"If you then discovered that the majority of the committee members had financial interests in the drug being developed, how would you feel?" 1/n
@zoeharcombe @RosemaryFreiTO @simondolan @Francis_Hoar @BreesAnna @toadmeister @NeilClark66 @allisonpearson

#KBF
"The advice was stay home if you’re sick, wash your hands, protect the vulnerable, most people will have a mild illness, wearing face masks is “usually quite a bad idea“, & “big gatherings don’t have a big effect so we don’t want to disrupt people’s lives.” 2/n

"1) Organisations invested in vaccines make money from vaccines. If people acquire natural immunity, they have reduced or no need for a vaccine and thus the potential gain for the vaccine company is reduced." 3/n

"2) Locking people in their homes and other lockdown measures will reduce the number of people who acquire natural immunity." 4/n

"The notable exception was that @neil_ferguson resigned from the SAGE committee when it became known (on 5th May) that he had broken lockdown rules" 5/n

Today is a really significant day in Ireland as the report into the Mother and Baby Homes is finally being published.

It was a cruel system which sought to punish and shame women and girls for the perceived 'sin' of pregnancy outside of 'wedlock'

A quick thread:

(📷 : PA)

The ‘homes’ were religious-run institutions supported by the state and wider society, which operated throughout much of the 20th century; effectively imprisoning and punishing women and girls for transgressing strict religious 'morals' by becoming unmarried mothers

They were a consequence of Ireland’s pathological obsession with sex, religious morality and women’s bodies.

When vulnerable women and girls needed support, we as a society decided to shut them away and punish them instead

The ‘homes’ operated in plain sight in Irish society throughout the last century and saw thousands of children ripped apart from their mothers and put up for adoption against their will, as well as being subjected to physical and emotional abuse

Survivors and their families have spoken of the immense long-lasting and ongoing trauma they’ve suffered.

Many children born into the homes still don’t know who their families are, decades on.

Many mothers still don’t know where their children are or what happened to them

As a mom of 4 I have spent a significant amount of my time discussing the virtues of truth telling and the consequences of telling a lie, at this moment one of the kids is writing me an essay on using self-control to ensure her words are true.

On Monday @TuckerCarlson said, “The Green New Deal has come, believe it or not, to the state of Texas. How’s it working out so far?”

First GND is a resolution, second it hasn’t even been past, 3rd, we’re talking about TX. This is objectively false.

He went on to say, “Not a single major American city is prettier or more functional than it was in 1950. The parks that previous generations so lovingly built are filled with vagrants and junkies."

"The monuments they constructed are covered with spray paint. Public transportation is a disgrace. It’s filthy, the streets are dangerous. Are you really surprised that Cory Booker was once the mayor of Newark, New Jersey? You shouldn’t be.”

Wow, that’s a lot to unpack and has little to do with the lack of power in TX. For myself I believe the best is yet to come. I see the dog whistles there, and it’s an excellent example of racist demagoguery and a sure path towards the destruction of our democracy.

In London, it won't be long before a bail application hearing for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange starts. I'm attending remotely and will have updates in this thread.

Some history of the case: after Assange was arrested and expelled from the Ecuador embassy, he was convicted of "jumping" bail when he sought asylum. He was issued a 50-week sentence.

Sentencing judge said he exploited his "privileged position to flout the law."

Assange was scheduled for release from Belmarsh high-security prison in September 2019, after completing his sentence for "jumping" bail (essentially, he was criminalized for seeking asylum).

On September 22, 2019, Judge Vanessa Baraitser declined to grant Assange bail.

"I have substantial ground for believing if I release you, you will abscond again."

In March 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic intensified globally, Assange's legal team applied for bail that Baraitser denied.

"Mr. Assange’s past conduct shows the lengths he is prepared to go to avoid extradition proceedings," Baraitser

Kukah’s allegation of nepotism against PMB holds no water. Buhari’s appointments by geo-political zone as published by a leading online newspaper has debunked Kukah’s verbal halitosis.

The analysis showed that Buhari’s North West got 37 appointments, North East received 29, North Central secured 21, South West had 63, South East received 25 while South South got 24. South West benefited most.

