BC LAW
Saved by @Alex1Powell

We need to talk about the 'expert' witness statement evidence led by Ms Bell in her successful case before the Tavistock. THREAD

 You can see who gave evidence in her support from these extracts from the Tavistock's Skeleton Argument.
Helpful for you to bear in mind that her solicitor was a man called Paul Conrathe, who has a long association with the religious right in the US (I have talked about him a number of times but this is as good a starting point as any). https://t.co/GqoBNcRaEA
I am not going to address here other criticisms that might be made of the form in which that evidence was given or the timing of its service before the court. I am just going to address, in alphabetical order, the individuals whose evidence Mr Conrathe led on Ms Bell's behalf.
The first witness, alphabetically, was Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Oxford, Michael Biggs.

Mr Biggs was exposed for posting transphobic statements online under a fake twitter handle: @MrHenryWimbush according to this report.
https://t.co/EDPCZt6Mih
The tweets posted under that account include “transphobia is a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons." It also accused The Lancet, amongst the world's oldest and best-known general medical journals, of "endorsing eugenics".
The second, alphabetically, is Professor Neil Evans.

Although he was described as an “internationally recognised neuroendocrinologist” he is in fact a Professor at the Institute of Biodiversity Animal Health & Comparative Medicine: https://t.co/42WlwZ4NBe
Amongst his papers on veterinary medicine are a study on puberty blockers in sheep which was taken up by the Christian Institute which describes itself as "committed to the truths of historic, biblical Christianity" https://t.co/tYHpxYmIE8.
The third, alphabetically, is Professor Gene Feder. He is plainly an eminent academic and practising GP (https://t.co/1VrW5hyElU) but he doesn't seem to have any particular expertise in this field.
The fourth is Professor Gillberg, a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry, Gillberg Neuropsychiatry Centre, University of Gothenburg.

Professor Gillberg was involved in a major scandal in Sweden involving the shredding of evidence. https://t.co/B6lpLvRSqA
The fifth, is Professor Paul Hruz. Professor Hruz's evidence was explicitly relied on by the Divisional Court.

Paul Hruz is linked with the religious hate group, the Alliance for Defending Freedom https://t.co/1skuO8GRiP
Professor Hruz is also linked with the US Heritage Foundation. https://t.co/N4i0ULnB4T
According to this report, Professor Hruz's own university entirely disavows his notional expertise in the field (https://t.co/bEV2wtt4BG) but that did not stop the Divisional Court from placing considerable reliance on it.
There is a lot more to say about Professor Hruz but let me move on to the sixth in alphabetical order, Professor Stephen Levine (whose evidence was also relied on by the Divisional Court).
Stephen Levine has given evidence for the ADF.

As the ADF puts it here: "aggressive pro-abortion and LGBT activists aren’t just targeting churches and creative professionals. They’re also targeting our children—and they’re lying about it" (https://t.co/I3lIwrXkw2).
The seventh was Professor Patrick Parkinson.

He is a Professor of the University of Queensland. So far as I can see, his evidence should not have been before the Divisional Court at all but nevertheless it was.
According to this report (https://t.co/cd0jTdWsuQ) "Parkinson compared transgender people to the coronavirus, declaring it an 'epidemic.' Previously, he has... campaigned against LGBTQIA+ adoption and has ties to Freedom For Faith and The Australian Christian Lobby."
Parkinson has written in favour of conversion therapy https://t.co/f7trpOYGvo
He chairs or chaired the conservative think tank Freedom for Faith and was commission by the Australian Christian Lobby but stepped down from his role as head of the Law School. https://t.co/eobAtU88JS
Freedom for Faith were recently angered by a decision to stop LGBT conversion practices in Australian churches https://t.co/37LMspdeG7
The eight witness was Professor Sophie Scott. You can see her academic specialisation here https://t.co/kEJ0U5oJ14. Plainly she is an eminent academic but she does not claim any particular expertise on the question before the Divisional Court.
The final witness was Professor John Whitehall, Professor of Pediatrics and Child Health, Western Sydney University Medical School. Whitehall is another particularly interesting individual.
You can read about Whitehall here.

