BC GOVERNMENT
Saved by @jay_millerjay

Keir Starmer giving his most important speech yet-laying out his vision for the future.

“The Conservatives say they want to build back. But I don’t want to go back. You can’t return to business as usual. And certainly not back to an economy rooted in insecurity and inequality.”

 "The foundations of our society have been weakened over a decade...even before the pandemic life expectancy had stalled for the first time in a century. Child poverty had shot up to over 4 million. A child growing up in a deprived areas of the North East can expect to live for.."
"...five fewer years than a deprived child brought up in a deprived area of London. What sort of legacy is that for a party which has been in govt for a decade? That life itself got cheaper. And shorter."
"During the last year my thoughts have returned time and time again to the wartime generation. Those who suffered the horrors of WW2, who rebuilt Britain from the rubble of the Blitz, created the NHS and built millions of homes fit for heroes. And I contrast that...
"...to those exposed to Covid in underfunded care homes, unable to say goodbye to families and to loved ones. How can the PM look those families in the eye and say 'we did everything we could'? When the truth is the Tories failed to fix social care for a decade?"
"We've seen the same tragic stories in overstretched hospitals, in GPs' surgeries, in schools with ever growing class sizes, in our once proud town centres and high streets. In an economy so insecure that millions of people can't afford to isolate and where...
"...the lowest paid have been amongst the most exposed. These are the inevitable consequences of a decade of decisions guided by the notion that govt can't interfere with the market; that you can strip back public services; ignore inequalities; and take money out of the..."
"...pockets of those who need it most, only to look the other way when the consequences become clear. This pandemic has pulled back the curtain on that way of doing things. This must now be the moment to think about the sort of country we want to be. A call to arms."
"That's the path I would take in the March budget. To begin a new chapter in the history of our country...I fear the Conservatives are incapable of seizing this moment. That what we'll get on March 3rd will be short term and it won't even be a fix."
"Successive Conservative PMs have used the rhetoric of change- 'northern powerhouse', 'burning injustices', 'levelling up'- but all it ever adds up to is a few soundbites and photo opportunities."
Starmer: "But the truth is, whoever their PM is, the Tories simply don't believe that it's the role of government to deal with inequality and insecurities...you can get away with that for a short time, or even a few years. But after a decade the results are obvious."
They try to pretend they're a different Conservative party. Well you could have fooled me. If you can't decide whether to plunge 100,000s of kids into poverty by cutting UC, you have no chance of mending our broken system."
This is the key theme which Starmer's team want to get across. To try to encourage the public not to see the pandemic purely in its own terms but in the context of a decade of government policy, policies which they say left us deeply ill-equipped to deal with its effects.
Starmer: "This is no time for a second wave of austerity. This is no time for tax rises."

As I reported yday on NN, Starmer's team believe that despite massive govt intervention, the Conservatives have not fundamentally changed their view of political economy. That Sunak...
...particular will be arguing for retrenchment. That's an opening they think they can prise open in the medium term.

Starmer says spending public wisely is important but: "Covid has shifted the axis on economic policy- both what is necessary and what is possible has changed."
"The age in which the govt has done little but collect and distribute revenue is over... I believe people are now looking for more from their govt. Like they were after WW2...a govt that knows the value of public service, not just the price of the market."
"The Conservatives simply don't believe that it's the duty of govt to deliver social justice and equality. That's why in the end they'll always fall back on the short term demands of the market. But if we're honest for too long Lab has failed that the only way to deliver..."
"...social justice is by working with the enterprising power of British businesses...I know govts can't do that on their own. And a new partnership with British biz is the only way to secure...a prosperous country. The vast majority of businesses know this too."
"People often ask me why I want this job? The answer is simple: to change people's lives. Because when I see an injstice- I want to put it right. It's not just about policy choices. It's an utter determination that pulses through my veins."
"Inequality is not only morally bankrupt. It's economic stupidity too. A fair society will lead to a more prosperous economy...Harold Wilson once said that the Labour Party is a moral crusade or it's nothing. He was right."
"Our moral crusade now is to address the inequalities and injustices that this crisis has so brutally exposed and to build a better more secure future."

Powerful ending. But good encapsulation of the awkwardness of making speeches in an empty room.

More from Lewis Goodall

Lewis Goodall
Lewis Goodall
@lewis_goodall
Hancock: "It's your actions now which can make a difference."

Plays down prospect of immediate introduction of new restrictions.