But is Buhari a Yoruba man? He gave the South West almost double what he gave his own North West. Is that nepotism? We challenge Kukah and his merchants of falsehood to provide their own data.

This means that the North as a whole which Kukah accused of hegemony and for which reason Buhari is being accused of nepotism, got 87 appointments while the South received 112.

All the false propaganda and allegation of nepotism against Buhari fell like a pack of cards with this analysis. Kukah’s diatribe is therefore sheer tramadolised religiousity. His allegations are as unfounded as they are baseless.

JEWISH PROSTITUTION AND TRAFFICKING IN WOMEN

Jewish trafficking in women did not begin in a vacuum. Jews joined the crime wave that swept over East European Jewish society and spread throughout the world.

Prostitution and international trafficking in women, which were among the gravest plagues in Western society from the end of the nineteenth century on, did not bypass Jewish society, which had been undergoing enormous changes since the 1880s.

The migration from town to city and the increase in poverty contributed to the development of prostitution among Jews.

In most big cities that contained a large, poor population of Jews (Warsaw, Odessa, Vilna, Cracow, Budapest and Vienna, for example), there were concentrations of Jewish prostitutes working in brothels for Jewish pimps.

It was virtually impossible to work as a prostitute in small towns and shtetls where everyone knew everybody else and prostitutes were ostracized.

For over 200 years the Census has asked “What is your sex”. This year there will also be an *extra* question asking about gender identity. That’s great. Two questions about two different concepts - lots of useful information /1

One question about facts – the sex you were born.
One question about feelings – how people identity and live.
The extra question will give us our first accurate indication of the size of the trans community. A move welcomed by everyone /2

So what's the problem? It's that trans pressure groups such as Stonewall say it's not enough that trans people have their own gender identity question. They think trans people should be allowed to answer BOTH questions according to gender identity /3

They say it's simply too offensive and hurtful to ask trans person a factual question about sex they were registered at birth. So now an undefined number of people will be allowed to put the wrong answer to the sex question so we don’t hurt anyone's feelings /4

This has alarmed scientists who need accurate data on sex.
Last year 80 academics, including Professors from top universities, wrote to the ONS saying they mustn’t do this /5

Men. Brothers:

I absolutely, unreservedly support women in defending their sex-based rights to women-only spaces, services & opportunities for a host of reasons.

Among them:

1. If SOME males obtain the right to those things, on the basis of ‘self-identitifying’ 1/

as having a nebulous #genderidentity which functions as a magic key, then ALL males obtain the right, irrefutably. ALL men would acquire the right which we could choose to exercise or not. Like masters of everywhere & everything. No checks, no balances. Just our choices. 2/

If we are capable of empathy we will know that that’s an intolerable assault on the safety and dignity of women and girls. A sexual totalitarianism laid on top of the already deeply misogynistic cultures we have developed.

Do we have empathy enough with women to see this? 3/

2. The idea that only gentle, vulnerable, harmless males -whether they believe themselves to qualify as ‘women’ or not - would exercise that new universal right is so absurd as to not deserve consideration. History shows us why.

3. A let’s ask ourselves why some men are so 4/

Very keen to tell women to accept males in their spaces, services and opportunities. What are the motives? On the surface they are a desire for ‘kindness’, ‘acceptance’ - by women, toward men. Hmmm... So women are the nurse-class of humans, the sponges, the buffers?

Sexism 5/

A thread celebrating the many lady librarians of Mumbai, because very often, a woman who reads creates societies of people who read.

Seen here is Mrs Gulshan Feradoon Cooper, Head Librarian for over forty years at The People's Free Reading Room in Dhobitalao. “I am not at all strict, that’s my only drawback,” she said. (She doesn't charge a fine).

“I prefer research libraries because I don’t like novels, I like history," said Sarita Shekar Gandhi, Head Librarian at KR Cama Oriental Institute. Over her years at the library she has devoted herself to understanding the nuances of Zoroastrian studies.