He has admitted that that, in 50 years in medicine, he has never treated a child for gender-related issues and has (or had) published no papers to do with gender dysphoria or trans healthcare. https://t.co/v9PD1VGLZg
Whitehall was listed as a speaker in support of gay conversion therapy for the Australian Christian Lobby. https://t.co/CdxibDKR3m
He was Vice-President of the US-based Christian Anti-Communism Crusade https://t.co/smlpcbXHAW
He was former Deputy Present of the Christian Democratic Party whose is Fred Nile. Nile has said homosexuality is a “mental disorder” and is “immoral, unnatural and abnormal.”
Summing up on John Whitehall, he has multiple links to right-wing, anti-LGBT, anti-abortion and anti-trans groups.
These are the people whose evidence Ms Bell's lawyer placed before the Divisional Court, and at least some of which influenced it in the decision it made.

However, the Court shamefully refused to hear from any trans voices. It rejected (at least) three would be interventions.
Even if you do not care to listen to the views of the trans community you should be deeply alarmed that these or some of these highly marginal figures in world medicine are influencing the law around healthcare for children in the UK.
And if you do not care about the trans community - but you do care about abortion rights or gay rights - you should be deeply alarmed at the influence those who are no friends of 'progressives' are gaining in the UK.
If you'd like to support our efforts to protect perhaps the most vulnerable community in the country from the attentions of the US Religious Right (shamefully propped up by some who call themselves progressive) you can do so here. https://t.co/75Zjv7MQJi

More from Jo Maugham

Jo Maugham
Jo Maugham
@JolyonMaugham
We at @GoodLawProject have a paralegal attending the case management hearing in the Tavistock's appeal in the Bell case on behalf of our trans defence fund. Occasional updates from them as the hearing progresses...

The 'stay' - effectively a suspension of the legal effect of the first instance decision - will continue. That has been agreed between the parties.

Judge doesn't want oral submissions from any of the would-be intervenors at the case management hearing. (I wouldn't read anything in to that.)

Tavistock supports the intervention by @stonewalluk, @BrookCharity, @TheEndoSociety and @Genderintell, is neutral on those from @libertyhq and @TheBMA and opposes those from Transgender Trend and Dr Bell and a 'parents' group'.

Counsel for Bell opposes - I hope I have that right - the joint intervention.
LAW
Jo Maugham
Jo Maugham
@JolyonMaugham
The High Court gave us 'permission' to bring some of our judicial review arguments in relation to the Government's odd PPE contracts. We are today asking again for permission to bring the others. You can read our (remarkable) Skeleton and Statement here.

We chose these three contracts (Clandeboye/Ayanda/Pestfix) in June/July when we had much less understanding than we do now about what was going on. Once you appreciate that fact, what we have already uncovered (before disclosure) about those three is all the more remarkable.

Let me just focus on one aspect of those contracts: the quality of the product supplied by those companies (respectively, a confectionery wholesaler, a 'family office', and a pest control specialist).

And, rather than me editorialising, let me quote the words of those companies themselves, or Government, or Government agencies.

This is what Government says about what we bought from Clandeboye (we spent a total of £108m on gowns).

But how can they not be cleared for use as gowns? And yet be "authorised for distribution... as part of the PPE ensemble"? It doesn't sound like what we got was gowns.
LAW
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Jo Maugham
Jo Maugham
@JolyonMaugham
So, just before Christmas, Government what it called a "response" to this New York Times account of cronyism in pandemic spending.

And I said, when that "response" - which you can read here https://t.co/gLEJzuqoAx - was published that every single notional rebuttal by Government of a claim made by the New York Times was false, misleading or both.

And it's time for me to make good.

Here's the first "rebuttal" by Government to the New York Times' claim that: "The government handed out thousands of contracts to fight the virus, some of them in a secretive V.I.P. lane."


A number of points might be made.

(1) Government cannot say the NYT got it wrong. (2) the NAO found the VIP lane (later renamed the high-priority lane) "sat alongside" the normal lane. And I have shown elsewhere VIP contracts were handled by different teams all the way through.


(3) Although Govt says "offers of support raised by Opposition MPs were dealt with expeditiously" the NAO report does not record any referrals made by an Opposition MP leading to a contract - and the Government response telling does not say any did.
GOVERNMENT
Jo Maugham QC
Jo Maugham QC
@JolyonMaugham
If you want to know what happens to populations living in austerity who trade with the US on WTO terms, take a look at Tonga. THREAD

I visited Tonga in 1981 and it was, like so many other Pacific Island nations, slowly adjusting to Westernisation. The people ate mostly fish and vegetables. /1

Now it has rates of Type 2 diabetes of up to 40%, life expectancy has fallen by 10 years and well over half the population is obese. So what happened? (stats https://t.co/1XQHdqL8o8) /2

What happened was that the US discovered that Tonga was a great dumping ground for a cheap and locally unsaleable product known as a Turkey 'tail', essentially a gland of 40-45% fat. /3

They were fatty and, because cheap, attractive to a poor population. By 2007, in another Pacific Island nation, Samoa, 20 kilos per person were being sold every year. But it banned them for public health reasons. https://t.co/2f1N8tuMp6 /4
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Jo Maugham
Jo Maugham
@JolyonMaugham
From time to time, indeed quite a lot, I receive letters from Pestfix's lawyers who boast of acting for the world's leading tech companies (and a pest control specialist with last reported net assets of £18k but now engorged with profits from £350m of PPE contracts).

