Ok. Having now read the contract through a couple of times, my initial view that the Commission had no good argument remains the same.

A quick run through the

The central obligations of AZ are found in 5.1. As Soriot said, it is to use "Best Reasonable Efforts" to manufacture and distribute the doses.

/2

5.4 is clumsily drafted, indeed makes no sense on its face given it is said not to apply to 51., but I'd read it as meaning AZ is to use EU and UK sites in fulfilling its BRE obligation.

/3

The date of this contract 27 August (ie 5 months ago). Approval is only being given for the drug today.

The Commission's argument is that the drug is manufactured and eady for distribution, hand it over.

/4

But the reason that there are (any?) manufactured doses in the UK to distribute is nothing whatsoever to do with this contract. it is because the UK entered into an earlier contract, for distribution to it.

/5

Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Larry Rendall Brock Jr. with Joshua Matthew Black:

Look, it's a PR war. Okay? You have to understand, it's an IO war. We can't lose the IO war.

[Man] Hawley, Cruz.
I think Cruz would want us to do this, so.
Yeah, absolutely

Outside the Capitol a noose hangs on a makeshift gallows.

MAGA Mob storms the Capitol
"If they don't fix this sh*t, we're gonna fu*king take this... Millions of Americans are armed. To protect the Constitution of the United States, against enemies foreign and domestic... F**k you police"

1, Government messaging has become progressively hyperbolic and confusing. Balance and perspective is in short supply. As a result, the information we receive often feels alarming and frightening.

2, Trust is a vital component of effective public messaging, erosion of it is deeply concerning.Disconnection between governments, local level management and society. Information given without context is harmful. A recent advisory report

3, “ministers adopt a more straightforward approach to communicating with the public, taking care not to send out conflicting messages, admitting mistakes, foregoing “hyperbolic language and rhetoric” and adopting “an open dialogue rather than speaking at the public”.

4, Has this advice been heeded?
Did yesterday's UK briefing clearly communicate information accurately and clearly?
Was the information presented

5.The news of an increased mortality risk with the UK variant is based upon conclusions from a Nervtag meeting held on Thursday.
Full report here.

Here is why you shouldn't trust anything that was sampled after the outbreak: https://t.co/VoC1cwmfdz all samples were collected at June 2020. they mentioned an "oligo array" which is how they get to all virus, no bacteria. they claim "pangolins" but there were only bat.

What they actually did: the first part of SRR13380247 were virus at the 1st read and nothing at the 2nd read, despite the quality score say otherwise. what this tells you is that they have used a blank bat sample and artificially added in reads of fake viruses.

all samples lacked non-coronavirus reads. one have traces of human Flu virus and other have trace (6Kbp) "picornavirales". both were likely probes that have fell off. the samples were very late, so the most likely route: High throughput gene synthesis->mix into blank sample

(they forgot to add the bacteria, again!) and then mock "sequencing". also, since this is already when SARS-CoV-2 have been widely circulating in THailand, there exist a change that this backbone may have spilled into bats and have recombined with the circulating strains.

If you have ever studied bat viromes, you known that a real bat sample would have more than just one viral families. ajority of bats have picoRNAviruses and other respiratory viruses, yet none of these samples gave any other bat viruses other than their single "Coronavirus"

This view that only government's can censor, that only state agents coming to your house and slapping something over your mouth counts as limiting free speech, really needs to be tackled.

The oddest part is that's it's generally the left which seems most content to let private companies wield extraordinary power over who can speak and how.

There are all sorts of legitimate reasons to limit free speech. Right now we are seeing one of them with Trump - to prevent incitement to violence and a threat to the functioning of democracy. But it is still censorship.

We need to be clear that that is what it is, rather than limiting our definition of censorship to the smallest range of actions conceivable.

This is not a new idea. Benjamin Constant, Harriet Taylor and John Stuart Mill were treating the silencing which comes from society as equivalent, or more dangerous, than that of the state hundreds of years ago.

1. Military Intelligence Contact is confirming Mr. X’s sources, MarkZ's sources, and Bruce's sources and others saying that the RV release, liquidity shotgun start, & T4B start may happen any time over the next seven days or so under the cover of the current military...

Bored? Wanna help ID Fascists? Here is a 350GB folder of DC videos, a map of Parler videos (with post ids), and the link to Parler Metadata. Once archives are up you can use map + ID's + data to find

THREAD: It’s #ImpeachmentDay and I’ve got money on my mind.

We learned yesterday that Trump’s largest lender, Deutsche Bank, is done doing business with him.

Before he took office, no U.S. major bank was willing to do business with him.

And in the last 48 hours, we’ve seen scores of major companies respond to last week’s riots & the refusal to certify the free & fair election (all fueled by Trump himself), cut off political donations, and some terminating business/payment processing for the Trump Campaign.

The PGA cancelling the upcoming championship at Trump Bedminster was another major blow to Trump’s bottom line & brand.

None of this would have happened if Trump was simply ending his term like any normal President.

Two weeks ago he was considered the Replican party “king maker” whose influence would be looming for the foreseeable future.

Last Wednesday changed everything and that’s part of what this impeachment hearing is all about.

Unlike the first impeachment which was Republicans vs Democrats, Trump is in his own lane- along with some lawmakers who pushed misinformation, tried to block certification and welcomed the “Stop The Steal” movement to DC.

