A brilliant talk that punctures current discourse on climate ambition in Scotland, setting out what's really needed, by @KevinClimate for @ScotClimateCA

📽️ https://t.co/i02FtSkJT8 📽️

Well worth watching. Otherwise, here's a summary thread 👇
1/10

Want scientific assessment of what Scotland should do to achieve Paris Agreement temperature targets? Look to carbon budgets. See that a failure to rapidly reduce emissions will eat up the carbon budget in just a few years, leaving impossible burdens for future generations. 2/10

Are UK emissions down 45% in 30 years? Not when including emissions from aviation & shipping, and imports & exports – then they are only down 10%. Over three decades, we have had reductions of less than 0.5% per year. 3/10

Scotland’s average per person consumption emissions are still double the global average. Scotland’s consumption emissions have not meaningfully reduced in the last 20 years… 4/10

Principles of global equity and justice mean that Scotland’s fair slice of the global carbon budget is just a few hundred million tonnes of CO2, which is less than ten years of Scotland’s emissions at current levels. 5/10

Our #VIADUCT_EU Guest Lecture: "EU-Turkey-Russia Energy Security Realm" is starting now!

With @MarcoSiddi (@FIIA_fi), Suhnaz Yilmaz from @kocuniversity

Follow the highlights here!

/THREAD

"Energy security is traditionally defined as a government's efforts to ensure energy supply at a good price"

- Suhnaz Yilmaz from @kocuniversity

/2

"The EU adopts a comprehensive approach, going beyond the notion of uninterrupted supply and affordability to highlight issues of sustainability and environmental concerns"

- Suhnaz Yilmaz from @kocuniversity

/3

"While #COVID19 has posed challenges, foreign policy dynamics have made unclear how sustainability and environment concerns will factor into recovery"

- Suhnaz Yilmaz from @kocuniversity

/4

"World Population is expected to increase (on current trends) from 7.4bn to more the 9bn in 2040. It is not only a growing population, but a rapidly urbanising population"

- Suhnaz Yilmaz from @kocuniversity

/5

Dear @nsitharaman and @narendramodi, with having full faith in you & your government, I wish to draw your attention to certain facts. A thread

We haven’t come across or heard incident of corruption against your government which should be a normal practice but yet when compared with the previous UPA government, it is a commendable achievement

However the situation is not as good at the ground level. There has been lesser corruption because of use of systems driven techniques and lesser human intervention. But still there is rampant corruption in many departments & ministries, by bureaucrats & officers

Officers including IRS officers at Income Tax office both at investigation & assessments level, Enfircement Directorate dealing in FEMA, PMLA, IT. Customs offices, GST department again at all levels to name a few are highly corrupt

I and my office have been dealing with many of them on behalf of our clients and regularly come across several incidents of revenue officers asking for huge money and threatening to open old cases and harass clients on various counts

Motivation, Mindset, Failure and Luck

Losing in order to win - thoughts for new investors

[Thread]

I started investing in July 2017

I had £20,000 / $25,000 saved

I had realised that we were in a middle-class trap & wanted to change our future

MOTIVATION

I spent my 20s working on a business idea that failed

The saga had cost a lot of time, energy & money. It put a big strain on my relationship

It put me in a financial hole that had taken years to dig out from. I ended up at a big consulting firm

I consulted to the UK's National Health Service but I wasn't always convinced about the value for money being delivered through our projects

I ended up switching sides & working for the NHS

Less travel, more relationship time

Job security & a stable income

There were tradeoffs though

A smaller salary for one

Got married. Bought a house. Had kids.

The kids changed everything. Your worldview shifts

I was scared for their future

The cost of living, the cost of education, the cost of property

All. Going. Up.

I turned to investing to improve our future.

Waiting till I was 68 years old to pay off our mortgage and collect a pension was not what I wanted from life

A family friend had talked to me about investing when I was a teenager. But I had never taken action.

Thread about Shashanka and alleged persecution of the Buddhists. The purpose of this thread is to defy their claims while tackling a few other issues.

(Very long thread but useful) 1/n

Shashanka was a Shaivite king of Gauda with his capital being Karnasuvarna.
He is often accused to be a persecutor of Buddhists by the certain historians prejudiced folks to form a picture that Hindu kings were also against other religions just like the muslim kings. 2/n

Much of Shashanka's life after 619 CE is not very much known to us. Historians primarily cite from a few sources like 1) Banabhatta's Harshacharita and 2) Hsuan Tsung's Si Yu Ki(SYK), both being 7th century texts and 3/n

3) Manjushri Mula Kalpa(MMK), an 8th century text sometimes also dated as a 12th century text. 4/n

The method of accusing Shashanka as a Buddhist hater is established by saying that Shashanka desecrated Buddha's sacred marks, destroyed the Bodhi Tree in Gaya and replaced the Buddha statue w Shiva after which he died as he incurred a mortal flesh-rotting disease 5/n

[anan] Tsuchiya Tao × Murakami Nijiro Cross Talk

Nijiro: When I was offered the role of Chishiya, it wasn't long before the crank start. I remember downloading all the volumes of the original manga and reading it in one sitting on the airplane.
Tao: Wow! just in one sitting.

