Some achievements of Abū Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariyyā al-Rāzī in the field of medicine.

Al-Razi was one of the world's first great medical experts. He is considered the father of psychology and psychotherapy

Short thread.

[THREAD: WHEN GREECE RULED INDIA]
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Some time in the 7th century AD, Sanskrit writer Bāṇabhaṭṭa did a biography on his patron, emperor Harshavardhana. It was titled Harṣacarīta and is said to be the first biographical work from the subcontinent.

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Besides abundant references to the Greeks (as Yavanas, derived from Ionians), the book recounts a curious incident of king Vatsapati being ambushed by soldiers emerging from "the belly of a sham elephant."

This section may or may not have been lifted from an earlier work.

This week, 33 years ago, Thomas Sankara, the revolutionary leader of Burkina Faso, was assassinated in a French-backed coup. He aspired to an egalitarian, feminist society, and an economy built on self-sufficiency, ecological regeneration, and independence from Western powers.

As debt crises mount across Africa, his ideas are more vital now than ever. I wrote about Sankara's legacy in these two pages from The Divide:

Today, Sankara's legacy is inspiring a new generation of revolutionary thinkers and activists across the continent and beyond. As Sankara himself put it, with uncanny prescience, “You can assassinate revolutionaries, but you cannot kill ideas”.

Sankara knew his assassination was coming. Speaking to African leaders at the OAU, he said "I would like this conference to clearly declare that we will not repay the debt; we must do it together, to avoid being assassinated individually..."

"...If Burkina Faso is the only one to refuse, I will not be here at the next conference."

As America celebrates its defeat of an authoritarian in the middle of consolidating power, it is critical to stay vigilant.

In my @BylineTimes interview with historian @ruthbenghiat she cautions these so-called “strongmen” often remain in the party’s

1/ Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s latest book, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, details the precise moment in time when fascism was born.

2/ “World War One was this cataclysmic change,” she told Byline Times. “Multiple empires fell, including the Russian Empire, Hapsburg Empire, the Ottoman Empire. It created death on a scale no one had seen before. It created wounds no one had seen before because of new weapons.”

3/ In addition, the Great War led to a profound crisis in maleness.

4/ “It created this entire class of men who were damaged, many were killed, and it created this huge crisis of masculinity,” she said. “So fascist rulers came up during this crisis period of unrest and instability in their individual countries and Italy was first.”

Spaak Committee - Wikipedia

The Spaak report was approved at the Venice Conference on 29 and 30 May 1956 and was used as the basis for discussion in the work of the Intergovernmental Conference on the Common Market and Euratom from July 1956 which met

at the Château of Val-Duchesse in Brussels. This would lead to the Treaties of Rome being signed in 1957 which established the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) among the members of the ECSC.

The European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC or Euratom) is an international organisation established by the Euratom Treaty on 25 March 1957 with the original purpose of creating a specialist market for nuclear power in Europe, by developing nuclear energy and distributing it to

its member states while selling the surplus to non-member states.

It is legally distinct from the European Union (EU) although it has the same membership, and is governed by many of the EU's institutions; but it is the only remaining community organisation that is independent

of the EU and therefore outside the regulatory control of the European Parliament. Since 2014, Switzerland has also participated in Euratom programmes as an associated state.

The Common Assembly proposed extending the powers of the European Coal and Steel Community to cover

How to not run/and run a business:

In 1976, my family was Big Thompson River flood. 2 hotels survived -locally owned one we were in, which let people stay free & doubled up rooms, & Holiday Inn, which tripled rates. I’ve never again stayed in HI for 45 years because of that..1

...we’ve seen the opposite in Texas disaster - a community minded business that wins public affection & is better managed than the state. @HEB is beloved in TX, more so since the recent crisis. In a town where people were in financial trouble, HEB gave away groceries for free...2

...literally, you would walk into the store, head to the cashier, and they would thank you and send you on your way. They were prepared for a disaster. Why? Because at the beginning of the pandemic, this grocery store chain -GROCERY STORES! - commissioned John’s Hopkins to do...3

...a pandemic report that correctly predicted how things would go (badly), consulted experts on how best to keep their workers and customers safe, and then spent the money required to get it done. They shared all of their information with mass killer Governor @GregAbbott_TX.../4

....a man they did not know how already deep-sixes a report put together specifically for the state to show how to open up safely. Just like his ignoring the 2011 warnings about an electricity collapse and the need for Abbott’s bagmen at the energy companies to spend money to...5