And so; how much less corrupt is the new “democratic” govt of #SouthAfrica. Like;as far as I know, no major hospital has been built in 30yrs. Infr projects are ignored. There’s no mgmnt of anything needing mgmnt. Kids have dark ages pit toilets. And ATROCIOUS teachers/curriculums

A story ...

In 1994, I was teaching U.S. history and American government at Oak Ridge HS in El Dorado Hills, California.

I had three bright students who were my TAs. The 20th anniversary of Richard Nixon's resignation was a few months away. I decided to have ... 1/

my students -- Sherilyn Peek, Aaron Leahy and Nicole Poimiroo -- take on an extra project. They contacted dozens of people who were in some way involved with the Watergate saga. Politicians, lawyers, political appointees, journalists and others. 2/

They spent weeks, before the internet existed, tracking down addresses. Then they sent a short letter that asked the recipients to respond to one question: What should America learn from Watergate?

Before long, responses started to show up in my mailbox at school. 3/

Archibald Cox replied, and I'm especially struck by this sentence: "...we should be reminded of the corrupt influence of great power, especially when the power is in the hands of someone who is willing to resort to any tactics, however wrong, to retain and increase his power."4/

Richard Kleindienst wrote his response by hand ... "Our Constitution worked! The federal judiciary worked. The Congress and a free press worked. That our Constitution works is the magic of America." 5/

THREAD: British people are so thick that they will watch the government make exactly the same mistake for a fourth time, and carry on cheering. Ok, yes, you're being lied to in the press. But the opposite of "opening up as quickly" is not "lockdown forever". Here's why: 1/

In fact, opening up as quickly as we can will lead to more lockdowns, and worse restrictions over the course of the next year. Or to put it another way an extra week of lockdown now saves us from an extra month of lockdown in the Summer or Autumn.

How does that work? Right 2/

now the number of infections is declining quite fast. But the number of cases is still quite high. If they are still quite high (or even medium) when we lift restrictions this will lead very quickly to a massive spike in cases, and then we will have to lock down again, 3/

probably for a long time.

Sounds familiar doesn't it. It's exactly what we did in November through to now. First we went into lockdown, then we released it too early (at the beginning of December). As a result, cases spiked. By the end of December there was an enormous wave 4/

of infection, which killed tens of thousands of people. In the first weeks of January the government put in the current lockdown restrictions. They didn't really have a choice: about 80% of the British public supported restrictions. But here's the thing: after six weeks of 5/

So the Canadian government will soon be introducing legislation aimed at regulating platforms with respect to harmful speech, spearheaded by Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault. I'm concerned b/c we haven't seen a lot of serious thought from the Gov on this. A thread:

Guilbeault has taken this on as part of a large digital regulatory agenda that also includes things like requiring Canadian content on streaming services, and potentially forcing intermediaries to pay for news (like Australia).

We don't know what form the legislation will take, but there's cause for concern that it's partially going to look a lot like the German NetzDG law, and require hate speech and other illegal speech to be taken down quickly. It will also include a new regulator to do...something

The concern comes from the PM's mandate letter to the Minister, which asked him to "create new regulations for social media platforms, starting with a requirement that all platforms remove illegal content, including hate speech, within 24 hours or face significant penalties."

I haven't seen anything to suggest Guilbeault has moved away from this. His office was quoted recently as saying "our approach will require online platforms to monitor and eliminate illegal content that appears on their platforms."