NEW. 🚨🚨🚛🇬🇧🙄🚛🚚🚨🚨 clear signs govt is preparing for coming #brexit turbulence - consulting on new fast-track scheme for food lorries returning to Europe /1



The idea is that 300 lorries a day will be granted 'fast track' permits so they can go back EU and replenish supplies...this is because (see below) the gov fears that potential for disruption is "high" /2

The 8-page consultation document notes this is both because of #Brexit but also because of #COVID19 and continued French insistence on checks on all drivers from UK. /3

Lots arriving in Kent without clear tests SO separately Dept for Transport is considering £150 fines for drivers that don't have clean tests before entering Kent - problem, say hauliers, is that this requires communicating with EU-based drivers (85% from EU) /4

The govt is worried that disruptions will risk the kind of panic-buying we saw in early #COVID19 pandemic /5

MINISTRY OF INTERIOR
ABUJA

PRESS RELEASE

FG DECLARES DECEMBER 25, 28, 2020; JANUARY 1, 2021 PUBLIC HOLIDAYS

The Federal Government has declared Friday 25, Monday 28 December 2020 and Friday, January 1, 2021 as public holidays to mark the Christmas, Boxing Day and New Year Celebrations respectively.

Minister of Interior, Ogbeni Rauf Adesoji Aregbesola (@raufaregbesola), who made the declaration on behalf of the Federal Government, felicitated with Christians and all Nigerians both at home and abroad on this year’s Christmas and New Year Celebrations.

Aregbesola urged Christians to adopt the creed of Christ on faith, hope and love.

“We must emulate the life of humility, service, compassion, patience, peace and righteousness that the birth and Ministry of Jesus Christ signified, that will be the best way to know Christ and celebrate his birth”, he said.

Thread: Meaning and loss in American conservatism

I've written a lot about how Christian supremacism (expressed and implicit) is the underlying objective of most Trump supporters but the psychology of American conservatism is very important in its descent into madness.

We're seeing it manifested heavily in the present moment as Trump and his followers are forced to contemplate the loss of the presidency but it's important to realize that losing is the psychic core of the U.S. right.

Trump's repugnant demeanor and prior history of political moderation is what made him so reviled by conservative activists and donors in 2015 but his angry victim complex so deeply resonated with the GOP base that this is why he won the primary.

American conservatism has been obsessed with death and loss since it emerged in the 1940s. The utter humiliation of Herbert Hoover and the rapid growth of federal spending and regulation under FDR was an existential moment for the corporate barons who started the U.S. right.

The rise of explicitly atheist Marxist-Leninism was also immensely triggering of long-time fundamentalist fantasies of persecution and death before the return of Christ. Most Christians don't see John's Apocalypse as a literal text but fundamentalists do.

@AlexandraChalup "As MAGA World’s hopes for an election redo have slipped away, an equally improbable idea has begun to percolate among Donald Trump’s most bitterly disappointed followers: secession." 12/21/20 h/t @AlexandraChalup 1/

2/"Texas GOP chair Allen West floated the idea of a new union of 'law-abiding states,' and Texas state Rep. Kyle Biedermann—previously best known for dressing up as “gay Hitler”—pledged to file a bill in Austin to put the question of Texas secession to voters."

"Rep. Randy Weber also posted pro-secession material on his Facebook page, becoming the first official in Washington to advocate for disintegrating the U.S. Trump’s most reliable media supporters have likewise spread the idea nationally." 3/

"Rush Limbaugh, recent recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, this month claimed the country was suddenly 'trending toward secession.'" 4/

"Actual secession in the U.S. remains, for the moment, something outside the realm of feasibility." 5/

“Giving prosecutors more authority & leverage to punish those who are despised—white racist fascists, for example—will inevitably result in more poor nonwhite people being prosecuted.” White crime often leads to harsher punishment for Black & Brown

"Even hate crime legislation specifically intended to help prosecute crimes motivated by white supremacy & other forms of bigotry, can have a disparate negative impact on minority groups. In 2019 Black people (roughly 13% of population) were accused of nearly 24% of hate crimes."

"Half-century ago, the Mafia was seen as a pervasive, violent threat. Congress passed the Racketeer Influenced & Corrupt Organizations Act or RICO the most sweeping federal criminal law ever enacted. At the time, lawmakers weren’t talking about going after Black groups." Well?

Despite RICO passed in response to predominately white Mafia threats, Black people are now "disproportionately prosecuted under RICO In a 2012 study, approximately 86 percent of federal criminal prosecutions of gangs using the RICO statute have targeted racial minorities." Why?

"[T]he implicit racial biases of prosecutors" is what drives prosecutions of Black people under RICO. "They tend to only see a White gang as a “gang” when it is formally organized while far likelier to apply the label to an informal group of Black friends in a neighborhood."

This is the mind-blistering fact that everyone should be aware of. The government still has *no plan* for ending the pandemic. Or even for ending the lockdown. I knew we had a troupe of clowns in charge, but this is beyond incompetence.
My column.

Taiwan's most recent death from covid-19 was on May 11th last year. It stopped the virus without lockdowns. How? Mostly through its genuinely world-beating test-trace-isolate-and-support system, developed with the help of participatory democracy. Compare, contrast and weep.

See those numbers on the y axis? They are the actual numbers. SEVEN deaths in total from covid-19, in a nation with over twice our population density. This is what competent government looks like.

From the outset, the Taiwanese government built its system on mass popular engagement and active consent. It also understood the central importance of getting TTIS right, part of which means providing a 5-star service for people who have to go into isolation.