Bidisha Basu co-started @leapingwindows , a library and café for comic books, graphic novels and manga. “You get people who have never read a comic before and that’s the most interesting part of the job. It’s exciting to introduce them to comics," she said.

“A librarian should not only love books, she should also love people," said Arati Desai the Head Librarian at the immaculate Nehru Centre Library in Worli. "I've even swept and swabbed my library, there's dignity in everything that you do at work," she goes on to say.

I’ve just finished some research about the use of biosolids (human sewage sludge) as farm manure. The results will keep me awake at night.
¾ of biosolids in the UK are spread on farmland. The rules about what it can contain are not fit for purpose. Please read and share this 🧵

Biosolids typically contain a wide range of synthetic chemicals, including antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals, personal care products, microplastics and persistant organic pollutants, among them “forever chemicals”. Yet testing is restricted to a small number of contaminants.

Spreading them across the land means spreading them through the foodchain and the ecosystem. There’s plenty of evidence of uptake of many of these chemicals by crops, earthworms and other soil animals, and of large-scale antibiotic resistance developing among soil bacteria.

When soil is blown or washed off the land, these chemicals enter the air and water. Some seep into groundwater. We're likely to eat, drink and breathe them. It’s hard to say what the health thresholds are, or what the combined impact of this cocktail of synthetics might be.

Yet the issue has been wilfully neglected by governments. Regulation is negligible. Farmers in the UK are “responsible for knowing the levels of any potentially toxic elements” before spreading sludge. But how? With an on-farm lab that can test for 80,000 possible contaminants?

When I was 25, I worked as a legislative assistant in the Missouri General Assembly.

It was a dream job, honestly.

But that dream dissipated the day the #MoLeg decided to name Rush Limbaugh as an “honorable Missourian” and place his bust in the “Hall of Famous Missourians.”

1/

The Hall of Famous Missourians sits in the Missouri State Capitol.

There are busts of Mark Twain, Dred Scott, Josephine Baker, Harry Truman and other legends of history.

The day I learned Rush Limbaugh would join their ranks, I thought it was a joke.

2/

We received phone calls from constituents appalled that Missouri would honor a man who had become infamous that year for calling a college student a “slut.”

And who just that week had continued spreading the racist birtherism lie about our then-President, Barack Obama.

3/

What I learned that day is that it wasn’t *despite* his racism, but because of it that he received this award.

It’s because he created a universe where it was permissible to lynch with language America’s first black President.

4/

Several State Representatives and their staffers intended to protest the vote and the selection.

By the time we made it to the doors of the House Floor, we weren’t allowed in. It was Republicans only. The doors were locked and secured by the Highway Patrol.

5/

My wonderful @jainfamilyinst colleagues @laura_bmw & @Edi_Nilaj have released their new report "Student Debt and Young America," which pretty comprehensively demolishes many of the myths about who does and doesn't have student debt.
https://t.co/y02KFosRQ3
Highlights to follow
/1

@laura_bmw @Edi_Nilaj First of all, look at this one chart that tells you why the student debt crisis is happening: rising debt; stagnant income, and the gap has opened widest for minority borrowers.
/2

You look at that chart and you see the total failure of the human capital model to explain labor market outcomes, insofar as it even is a falsifiable social science hypothesis.
/3

Second, while it's true that total loan balances are increasing in income, student debt has increased most over time among the lowest-income groups. This tells you that student debt is becoming a marker of the disadvantaged rather than the advantaged.
/4

Third, balances on outstanding loans are rising over time, not declining. As I said in my last report, the student debt crisis is a crisis of non-repayment. This is why it's foolish to think the student debt is ever going to be paid back, whether it's cancelled now or not.
/5

Emotional incest is not sexual unlike the name can suggest. It's also called covert incest. It is when an adult's (parent/guardian) relationship with their child is too adult-like. The child is burdened with adult emotional responsibility. It is considered abused.

People often wonder what's SO wrong with it, and often debate if it is *really* abuse. It is considered so because it forces children to put their parent's needs first and abandon their own emotional needs and it forces them to be adults and abandon regular growth/development.

Parents that depend on children in this way are often lonely. Either from social withdrawal, singleness or a tumultuous relationship(s). Their social/support system is not great and so they lean on in-house support from their child/children.