Herd immunity by infection strategy is back. People need to know. The reason why the UK government chose 8th of March is because it is exactly three weeks after they anticipate vaccinating people who were shielding. Then they will open up and everyone else will be infected. This

is precisely the same disastrous idea from last year - it is the same as "send all the vulnerable people to Scotland and let the virus rip through the rest of the population." The only difference now is shielding by way of a vaccine and not by social distancing. The government's

plan will see enormous numbers of people infected, and enormous numbers of people very sick, and large numbers dying. The Oxford vaccine only has 70% efficacy, so up to a third of vulnerable people will still be susceptible to disease. But more than this - we should be aiming not

to allow the virus to rip through the population as soon as the most vulnerable are vaccinated - we should be aiming to get the virus to the lowest possible levels and keep it there. COVID does affect younger people. 40% of people being admitted to hospital now are under 65.

Everyone needs to know that this is the government's plan. It doesn't need to be this way - just as it didn't need to be that way last year. It is unbelievable that they are still doing this - that the opposition is not opposing it, and that journalists are not asking questions.

TIL that the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity & Efficiency (CIGIE) Integrity Committee, which is charged with performing audits of IG shops & investigating complaints of IG misconduct, takes the position that all of the military service IGs are beyond their reach.

They maintain that they only have oversight over the DOD IG, but that means that the only entity overseeing some of the most important OIGs in the government is ANOTHER OIG, subject to the whims of whomever happens to be leading it.

As opposed to, say, ALL THE OTHER OIGs, ...

who are answerable to an entire committee comprised of IGs from across the government, which is NOT subject to any particular member's whim.

Let's put this in some perspective. An agency OIG is charged with an awesome responsibility. They are often a whistleblower's only ...

recourse, & if they reach a decision that there's nothing to see here, there's practically nothing you can do about it. Because of this, by design they are supposed to operate independently of the agencies they oversee, so they won't be captured by the subjects of their review.

In order to carry out this important & often unappealable work, it is important that they be subject to close oversight by an objective outside body. It is also mandatory that this objective outside body be charged with investigating whistleblower claims ABOUT THE OIG.

@LWCorry United States Department of Defense
1400 Pentagon Pedestrian Tunnel
Washington, DC 20301-1400

Dear Sirs or Madams;

As a Natural Law sovereign being, Citizens of the United States of America, and member of the Global Ubuntu party, I order the good Military to begin to arrest

John Horgan, a Georgia State University professor and the director of the Violent Extremism Research Group, has never been more

“You had your gawkers..tourists...instigators, your preachers. ..you had your guys in military fatigues who ...came with a plan. They were organized & they were looking to get their chance at infamy.

Those are the kinds that I think about between now and Jan. 20.”

“It’s a rallying cry.

I’m not worried about the people that were caught up in these arrests.

I’m not worried about the people that were at the protest.

I’m worried about the Timothy McVeighs who are out there now realizing that their time has come.”

“They are radicalized.
They are mobilized.
They are bereft of direction because their leader for whom they are clearly ready to give their lives has lost [his] platform.., so now they’re trying to figure out what to do, and it makes them unpredictable.”

‘After the IRA tried to kill Margaret Thatcher in 1984 and she survived, they said,

“Remember, we only have to be lucky once. You have to be lucky always.”

That’s where we are right now.’

We're facing a fascistic movement that's backed by the wealthy and powerful who want to dismantle government, an administration and party desperate to cling to power, a racist evangelical base, and a mob lost in weaponized conspiracy

This video is a primer and explainer of the complicated and frightening moment we find ourselves in, a crisis that is a long, long time coming and that won't simply stop unless we address it and the underlying factors.

Have the hard conversations about this. Reject this.

Talk to the people around you about what this coup attempt was, the fascist movement growing in this country, and the very real history the wealthy and powerful don't want you to know.

The only we way we're going to escape this is to expose what it is and fight against it.

The truth is that a large part of the country has been intentionally ensnared in fascistic conspiracy theories for profit and power and the other part is still trying to disentangle itself from mythologies of American exceptionalism.

It can happen here. It IS happening here.

Misplaced trust and faith in our history, our exceptionalism, and our institutions has gotten us here and allowed this fascistic threat to grow.

We're not immune to fascism. In fact, we're especially vulnerable to it. And it is growing in strength and size and ambition.

Same shit, different decade. Imagine if Manafort and Stone had been removed from the system back then.

On Jan 4 the Eighth Circuit issued a pretty awful opinion on eligibility for a fraud waiver after a person is denaturalized for fraud, essentially endorsing gamesmanship by the DHS without notice. The case is Herrera Gonzalez v. Rosen.

Petitioner admitted she had gotten her permanent residence through fraud (which led to a criminal conviction and later denaturalization). The government charged her with removability for the fraud, and she applied for the waiver that is allowed under that section.

After the judge had sustained the fraud charge, the DHS added a new charge that the marriage fraud conviction was a "crime involving moral turpitude." Then, at trial, the DHS withdrew the fraud charge, leaving only the CIMT charge, and argued there was no waiver for just the CIMT

Citing Matter of Tima, the Eighth Circuit agreed that the "fraud waiver" couldn't be used if the DHS plays this game of charging the same conduct under a different section, and that not doing that until the moment of trial didn't violate her right to due process.

There are problems with this. One is that Matter of Tima largely erases part of the fraud waiver statute - the part that says a fraud waiver under that section does waive other related grouns of removability. I wrote about it here when Tima was issued.