Nijiro: I was going to read it while thinking about whether I could play Chishiya or not, but it was so interesting that I forgot about that and got absorbed in it (laughs)
Tao: I read it like crazy too. I thought it'd be difficult to make a live-action based on a manga.

Some authors have been drawing for decades, and then they put the story together in a few hours in a movie or drama. I had a hard time believing that the appeal of the story would be conveyed properly. But when I realized that there are some fans of the original manga

who will watch the live-action version, but there are also people who will read the original for the first time after watching the live-action version, I was able to switch to pursuing the fun of the live-action version.

Nijiro: I studied abroad in Canada for a year when I was a student, and I had a strong image of manga and ninja when I thought of Japanese. Incidentally, Nijiro was called NINJA because (Nijiro) looked like (Ninja) when written in Roman letters.
Tao: I see! (laughs)

1. This THREAD has everything.

Jus cogens.

Hans Kelsen.

The Israel-Egypt conflict.

The right of self-defense and Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.

Buckle. Up. 🧵

2. On August 1, 1951, the UN Security Council met to discuss "Restrictions imposed by Egypt on the passage of ships through the Suez Canal" bound for Israel.

3. Mahmoud Fawzi, Egypt's UN representative, claimed that a state of war still existed between Egypt and Israel, despite their 1949 General Armistice Agreement, and that Egypt retained its belligerent right to visit and search neutral vessels for war materials.

4. Fawzi grounded this right in "the right of self-preservation and self-defence, which ... transcends all other rights," and even hinted that Article 51 of the UN Charter may not limit the right of self-defense.

5. And then ...

... it happened.

Fawzi quoted Hans Kelsen ...

... suggesting that the right of self-defense was ...

jus cogens.

A peremptory norm of general international law that "cannot be affected by any treaty," not even the Charter.

How dispossession and corporate greed leads to environmental harm, a worked example form modern day Scotland.

Thread 1/19

On Saturday 12/12/20 I saw this on a Facebook group of which I am a member. The comment from the poster mentioned it was taken near Langholm in Dumfriesshire.

It appears to show the use of a forestry plough peat soil

2/19

I'm partisan enough to admit that my initial idea was that this might be on Langholm Moor which was the site of a controversial experiment in grouse moor management. I contacted the poster and he sent me this map of the location. Which is not on Langholm Moor 3/19

The location is significant. But before I go into it, a quick explanation of what you are looking at. This photo shows peat ploughed with double mould board forestry plough. Trees are planted on the ridges thrown up, while the furrow drains water. 4/19

The cut in the centre of the furrow is from a 'tine' breaking up a hardened layer of subsoil called an 'ironpan' which inhibits root development. The presence of this pan is the justification for ploughing rather than 'mounding' this site 5/19

New: the European Parliament's announcement that it will not ratify any treaty before the end of December unless the deal is concluded by midnight on Sunday comes amid signals that, despite progress, a deal won't be concluded until early next week.

2/ This is because there are still some formidable hurdles in the way of closure on the level playing field issue, and they haven't even got into fisheries in a big way yet. And both sides say things there are "extremely difficult".

3/ Yesterday there were some signals that a deal could be done by the weekend, but the mood seems to have dipped somewhat.

4/ The EP is saying it wants a "provisional" text from the European Commission "as soon as possible" - not clear if that means even before the midnight deadline

5/ If a deal is not concluded by Sunday night then we are in uncharted waters

Enough Jaw Jaw, this is War!
1. People's Justice Courts to be set up worldwide
2. Citizens' arrests of all Identified Suspects
3. Lab Inspections
3. Harsh interrogation using MKULTRA
4. Public Show Trials video streamed live
5. Cross Questioning of suspects via Twitter & Zoom
6.

A growing list of suspects to be interrogated

Foul Traitors, Charlatans, Frauds, Bat Molesters! Frankensteins, Well Poisoners, Plotters, Deceivers!
Dr. Shipmans, Saboteurs, Devils in White Coats!

