Reflecting on the discussion over School Exclusions, it's struck me that many see the concept of Abolition as like "Reform, only better". My experience of running a prison segregation unit has informed my view of how wrong this is. And so... A THREAD 1/

Firstly, updating laptop prevents a blog post, but I may get to that later, if so, I'll link below. To begin: A few years ago, I took over the senior management position in a prison that had departmental responsibility for the prison's Segregation Unit 2/

A Segregation unit is essentially a small living unit within a prison, where people can be taken for the purposes of punishment, or separation from the general population for safety reasons. 3/

When I took over the function, there were normally 12-16 residents, and almost never fewer. There are rules around how/why you can segregate people, which are too much for twitter, but for our purposes, we'll use the two main "themes"- Punishment and Safety 4/

People can be segregated as a punishment after an Adjudication, or held for the good order and discipline of the prison. (See the parallels with the school exclusions debate?) Segregation is not the only punishment available from Adjudication, but is often seen as the top one 5/

I believe very strongly we need to start tolerating one another more, making space for one another, working hard to bridge the divide. It's a theme I've been on about for a while. And I get push-back - often very indignant and heated. Sometimes outright accusatory. #cdnpoli 1/16

A point I keep trying to make, with varying degrees of success, is no matter how much other people may bug you, even disgust you, they're simply not going to disappear tomorrow. So we need to live together. It's not a question of if, it's only a question of how. #cdnpoli 2/16

The response I've never understood is the purist one. I refuse to live with X. I make no allowance for Y. How dare you (turning the question back on me) even imply we should tolerate Z. That's offensive. They are wrong and we are right. It's simple. No compromises. #cdnpoli 3/16

I consider purists to be comically self-indulgent. I've even started arguments over it. I recognize the attraction of purity. It feels great to stand firm on principle and uphold what's right. The question I return to is - now what? They're still here, as are we. #cdnpoli 4/16

What I forget, sometimes, is I view this as a political problem and not everyone does, even when talking about politics. They hear me say we need to live with the "other side" and imagine I mean make friends with them, date them, go bowling with them. That isn't it. #cdnpoli 5/16

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Vienna antilockdown protest 31/01/21

Police Remove Helmets In Solidarity With Crowds

13 Ghosts
All the Ghosts wanted was to be set free.
Cyrus(Osiris) made A Castle of Glass that trapped pissed off spirits.
"A Fathers love for his Children Knows No Bounds"
The LEAP OF FAITH

Remember when Tom Hanks

Look at the hat Hanks Is Wearing when he put out this cryptic Tweet.

Osiris.
He was sending out All those messages surrendering ..
I Posted Alexander the Great all those times before these Messages. he then Fled to Greece..

Both The Light and Dark sides have been asking for

forgiveness in many ways .

Because I am who I am I have to listen. I have to give EVERYONE = Chance to repent and come clean.
No I Am not protecting any of [THEM] who have committed all those crimes. I am/Was at the time giving everyone the chance to make things right.

There's been a lot of discussion about how to communicate uncertainty about vaccines/transmission, guidance for vaccinated people, how to increase vaccine demand/address hesitancy, & what vaccines mean for the "end" of the pandemic.

Here are my thoughts. I call it "the well."

This pandemic has plunged us to the bottom of a very deep well. After recovering from the shock of a long, abrupt fall into cold, fetid water, we looked up and saw only darkness. But we did find a ladder leading upward.

We've been slowly climbing this ladder, sometimes slipping and falling down a few rungs, but we've endured and kept climbing. Our dedication was rewarded. We've developed very efficacious vaccines, and now as we look up, we can see a small circle of light at the top.

As we continue to climb, the circle will slowly expand. The hope of that circle, slowly growing as we climb ever closer to the top, keeps us going. Eventually we will emerge into the bright sun. Hopefully then we'll put a cover on the well so we can't fall in again.

Now that we have two very efficacious vaccines—that have exceeded our wildest expectations at protecting us against disease. That's a tremendous public health achievement. It should allow us to tighten our grip on the ladder and give us a second wind on the climb.

One of the most remarkable things about #Jews is that they are vocal enough to not let their history disappear from the worldwide narrative. A majority of the world’s population is taught about the #Holocaust, and how evil Adolf Hitler was.
(1/14)

But, figures like Stalin, Lenin, Churchill, Akbar, and Nehru are still glorified. They were no less than Adolf Hitler.
(2/14)

Being case-specific here, as per various estimates, Hindus have been wiped away from their native land of Bharat in a huge number, it ranges from 300-400 million.
(3/14)

Hindus are much larger in population as compared to Jews but are not united enough to be vocal about their past. Okay, for a moment if we let go of everything till the 19th century, there still is a lot that Hindus have been suffering in their own land.
(4/14)

Our curriculum doesn’t even mention the #KashmiriPandit exodus of 1990 which is a recent major event. Even the horrific tales of partition are sugar-coated with the Charkha-Khadi-Ahinsa narrative.
(5/14)

