A quick thread on the new variant, pulling together information from news sources, twitter, genomic databases, and word from well-placed peers.

When we call @medialens "Our Friends" we do so collectively for they are the friends of anyone engaged in a struggle to save the planet from rampant kleptocracy and the excesses of Billionaire media control.
This thread draws on their 2009 work "Newspeak in the 21st Century"

In it they have created a list of Key issues that should have been debated by Politicians, Academics and the media, concerning Climate change issues. All three groups have not only failed to debate it, but have actively tried to blot them out of the discussion. List as follows:-

1 A capitalist system that places Corporate Shareholder Profits above ALL else, represents an inherently biocidal, indeed psychopathic logic. How does this corporate immorality dodge any discussion that is relevant to the industrial destruction of global life-support systems?

2 Corporations have consistently worked to deliver short-term profits over human and animal welfare. Look how they fought links between smoking/cancer; junk food/obesity; fossil fuel use/climate change; factory farming/animal suffering, high salt/Sugar diets and illness.

3 A relentless corporate lobbying campaign of elected governments to introduce, shape and strengthen policies to promote and protect unelected private power.
Still largely unchallenged by the corporate media a decade after this book was published

As the @guardian continues their antisemitic game of contorting everything in existence to attack Israel, (in this instance perpetuating a libel of Jews as disease spreaders withholding vaccines), here are some other headlines I’ve written for them to keep up their sleeves:

Israel’s national anthem sung in Hebrew - not Japanese - another low for this racist state

Israeli of the year award goes to Israeli - not Frenchman - is there no end to Israel’s racism?

Israeli sports budget spent on Israelis - not on Scottish skateboard parks. What would we expect?

Diego Maradonna doesn’t even place in list of top ten greatest ever Israelis. An insult to world’s football fans. FIFA must act...

@StephenFlynnSNP @NHSGrampian

This is how bullies operate, they will say you are to blame but not care about why! Mrs Dickson and her practice has misrepresented me for the last time.

It was her staff who were rude and hung up on me because it was 16:50pm and she was tired.

The fact is, for the what 20th time, holburn medical got my prescription wrong, the day before Christmas Eve after ordering well in advance.

I have anxiety disorder, they know this. I had every right to be annoyed and while I was firm but not aggressive or shouting.

Her receptionist told me for NO REASON to "stop shouting" even though I was just speaking. When I tried to say 'hey, I'm not shouting, I just am annoyed and want help' she hung up the phone on me.

I called back and tried to explain what happens to someone else, who was also rude. I explained and said 'look, I'm working tomorrow, I need to know this is sorted', to this the woman rudley snipped back with zero empathy "well, we are working too"... This blew my mind.

I was not calling their work into question and I was in no way trying to boast, I was just trying to get help but when I said 'won't, I'm not trying to be funny ' this second woman turned it into an argument and hung up! I was left awestruck at this treatment.

Alright, folks. You may have seen that the FDA was in a fight with distilleries last week.

Let's unpack what happened, why it happened, and why it's now resulting in some extremely unusual behavior by HHS.

Thread below. Follow if you're interested.

If you're like most people, you might have stumbled across a few news items in this past week talking about how the big-bad-FDA was deciding to screw over distilleries with a $14,060 fee.

It should be noted that the only reason distilleries were being charged this fee was because they had been permitted by the FDA to make hand sanitizer.

It basically sounded like "no good deed goes unpunished by the government." Reddit's

The problem is that this is a wildly incomplete picture of what happened and why it happened.

So let's look at what did happen, and you can decide for yourself where the blame lies.

Let's start with some regulatory background here.

Hand sanitizer is regulated as an over-the-counter (OTC) product. Under that regulatory approach, entities which adhere to an FDA "monograph" may market an OTC drug without obtaining explicit FDA approval.