Sometimes I have to send those letters off to lawyers acting for @GoodLawProject who charge quite a lot of money (we might now be well into five figures) to advise me on the various ways to tell Pestfix's lawyers to sling their hook.

What I find especially crappy about this is that Pestfix doesn't like its actions being in the public domain. Their letters are marked "private and confidential" to try and stop me telling you they are using profits from public contracts to muzzle my work.

And if I do tell you, they complain to the court that it is my actions that lead to public opprobrium being heaped upon them. For my part, I tend to think it is mostly their actions.

Anyway. I mention this by way of precusor to observing that the NAO has quietly made some changes to their report about, inter alia, the £350m in PPE contracts won by a small pest control specialist in Littlehampton that got into the VIP channel for reasons no one can explain.
LAWER

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Matthew Hoppock
Matthew Hoppock
@MatthewHoppock
One of the judges this story mentions is William Cassidy, who was promoted from an Atlanta IJ position to a BIA member position in 2019 by the Trump DOJ. Cassidy has an awful history that has been well-documented, but I'm still enraged reading this reporting.


The story notes that the EOIR Director served as an ICE attorney in Atlanta and practiced before Cassidy for years. And it points to FOIA records unearthed by Bryan Johnson showing they remain friendly.

A trove of complaints against Cassidy was published by AILA in 2019 after FOIA litigation. They generally show misconduct, substantiated in the record, followed by "written counseling" etc.

One way Cassidy could avoid discipline is by turning off the recording device during the hearing. If he made a lewd or offensive comment off the record, all the EOIR would do is listen to the recording. If it's not there, the complaint is "unsubstantiated" https://t.co/wUeBPEEbpV


In that case, Cassidy joked about a detained immigrant saying he missed his wife. The complaint was dismissed because the ACIJ found "no levity or joking" in the comment.
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TXgrlWatching 💻🛡⚔...
@VeritasTXgem
🤔🧐⬇️ 🚨Active Thread🚨
Safe? Doesnt exist? No evidence? Decide for yourself I have things to show you...

Dont say I didnt try to tell you...

Over 1300 post & counting...

Parts 1-11 attached...
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Truth
Truth
@1foreverseeking
@littlecarrotq I've been tracking these since December. Michigan


Wisconsin


Georgia


Arizona


Another Pennsylvania case. This is the most important one in my opinion. It shows the Republican Legislature broke the law when they created a mail-in ballot law in October, 2019, which they knew was against the state
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@AdamSmithWorks
@AdamSmithWorks
@adamsmithworks
#AdamSmith, #WealthOfNations, and #CornLaws!
What more could you possibly want on a Saturday morning? (IV.v.b) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets


Yes, it’s the Digression Concerning the Corn Trade and Corn Laws! We can barely contain ourselves long enough to remind you that “corn” doesn’t mean 🌽 It means the principal cereal crop of a nation. (We keep saying so because we keep forgetting.) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

#TLDR on #AdamSmith’s thoughts on the Corn Laws:

They’re bad. (IV.v.b.1) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets


Corn merchants can be broken down into four groups. Smith loves to break things down into groups.
1) Inland traders
2) Importers
3) Exporters
4) Transporters (IV.v.b.2) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets

If inland traders raise their prices higher than supply and demand will allow, they’ll discourage consumption beyond “thrift and good management.” People will go hungry and crops will rot.

That's bad. (IV.v.b.3) #WealthOfTweets #SmithTweets
LAW
Billy Bostickson \U0001f3f4\U0001f441&\U0001f441 \U0001f193
Billy Bostickson 🏴👁&👁 ...
@BillyBostickson
A Call for Help!
1. we have a petition/open letter for the WHO
https://t.co/Bie8pUy7WJ
2. 372 people signed it but we want to boost it
3. I post link ascomment on related YT videos
Tks @KevinMcH3 for the tip
4. You can help by liking the comments
5. That will increase visibility!