For us to get through what needs to happen next, our society and we as individuals need to learn how to accept feedback that our behavior needs change and sit with the discomfort of being wrong.
I see over and over again that people are so uncomfortable with this idea that they

distance themselves from reality when others make complaints. You see them question if you're sure that is what happened, they make excuses and wonder if you maybe interpreted it wrong, or maybe you invited it all because if YOU did something wrong here then they can distance

themselves from the idea that similar abuse might occur to them. Instead we need to be supporting people who are speaking truth to abusers. We need to not tone police them, gaslight them, or diminish their stories. But this is exactly where people go first because they are so

unable to sit with the discomfort of reality. They would rather denial that anything happened at all. Then they are safe from it too.

The problem is that this mechanism provides cover for abusers and gives them the space to abuse. It discourages people from coming forward.

And if you try to talk to an abuser about their behavior they won't hear it either. There will always be something wrong with how you phrase your complaints, purity tests, gaslighting, and further abuse.

But there is a moment between the complaint and the response where a breath

1/ EXCELLENT piece by @ChrisdYork with real investigation, confirming what I’ve been telling about since April 2020. NHS COVID data is NOT produced and presented by NHS. For profit handlers of test data and Trace and Trace system include AMAZON!! —

2/ a company that has a direct conflict in reporting high numbers; Serco; Boots, which is also conflicted, as I had guessed; Deloitte; G4S, which also manages private prisons; Palantir, with close ties to intel agencies; Transunion which runs credit checks to verify identity. All

3/ these companies have huge vested interests in continual testing, constant vaccination, home deliveries due to people being told it’s dangerous to go outside to shop (when transmission happens most often at home and NOT in ventilated distanced retail), and with links to PayPal

4/ Palantir also has a conflict of interest in benefiting from the data reporting numbers that lead people to stay home, order online since PayPal us a payment processor for online commerce and loses $$$ when people shop as humans for ‘nonessential items’ in High Streets. Get it?

5/ All these companies have access to your data when there is mass testing. Not only whether or not you test positive but your name, address, which is cross checked with Transunion, which adds your entire credit history, all your credit cards and property you ever owned, which..

Have you seen the stories about how Trump administration officials and staffers for Ted Cruz are finding that no one in the private sector will hire them because they are forever tainted by their former bosses' disgraceful behavior?

They're bullshit.

https://t.co/XvYDPpR9yd

1/

The Swamped site from @twittlesis is a crowdsourced list of Trump's ugliest swamp-gators and the employers who put them in positions of power and authority despite their complicity with a fascist would-be

On @TheProspect, @alex_sammon provides highlights of the swamp-to-industry pipeline.

Unsurprisingly, babykiller companies LOVE Trump's gators. Jim Mattis? Board member for General Dynamics. Andrea Thompson? Northrop Grumman. HR McMaster? Zoom.

Rick Perry is back at Energy Transfer Partners, parleying his government service into a plum role in energetically rendering the planet unfit for human habitation.

Ryan Zinke's in fintech.

4/

As punishment for his multitude of sins as the president's personal attorney, Donald McGahn has been sentenced to the Wearing of the White Shoes, threatening people on behalf of the clients of corporate law powerhouse Jones Day.

5/

If women knew how they carried the divine letters they carried, they would understand why dark groups made so much effort to break the marriage tradition. The hymen of women is not only for health and hygiene purposes.

Especially as it is thought in the eastern parts of the world, it has nothing to do with honor. Every woman has a divine letter with her virginity. This divine letter is in the first sexual experience after a true spiritual marriage, in the presence of God, in sickness-health, ..

good day-bad day, until death separates them (without any earthly condition), in the first sexual experience that takes place after a true spiritual marriage, where they are promised to be with each other for their spiritual development.

During the opening of the membrane, its seal is opened with the first drop of blood flowing. This blood is the only divinely allowed blood. All other bloodshed violates divine laws. When there is no marriage, that is, when the oath is not given before God,

the divine protection is removed and this letter is destroyed by the dark beings. This is why the peoples of Europe were taken to unmarried partnerships, polygamy, youth madnesses, and these were normalized, especially for the destruction of the sacred letters of great importance

Here's a happy story to end the week. For years @RonJichardson and I had fantasised about going to New York. For almost as long as we'd known each other we'd dreamt of going and having a holiday there. In 2011 we sorted it and set off on our adventure.

We went for 10 nights which is a long time in New York. It was emotional. For both of us NY was the land of dreams. Seeing the Ghostbusters Fire Station is still one of the highlights of my life. My main memory is of the bars. I think we went to every bar in New York.

The best thing about going for 10 nights is you can do the tourist stuff pretty quick and then you're just mooching about as if you live there for a week. The days are long, especially when you're doing a pub crawl every day.