Few doubt the public must play its part. But legitimate questions about whether the govt has made/is making public's task harder in two key respects:

1) For some there's still a major economic disincentive apropos self isolation. Sick pay still poor. Savings for many exhausted.

Imminent prospect of Universal Credit cut would make this worse. Some people have fallen through the gaps of government support throughout. Though government support for (effectively) laid off people, a full economic bargain to universally support self isolation still...

...does not exist. Rishi Sunak just made a statement to the House which offered nothing new on any of these fronts.

And 2) The job for individuals is now made harder as a result of prevalence as a result of the delay in full lockdown in most of the country between the...

...point ministers were informed that the new variant had greater transmissibility (December 18th) and full lockdown (early January). We can't interrogate the micro decisions of the public alone, we must look at the macro decisions of ministers too.
ECONOMY
Lewis Goodall
Lewis Goodall
@lewis_goodall
Some quick thoughts on what we just saw

Firstly hardly a unique insight but hard to overstimate the difference between the two last inaugurals. America has meandered sharply along its political arc.

Biden's rhetoric reached high. Every sentence seemed purposefully...


...constructed to negate every political and personal characteristic of his predecessor.

And insofar as he's not Trump, that he does accept, cherish and understand democratic norms, institutions and conventions in a way that Trump never could, Biden will make a real difference.

He will change the tone and tenor of politics, not only in America but across the West. As I've said before, just replacing Trump is a substantial victory for him and will earn him praise from historians.

But that aura will disappear quickly. A governing project it will not make

But how much praise he receives and stature conferred by posterity will depend on what happens next.

Because the big overarching question for me, watching this, is which of those two inaugurals, Trump or Biden's, is going to seem unusual in the future.

The relief that many are feeling is predicated on a type of politics ending. But it is at least as possible that it is Biden ..not Trump who is the last gasp of something. Is it Trump who is the dying embers of a dying, increasingly powerless old white America...
SOCIETY
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Lewis Goodall
Lewis Goodall
@lewis_goodall
More study aids and generous grade boundaries for 2021's exams will be welcomed by many teachers and students. But doesn't address a fundamental problem of the next exam season: equity. Because there's great variation in how different schools have been affected by self-isolation.

Let's take the most recent attendance stats which I still don't think have really registered.

Most recent data- attendance rate across England of 83%

In secondary schools it's 78% (!)

So more than 1 in 5 secondary pupils are off school, largely for Covid related reasons.

But that’s just an average. Some schools’ attendance are at levels where they can’t really function, or certainly provide the quality of education they normally do.

Teachers’ are split between trying to run online lessons and those in schools.

Whole year groups are off.

Some students are in isolation, return to school and within days are in isolation again.

As I’ve reported before, IT provision is still patchy. Lots of reports of kids not doing work at home either because they get of the swing of it or they don’t have the IT resources.

And that’s before we get on to staff isolation, which is also proving a nightmare in many places.

In other words, you have to have everything go right for your education not to be impacted by Covid right now. And that’s affecting some places more than others.
EDUCATION
Lewis Goodall
Lewis Goodall
@lewis_goodall
Earlier when asked about why the govt didn't act earlier the PM said “I think we were told about the new variant and the way it was taking off on 18th December and we went into T4 across the vast bulk of the country pretty much in the next 24 hours.”

This isn't entirely correct.

The new variant was identified in early December after genome data was paired with a curiosity that the rates of infection in Kent were not falling despite national restrictions and then T3.


So there was indicative sense that the variant may be playing its part as early as that and perhaps sport greater transmissibility.

On December 14th Matt Hancock informed the Commons, saying the new variant was in at least 60 local authorities already.

He told MPs in that over that week, there had been sharp, exponential rises in coronavirus infections across London, Kent, parts of Essex and Hertfordshire.

He said they couldn't be sure whether that was due to the new variant but that caution was required.

As a result, London and several other places in the South East were moved to T3.

On 18th December NERVTAG reported that they believed the new variant was indeed more transmissible.

On the 19th, the govt acted. This is the action I assume the PM referred to today.
GOVERNMENT
Lewis Goodall
Lewis Goodall
@lewis_goodall
BREAK: Joe Biden is inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States.

The Trump administration is over.

Technically another 9 mins to go for the official handover. But it’s a formality.

Biden: "This is America's day. This is democracy's day. A day of history and hope....Today we triumph not of a candidate but of a cause. The cause of democracy. The people, the will of the people has been heard. And the will of the people has been heeded."