Organisations to be Investigated
WIV
Wuhan University IMA
WIBP
WCDC
BEIJING IPB
Nanjing Military Lab
SinoPharm
BARDA
NIH
EMERGENT BIOSOLUTIONS
BIOPORT
GILEAD
SIAC
QTEL
USAMRIID
FORT DETRICK
DARPA
DTRA
Metbiota
ONE HEALTH
GVP
ECOHEALTH
MITRE
BATTELLE
TUNNELL
LAURIMA GOV SERVICES

Suspects (1)
China
Zhengli Shi
Peng Zhou
George Gao
Deyin Guo
Major General Chen Wei
United States
ALEX AZAR
JONNA MAZET
ALISON O’TOOLE
ANTHONY FAUCI
BOYD YOUNT
DAVID FRANZ
DAVID KARESH
DENNIS CARROLL
DYLAN GEORGE
GEORGE PAINTER
IAN LIPKIN
JENS KUHN
JEROME HAUER
JONATHAN EPSTEIN

#tdih 1951, Paul Robeson submitted a petition (edited by William Patterson) to the U.N. titled, “We Charge Genocide: The Crime of Government Against the Negro People,” signed by almost 100 U.S. intellectuals and activists.

With the Cold War raging, the U.S. gov't maneuvered to prevent the U.N. Commission on Human Rights from formally debating or even considering the charges brought in the petition.

[One of countless examples of the white supremacist goals/purpose of "Cold War" and McCarthyism.]

U.S. corporate media gave scant coverage to the petition or the crimes it documented. The few Gov't officials who commented on the petition described it as “Communist propaganda.” Elsewhere in world [& in US Black press] it was well received & extensively covered in the press.

As the Black Freedom Movement gathered strength in the following years, Cold War geo-politics influenced [and justified to public] Washington's reaction to major events like the sit-ins, Freedom Rides, voting rights organizing, and so on.

Read ⬇️

On return to U.S, Patterson's passport was seized, he could no longer speak to foreign audiences. Robeson was prevented from leaving U.S. They & other CRC leaders were harassed & persecuted by FBI & other federal agencies for rest of their lives.

More

Why English as the Universal Language of Science Is a Problem for Research

Where do most of the researchers and inventors around the world appear today? What is their mother tongue?
1/8

The obstacle to many researches in our country is that many of the documents and research articles that they need to do research are available in English only 80-90%.

Can't anyone read and understand research articles so easily? Why is that?
2/8

Today most scientific papers are published in English. What is lost when other languages ​​leave?

Plagiarism in research articles Should not be. What is Plagiarism?
3/8

Plagiarism is the representation of another author's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work.

In educational contexts, there are differing definitions of plagiarism depending on the institution.
4/8

plagiarism is the representation of another author's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work.

In educational contexts, there are differing definitions of plagiarism depending on the institution.
5/8

Now that we already have maxed out hospitals and still-rising Covid infection and death rate, mass evictions in winter with many times more looming, and have learned that, actually young people are dying from the virus...

Now that we know these conditions —viral and social—are also killing people at much higher rates through accidents, untreated medical conditions, overdose and exposure ....

Now that we know that warnings haven’t stopped people from traveling or large gatherings at anything like the degree needed and that going to work is a major cause of the continuing intensification of the pandemic

You’d think that a discussion of travel restrictions and more rigorous closure of unnecessary construction, retail, in-person instruction, gyms, restaurants and the like , with actual funding and rent/mortgage freezes to make this possible, would be, at least, on the table

But it’s not. The ruling class is literally banking on another couple hundred thousand preventable deaths.

1) A thread on social, economic, and technological change:

2) As modern westerners, we grossly underestimate the profound and sometimes brutal sociological and psychological effects of continual, relentless, and massive social, economic, and technological change. We are too close to it. It's all we know. We are fish who can't feel wet.

3) The technological changes enable and facilitate massive social and economic changes, which, in turn, create demand for yet more technological changes to help people adjust to the social and economic changes. Rinse and repeat (in a smart washing machine).

4) There is nothing novel about this observation. Far smarter people have written and spoken eloquently about this dynamic over the past several centuries.

5) But we are not forgiving enough (of others and of ourselves) and we are not understanding enough about the significant harm that this continual and relentless cycle of change and disruption does to our mental and spiritual health. We think all of this is normal.

@RealRLimbau

EXCERPTS FROM RUSH 12/16/20

He’s a senator from Missouri, and I told you earlier that he was literally telling all the witnesses who are testifying on this committee that “74 million Americans are not going to shut up over this.

We’re not just gonna go away and pretend that everything’s hunky-dory.” Here is the sound bite.

HAWLEY: After four years of that, being told that the last election was fake and that Donald Trump really wasn’t elected and that Russia intervened — after four years of that —

Some committees in the Republican-controlled Senate have started the process of vetting Biden’s Cabinet picks, as his transition and Democratic allies press for quick confirmations amid the

w/@DanielPFlatley @jeneps @jendlouhyhc @elwasson