One of the games we'd play at home was The Lookalike Game. On a train, in a pub or on the Tube you'd spot someone and say "over your right shoulder, looks like a short Les Dennis" or "by the bar, a male Barbara Streisand". It was purely for our own amusement.

Towards the end of our trip in New York we're walking down a busy street in downtown Manhattan. We're playing the lookalike game. Jon says "he looks like Billy Connolly". I look up and there's a radiant man in a North Face gilet. He didn't look like Billy Connolly.

Thread:
What does State Sponsored Genocide on ethnic #Amharas and #Agaws in Metekel Zone in BSG look like?
Representatives of ethnic #Amhara residents in Metekel have travelled to #BahirDar to raise the ff grievances:

Ato Ayal Engide

“In April 2011,Ethiopian Calendar(1/)

[two years ago], right after Ethiopian Easter, they(ethnic Amharas and Agaws) were forcibly chased out of the rural parts, before they could even finish their Easter celebrations. When we knew we were next, then those of us who were in the urban areas, ended up moving to (2/)

Amhara Region. In May, there was a reconciliation between Mandura Woreda in BSG and Guanga Woreda in Amhara RS. All of us that were displaced believed that this was a true reconciliation and moved back to BSG. But those from the rural parts were still not allowed to go back. (3)

“Targetted killings of ethnic #Amharas and #Agaws has been happening for a while now. But recently, it has been out of control. For example, three brothers who were my neighbors were killed in 2011. Their names were Habte, Ayalew and Yeshewas and are all buried together. (4/)

After the reconciliation, the BSG administration started bothering us again. 12 families were killed in Banjimago. We can tell you by name who are doing these killings and it’s the Zonal administration. (5/)

THREAD: Effects of lockdowns & restrictions on kids and teenagers.
There's many amazing representatives of young people on here but as a young person myself seeing much of this daily, I thought it would be good to make this.

Firstly I think the underlying theme is just the destruction of livelihoods. The phrase 'let kids be kids' seems to have been forgotten about this year. Millions have missed out on experiences, events, friendships, socializing, education and just some the care free times of life.

90,000 London children homeless. This is very distressing.

Child sexual abuse raised but is under reported.

Mental health worsens among young people, at the lowest risk from COVID.

I’m honestly just so sick to death of seeing hypersexualised female celebrities. It’s so, so damaging and to think that my nieces are growing up surrounded by it makes me worry constantly about the next generation of girls and women.

And it’s so fucking prevalent. Hypersexualised female celebrities are the norm, not the exception. Especially black/brown women. When I think about how every single Top 40 song sung by a female is about male pleasure, it hits home how profoundly mired in patriarchy we are.

Can we just have female celebrities that aren’t forced to sexualise themselves? Is that too much to ask for the diet that young girls grow up on?

Ariana grande’s latest album is *literally* named after trying new sex positions—for a man. The most famous pop song by women of last year, WAP, was literally about male pleasure and the lengths women will go to for it, and included the lyrics, “I wanna gag, I wanna choke.”

Don’t even get me started on the imagery. The music videos, the photography. The constant fucking nudity. The way almost every dance move is an allusion to sex.

@JustUsADOS @AbdullaahDawud @BreakingBrown @doritegrocery @Amazon_Queenn @melanatriot In my humble opinion, there are some (few) who claim “FBA” because they don’t like the moniker “descendants of slavery”. But, they don’t understand the significance, connection and necessity in being explicit that we are owed reparations BECAUSE OF “slavery”... 1️⃣▶️

@AbdullaahDawud @BreakingBrown @doritegrocery @Amazon_Queenn @melanatriot And, everything that followed on the timeline from slavery til now. But, these *few*, need to understand that “FBA” IS an “org” (that does nothing) except for dox people, speak recklessly about ADOS, Black immigrants, and other people who ARE doing the work. Tariq can *say* 2️⃣▶️

@AbdullaahDawud @BreakingBrown @doritegrocery @Amazon_Queenn @melanatriot it’s not an “org”, but once he trademarked it, created some kind of “flag”, took money from thousands of people for a “conference”, and created some sort of weird and dangerous *allegiance* amongst those people... it’s an “org”. That does NO real work in furthering our cause.3️⃣▶️

@AbdullaahDawud @BreakingBrown @doritegrocery @Amazon_Queenn @melanatriot So, those *few* who are doing some work (in Marlon’s case) need to pick a definitive side in name, and principle. Because, whatever work they are doing, needs to be within the continuity of the foundation and work of ADOS who IS an actual WORKING ORGANIZATION. As well as a 4️⃣▶️

@AbdullaahDawud @BreakingBrown @doritegrocery @Amazon_Queenn @melanatriot DEFINED lineage. Those *few* are NOT actually helping, but are in the long run, harming the momentum and progress of those (ADOS) who ACTUALLY created and initiated the definitions, foundation and momentum for the reparations *movement* in the past few years. I can clearly 5️⃣▶️