"At this hour my friends, democracy has prevailed."

Biden thanks his predecessors from both parties "from the bottom of my heart."

With, perhaps, the exception of one.

Biden addresses the pandemic and its economic consequences: "Few people in our nation's history have found themselves in a moment as challenging as the one we're in now...but the dream of justice for all will be deferred no longer."
BIDEN

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Geoffrey York
Geoffrey York
@geoffreyyork
South African science was crucial in helping UK discover its new variants; but then the UK govt claimed (wrongly) that the SA variant is more transmissible. No evidence to support this, according to @krisp_news

From the Times article: SA scientists "were the first to recognize the importance of a genetic change in the spike protein, something that allows the virus to attach more easily to human cells, making it more infectious than the original version."

The SA discovery was shared on Dec 4 over the WHO’s Covid-19 Evolution Working Group. “Our British colleagues were able to go back to their own databases and interrogate them as a result of the work we shared,” Richard Lessells, an infectious diseases specialist at Krisp, said.

More from the Times article by @janeflan: "While working on a much smaller budget than their British colleagues, the South African team, experienced with work on HIV, have the skills to decode the genome of viruses."

"They started work on samples of the Covid-19 virus soon after the first cases reached South Africa in March. In October they identified the first example that had changed significantly."
GOVERNMENT
J.B. White
J.B. White
@RattlerGator
1 of 52

As our national civics lesson continues to unfold on its march toward our 59th Presidential Inauguration on January 20, 2021 and Donald Trump’s second term, 45’s unmasking exercise (that’s a large part of what his first term had to be) continues toward its big climax.

2 of 52

In his 2017 Inaugural Address, President Trump proclaimed on behalf of his administration, “we are transferring power from Washington, D.C., and giving it back to you, the people.”

3 of 52

From my very biased vantage point, here’s how I like to think of that sentence.

It likely was the announcement of his two-pronged military campaign.

The first prong is obvious; it’s against foreign interference.

4 of 52

As we now clearly see, nothing short of a military campaign would suffice when global influencers have totally co-opted elements of our two major political parties.

5 of 52

The other prong has an internal focus: Washington, D.C.
GOVERNMENT
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George Webb - Investigative Journalist
George Webb - Investig...
@GeorgeW63613375
1. I am in the process of recovering four years of destroyed Twitter posts from my recent hack. Most related to an organization of rogue CIA agents doing election hacking, drug running, and dark weapons trading in a group led by AG Bill Barr. Other have call this the Enterprise.


2. The Enterprise is run Bill Barr himself and organized 800 ex-CIA agents and 300 ex-Soviet KGB Generals into a junta of 1,100 Frank Guistra partners in a sort of law firm of international crime. Iran Contra drug running was the first major operation in 1980. by the Enterprise.


3. Chip Tatum, a CIA pilot, flew Bill Barr, then a CIA attorney for George Bush, to Central America for Iran Contra banking and money laundering operations talks about this extensively in him book about his close friend, Robert Mueller, entitled, "The Mule".


4. A fundamental premise of my work over the last four years is to focus on this core Iran Contra, "Enterprise" group, to follow election hacking, dark weapons trade, drug running, and money laundering. Here are some video notes capture on the web from shows I did in 2016.


5. You can see in these 2016 show notes how my focus was on a USAID funded Serbian election flipping, subversive group called OTPOR. This group received subversion funds for election flipping through KKR, a joint venture of David Petraeus and Henry Kissinger.
GOVERNMENT
Parker Molloy
Parker Molloy
@ParkerMolloy
If you're curious what Trump's defense will look like, all you have to do is turn on Fox News. My latest at @mmfa

The tl;dr is that for years right-wing media have been excusing Trump's violent rhetoric by going, "Yes, but THE DEMOCRATS..." and then bending themselves into knots to pretend that Dems were calling for violence when they very, very clearly weren't.

And in fact, this predates Trump.