Taiwan's approach was the exact opposite of the racist trope with which some people have tried to explain its success: "people in East Asian countries do what they're told, we don't". It actively built public engagement and enthusiasm, while our government centralised everything.

The very idea that we should concern ourselves with establishing rules of conduct that guarantee equal treatment for both ourselves & for the racist, murdering fascists who are aiming to carry out genocide & overthrow democratic governments makes no sense.

I appreciate everyone’s commitment to ideas of liberalism & equality but fascism exists outside of liberalism & there are people trying to kill us whose very ideology is based on the idea of there being no equality. They can only defeat us or be defeated.

There’s a reason we had an entire world war over this issue and it’s not because people at the time couldn’t figure out how to come up with a standard for free speech that applied equally to fascists & all the people they were trying to kill.

Furthermore, the idea we have to apply equal standards to all forms of speech implies all speech is equal. By that logic, there’s no difference b/w someone using social media to incite genocide v someone using it to advocate equal rights. Is that really the moral position?

The idea that holding Trump & other fascists to account might later have negative impact on others ignores that it’s already been the case that Black & brown ppl have received unequal policing & banishment online. The only thing new is that they’ve finally banned Trump.

I've been trying to put this into words for a while now:

I truly think Biden understands the presidency more than perhaps any President since JFK. He is very aware of this moment and his role.

At some point you should stop underestimating him.

Conservatives pretend Biden is senile while others categorize him as just a "Joe from Scranton". Both are very wrong.

Yes, he's got a regular guy persona. But he also lapses into quoting Irish poets, Lincoln, and St. Augustine at the drop of a hat. He's not shy about it.

He's incredibly in-tune with the American Ethos: he knows the role of the Presidency, in both a practical and inspirational role. His idea of the presidency is fundamentally as a transformative role. I've seen nothing to suggest the contrary.

He gets it. He freakin' gets it.

The bar is so low after Trump that a half-assed attempt would clear it easily and look miraculous in comparison.

Nah. Joe's gunning for the record. At some point you have to stop complaining he's complacent when he puts a 1.9T package as priority #1 and signs 30 EOs in 3 days.

I don't think enough has been written about the transformative impact a successful Biden term could actually bring. We're going from an administration who honestly didn't even try to one staffed by experts and experienced veterans.

People will notice the effects.

WEDNESDAY 23rd

UK-FRANCE DEAL
-Last night the government announced the deal agreed with France to reopen the border and allow freight to travel through

-The deal is based on mass testing of lorry drivers, 150-200 military personnel are being deployed to give lateral flow tests to hauliers in Kent
-Lorry drivers get their results in 20-30 minutes, they’ll then get a text message, allowing them proceed to France

-It appears Macron backed down on a demand to make the lorry drivers have more accurate PCR tests, which take 24 hours to give a result
-A government official says the PM was “full of praise” for how Transport Secretary Grant Shapps handled the crisis 💕

-It is expected to take days to clear the backlog and hauliers are still being asked not to come to port
-Rail, air and sea services will resume on Wednesday morning, all those travelling from the UK to France will need to show a negative test taken within the previous 72 hours

ABOUT THOSE LATERAL FLOW TESTS
-“The government shelved plans to open rapid-turnaround test centres across England amid concerns about the accuracy of their results”
-“Directors of public health had concerns about the potential false reassurance to those testing negative.” 😬

A little noticed decision by Mike Pompeo Sunday may result in tens of thousands dying of starvation and also a massive oil spill 4 times bigger than the Valdez.

1/ A THREAD of the mind blowing insanity of Pompeo's decision to name Yemen's Houthis as a terrorist group.

2/ A civil war has been raging in Yemen since 2014. Saudi Arabia and the U.S. are on one side. The rebel Houthi tribe and Iran on the other. It has caused a humanitarian crisis - the worst in the world. 100,000 children have died of starvation or disease. 16m are malnourished.

3/ The Houthis are bad guys. They target civilians. They steal food aid. But they aren't what we would traditionally consider a "terrorist group". They are using barbaric tactics in the conduct of war. But so are the Saudis. They intentionally target civilians too.

4/ Only food aid keeps people alive in Yemen. But humanitarian organizations can't work in areas of countries controlled by terrorist organizations. Now, these programs will shut down in areas of Yemen controlled by the Houthis.

5/ Gets worse. Commercial food importers will not send food into the same areas. Yemen imports almost all its food. So the designation is essentially a death sentence for millions. No humanitarian food. No commercial food.

Oh Josh , Seb does not need to be a citizen of the Metis Nation to be Metis, we both know it and for those who don't, I will do my best to help them understand.

For starters Josh, MNC who represents the Red River Metis Nation is only 1 of the 2 National Metis organizations in Canada. The other one, until it says otherwise is the 2nd but was the first original one, who got Metis repatriated into the Canadian Constitution.

The 2 National organizations, even though only one of them is truly national are MNC and CAP. CAP who previously was known as NCC. When NCC was repatriating Metis into the 1982 Constitution, MNC was not even an organization at that time. MNC was incorporated as a non-profit

society in 1984. / Canadian Metis Society - formed in 1968 - it ended with the formation of the NCC in 1971. The NCC and MNC have 2 very different definitions of what it means to be a Metis person. Although MNC only changed to that contemporary definition in 2002. In 1978, you

didn't even need to be Aboriginal to join that organization. The History of the Manitoba Metis Federation - Tony Lussier writing in 1978 states - Today a Metis is defined by the MMF as: / MNC had constantly changing goalposts over the years as to who could join their

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