Emotional incest can be tricky to recognise because children sometimes like it, it can make them feel very special, powerful, helpful and grown-up for their age. It can also appear really loving from the outside looking in.

Forms that emotional incest take place:

Asking children to mediate in their parent's relationship is one way in which it takes place. Children should not have to offer emotional support for romantic and social woes and be in positions of responsibility in regards to adult interactions.

THREAD: Almost a year into the launch of Aarogya Setu, there is still little to no public data on its benefits. Yet, many of its flaws are well documented. Now it's going to be used for vaccine rollouts despite meager progress in public

Experts have been warning us about Aarogya Setu's capacity for surveillance. Post integration with COWIN, it will likely become a permanent part of our health data landscape. We've written to the NIC with key concerns, because here's what we've learnt in 1 year:
2/n

To justify violation of privacy, necessity and proportionality have to be proven. Aarogya Setu has disregarded these principles - we know because we analysed its Data Protocol, which MeitY released after public pressure. It fails to satisfy the basic threshold of legality.
3/n

A lack of transparency has pervaded the ecosystem. RTIs on Aarogya Setu failed to receive adequate answers. In fact, we had to send a legal notice because CIC refused to let RTI activist Saurav Das attend his own show cause hearing regarding critical info about Aarogya Setu.
4/n

Issues have been raised about the non open-source nature of the app. Even when the source code was released, it was the code for an earlier version of the app that was made available. The server-side code of the app was not available at all.
5/n

NESARA is the most ground breaking reformation to sweep not only the United States of America but the whole planet (thus GESARA) in its entire history. The act does away with the Federal Reserve Bank, the IRS, the shadow government, and much more.

gonna get in line for the vaccine because I've heard all these urban legends about tracking microchips

and I think I might be able to root it and install Doom

supposedly bill gates is involved, right?
so it's probably like a miniaturized 386 running ROM-DOS.

the doctor walks in, looks down at my charts, and sighs.
"well, the bad news is that you've got the virus. I'm sorry..."
"and the good news?"
"well..."
*at doom's gate starts faintly playing from my

it took them four tries to figure out that I had the virus, because every time they did a nasal sample, the diagnosis machine kept glitching and playing a youtube video

I laugh in the hospital bed while they're like "ma'am sir ma'am sir, please, this is serious: we can't treat you. Our ventilator keeps trying to reboot in to Windows 3.1 and play skifree. we're quarantining you here so you don't spread this DIGITAL VIRUS to other patients"

MY RACIST

If U remember from an earlier post I brought up Sen Elizabeth Warrens remark that "Obama did more for Wall Street than Main Street." I concur. U can ignore poor black people all day, but under no circumstance can U ever ignore poor white

Now Biden must be careful not to repeat the same mistakes of Obama. Biden most go big & go big fast. Fuck inflation. Order the treasury to start printing money. You will not beat Trump by impeaching or prosecuting him. You must beat him on the battlefield of ideas & you do so by-

helping the people he ignored. People with good jobs, food on the table & a roof over their head dont have time to do insurrections. If U help these people, you will choke off the fuel to Trumpism. Some black people will criticize me for taking this approach. My simple retort is-

you can't out-violence white people. We don't make guns. We don't make bombs. We don't make shit. You have to make it such that everyone eats. Otherwise you have to deal with the warning Heather McGhee lays out in her new book: white

Obama did not get this. He made it such that only rich white oligarchs got to feast. Everyone else got crumbs. I need you to get precisely what peace requires. There are a good number of white people in this country which would rather burn this country down than to allow any-

So it's Christmas, and a bit of a weird one, so I want to tell you about a surprise Christmas present and the kindness of Twitter and total strangers on the other side of Europe that helped make it happen. 🎄🎄

Ten years ago, as relative newly weds, my wife and I had a lovely holiday in Croatia.

During that, we visited an amazing small museum (I do love a small museum): The Museum of Ancient Glass.

Amazing displays and THEY STILL MADE GLASSWARE THE OLD WAY!

We bought two glasses.