6. Links for YT videos with comments are here
1. China curtails hunt for virus origins
https://t.co/NhcYdtsd2Y
2. China: nearly 500,000 may have been infected in Wuhan
https://t.co/KRUQ5hFrii
3. WHO becomes US-China battleground | DW Documentary
https://t.co/8ah8M8bpiB


4. Gravitas: The 'hidden hunt' for COVID-19 origins
https://t.co/hHhhUqgPYt
5. Seeking the invisible: hunt for origins of deadly Covid-19 coronavirus will take scientists to Wuhan
https://t.co/tCPQqjUZF3
6. WHO team to probe COVID-19 origins in

7. How forensic researchers track down origins of SARS-CoV2
https://t.co/r7A1lkr5li
8. Bats, roadblocks & the origins of coronavirus - BBC
https://t.co/Kh9jacC54t
9. New coronavirus strain is far more infectious and spreading among young - BBC

10. https://t.co/OcpAZ9nrl3
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16. https://t.co/ir7QiwmlWt
17. https://t.co/PTT3KZDi8F
18.
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Rig Ved 1.36.7

To do a Namaskaar or bow before someone means that you are humble or without pride and ego. This means that we politely bow before you since you are better than me. Pranipaat(प्राणीपात) also means the same that we respect you without any vanity.

1/9


Surrendering False pride is Namaskaar. Even in devotion or bhakti we say the same thing. We want to convey to Ishwar that we have nothing to offer but we leave all our pride and offer you ourselves without any pride in our body. You destroy all our evil karma.

2/9

We bow before you so that you assimilate us and make us that capable. Destruction of our evils and surrender is Namaskaar. Therefore we pray same thing before and after any big rituals.

3/9

तं घे॑मि॒त्था न॑म॒स्विन॒ उप॑ स्व॒राज॑मासते ।
होत्रा॑भिर॒ग्निं मनु॑षः॒ समिं॑धते तिति॒र्वांसो॒ अति॒ स्रिधः॑॥

Translation :

नमस्विनः - To bow.

स्वराजम् - Self illuminating.

तम् - His.

घ ईम् - Yours.

इत्था - This way.

उप - Upaasana.

आसते - To do.

स्त्रिधः - For enemies.

4/9

अति तितिर्वांसः - To defeat fast.

मनुषः - Yajman.

होत्राभिः - In seven numbers.

अग्निम् - Agnidev.

समिन्धते - Illuminated on all sides.

Explanation : Yajmans bow(do Namaskaar) before self illuminating Agnidev by making the offerings of Havi.

5/9
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Butt plugs were originally sold as a miracle cure for headaches, acne, and insanity

Thread, article here and h/t: @qikipedia :
https://t.co/Ts84xnmWKJ


For a long time, medicine was pre-occupied with the question "can this be solved by putting something in the butt?"

Take, for example, tobacco smoke enemas, in which 18th Century physicians saw drowning victims and attempted to de-deadify them by blowing tobacco smoke up their rectums with a pipe.


Despite having no medical benefit whatsoever, the practice was popular, and enema kits lined the Thames like lifebelts, ready to be used as one final humiliation for somebody who was crap at swimming.

This practice ended sometime after 1800 when it became apparent that it didn't really work, given how the anus famously isn't really connected to the lungs, but doctors weren't quite finished with having a poke around in the old anus to see what happens just yet.
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And here they are...

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Congrats Chris on winning $250!


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A team project! @bpmct and @BaileyPumfleet built a tool for social media influencers to create simple "swipe up" landing pages for followers.

Really impressive for 24 hours. Congrats!


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Dalton is a beast. I'm so excited he placed in the top 10.


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I wish this existed when I learned to code! Congrats on $250!!
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Bhu Varaha Swamy temple is a Hindu temple, located at Srimushnam, in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Constructed in the Dravidian style of architecture...


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The temple had contributions from Medieval Cholas of the 10th century with later expansions by Thanjavur Nayak king Achuthappa Nayak.


A granite wall surrounds the temple, enclosing all the shrines and the temple tanks. There is a seven-tieredrajagopuram, the temple’s gateway tower.

Six daily rituals and three yearly festivals are held at the temple, of which the Chariot festival....


celebrated during the Tamil month of Vaikasi (April–May), being the most prominent. The festival also symbolises Hindu-Muslim unity in the region – the flag of the chariot is provided by Muslims; they take offerings from the temple and present to Allah in the mosques.


Source & Pic credit : Anusri
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