA star out of Russian prison.
Viktor “The Merchant of Death” Bout was not reformed by his time in American prison, and is once again dealing large amounts of arms to America’s enemies.
\Viktor Bout, 57, allegedly brokered a $10 million deal in August to supply the Yemen-based terror group with automatic weapons, including AK-47 rifles, people familiar with the deal told the Wall Street Journal.
The sources, however, said the deal included talks that could very well open the door to missile purchases that threaten Israel, as well as America’s efforts to protect the region.
The alleged deal came together when Houthi operatives traveled to Moscow over the summer posing as merchants set to buy pesticides and vehicles, according to the WSJ.
While there, the Houthis were allegedly greeted by Bout’s familiar face — he became a Russian lawmaker last year following his release from prison.
As they secured automatic weapons from the infamous arms dealer, who inspired the 2005 Nicolas Cage movie “Lord of War,” the Houthi representatives allegedly discussed future deals with Russia.
Those deals included the sale of Kornet anti-tank missiles and anti-aircraft weapons, a European security official told the WSJ.
Well that…could have gone better.
Until the next one,
-sth