In 2008, Obama was talking about not backing down in the face of an ugly campaign. He said "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun."

https://t.co/i5YaQJsKop


That quote was from the movie The Untouchables. And there's no way anybody reading that quote in good faith could conclude that he was talking about actual guns and knives. But it became a big talking point on the

In 2018, Obama-era Attorney General Eric Holder was speaking to a group of Georgia Democrats about GOP voter suppression. He riffed on Michelle Obama's "When they go low, we go high" line from the 2016 DNC.
GOVERNMENT
Dr. SpoonyT DNP, MSN/Ed
Dr. SpoonyT DNP, MSN/E...
@SamWitherspoon4
What should have been enough for @GOP @LeaderMcConnell @LindseyGrahamSC @ChuckGrassley but seem to make up excuse after excuse

What should have been enough: Charlottesville should have been enough. Then Ukraine. Then Covid failure. Then Attack on our Capitol. If you don’t #LeaveTheGOP then you have no moral compass

What should have been enough
Federal civil rights VIOLATIONS at Trump properties

WHAT should have been enough
The Central Park Five should have been enough

What SHOULD have been enough
Birtherism should have been enough.
GOVERNMENT

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Golden Crescent region of South Asia - comprises of Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan - which is a principal global site for opium production and distribution.


Golden Triangle is the area where the borders of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar meet at the confluence of the Ruak and Mekong rivers. The Golden Triangle is called so because of the triangular shape formed by the locations of New Delhi, Agra and Rajasthan on a map.


India is wedged bw world’s 2 largest areas of illicit opium production, Golden Crescent & Golden Triangle, that has made Indian borders vulnerable to drug trafficking. It flows from 2 fronts, NW & NE, that possesses dual concern - violation of border & threat to national security

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VEDIC COSMOLOGY, also known as Hindu Cosmology, and cosmography are both interesting and inspiring. Today’s “modern” Vedic texts originated around 3,000 B.C.E. This is the oldest scientific and the oldest religious doctrine known to the human race.


Our current astronomy of the solar system and universe has its roots in Vedic knowledge. It only shows that man had advanced knowledge of astronomy way before our current civilization came into existence.
We are here to talk about the Vedic version of the planetary system,

starting at the top from the eternal planets to the temporary planetary system within innumerable universes in the material world.

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The spiritual realm of the planets is everlasting, and this will forever be beyond what the material universe can encapsulate. The spiritual realm belongs to the “super dimensional” or “anti-material” dimension. It means that it is beyond what we can perceive,


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Singing the Blues:
Taking Down an Insider Threat

"I had all of the advantages. I was already inside the network. No one suspected me. But they found my hack, kicked me off the network...

...and physically hunted me down."


Many pentests start from the outside, wanting to see how the perimeter might be breached.

This pentest started from the inside. My client wanted to assume they had already been breached, and, if breached, how far could an attacker go.

Could they stop me once I was inside?

So they snuck me in. Disguised me as a new employee. Gave me a work computer, an ID badge, an account in their system... hell, I even had a cubicle w/my assumed name on it.

The only person who knew who I really was was their CISO. Everyone else thought I was Jeremy in Marketing.

During most of the first morning, I completed onboarding, made introductions, and completed menial tasks.

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Yantrodharaka Anjaneya Temple, Hampi, Karnataka.

This temple dedicated to pawanputra Hanuman, near the banks of Tungabhadra river was built by dwaita philosopher and rajguru of the Vijayanagar empire, Sri Vyasaraja around +500 years ago.


:It is only in this temple that Hanuman appears in a prayer position. In this image, Bhagwan Hanuman’s crown has been formed by his tail.12 monkeys have been carved around this amulet.


:They represent the 12 days Sri Vyasaraja prayed to Hanuman ji. Each monkey holds the tail of the monkey in front of him but is facing backward. Seed syllables have also been carved around the amulet.


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Manipulation Sign:

If you are compromising too much, there is a chance that you are getting manipulated.

Why are you the one that's always compromising?

How come the other person always gets their way?

Be more curious.

If something seems off, stick up for yourself.

'Wait, you sure I am being manipulated?'

I have no clue, that is only something that you can decide for yourself.

'Dang is there anything I need to look out for?'

Plenty..

But let me give you a few things to look out for.

👇

I see manipulation as skillfully controlling someone's behavior for egotistical or unethical purposes.

'How come people don't leave when it's happening to them?'

Because most people have 0 clue that they are being manipulated.

1. Guilt Trip

You ever made a mistake around someone, only for them to hold it over your head?

The will always bring up the mistake when you 2 are not seeing eye to eye.

These people will use that mistake as leverage to get what they want from you in the future.

Look out.

2. The Rationalizer

This person will commit the worst acts & find a way to rationalize it.

Example: cheaters when they get caught.

They have every excuse in the book for why they did it.

Heck, they are so good at rationalizing, they will make it seem like your fault.
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