#BenazirBhutto became the youngest and first female prime minister of the Muslim world in 1988. She was an embodiment of women empowerment. Her three children, Bilawal, Bakhtawar and Aseefa were born while she faced myriads of political challenges but showed relentless...

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“Thread: History of Valentines Day”

Ancient historical sources have claimed the existence of several saints by the name of St.Valentines who died on Feb 14. Among them, two were executed during the reign of Roman Emperor Claudius Gothicus in 269-270 A.D.
#valentinesday2021

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It was the time when the Christian persecution was common. Another legendary account states that under the rule of Claudius II, Rome was involved in the bloody campaigns, therefore, to maintain a strong army, Claudius II banned all marriages and engagements in Rome.

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The reason of forbidding marriages was forced by the reluctance of people to join military because of their strong attachment to their wives. But St. Valentine defied the orders of the Emperor Claudius II Gothicus and married couples secretly to spare the husbands from war.

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A few claims have reported that St.Valentine endorsed illegal relationships which could end up into a marriage. When it was discovered by the emperor, St. Valentine was arrested and condemned to have his head cut off.

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An order of Belgian monks spent almost three centuries to explore the lives of saints by the name of St.Valentines from archives around the world. Bollandists suggested, that there weren’t actually two decapitated Valentines, but the two different versions of one saint’s...

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On this day in 2007, the bomb blasts in Samjhauta Express killed 68 people including 44 Pakistanis. The immediate investigations revealed irrefutable evidence about the masterminds. In this thread, I would share some Indian newspaper clips which covered the investigations.

1. Lt Col Prasad Purohit, a serving Indian army officer, was arrested for terror conspiracy in the Malegaon blast case. He was the co founder of Abhinav Bharat, a right wing Hindu organisation. He admitted that he was the mastermind.

(The Times of India, Pune, 7 November 2008)

2. Lt Col Purohit met Pragya Thakur on 5 Oct 2008 to tell her that "Our People" had carried out the killings in Orissa, burnt down two churches and also carried out the Malegaon blast.

(The Indian Express, Pune, 24 Nov 2008)

Ironically, Pragya is BJP's MP today.

3. During his narco analysis test, Lt Col Purohit told officers that Praveen Togadia was responsible for the “Samjhauta Express Blasts”. He asked me to find out from Dr Dev, how much RDX was remaining after the blast.

(Pune Mirror, 19 Nov 2008)

4. In his narco analysis test, Lt Col Purohit gave sensational information that he supplied explosives for Ajmer and Malegaon blasts at the instance of Mahant Dayanand Pandey.

(Sakal, Pune and Pudhari, Pune, both of 15 Nov 2008)

Today marks 73rd anniversary of the Nakba when more than half of Palestine's native population close to 800,000 was uprooted in 1948. 531 villages were destroyed. Palestinian sources, combined with Israeli military archives, have listed 31 confirmed massacres.

THREAD

In February 1947, the British cabinet decided to pull out of Mandatory Palestine. UN had to solve the question of Palestine's future. It took nine months in deliberation and then adopted the idea of partitioning the country without the consent of Palestinians.

The Jews, who owned less than 6% of the total land area of Palestine and constituted no more than one third of the population at the time of partition, were handed more than half of its overall territory. The Partition Resolution was adopted on 29 November 1947, and...

the ethnic cleansing of Palestine began in early December 1947 with a series of Zionist attacks.

Ben Gurion said couple of months before partition:
“The Palestinians could become a fifth column, and if so they can either be mass arrested or expelled; it is better to expel them”

The early Jewish assaults were severe enough to cause the exodus of around 75,000 Palestinians. But on 9 April 1948, Jewish forces carried out the Deir Yassin massacre. As they burst into the village, the Jewish soldiers sprayed the houses with machine-gun fire killing..

Whatsapp will start forcing users to share personal data with Facebook which is it's parent company. It doesn't come as a surprise since all the major giants of Silicon valley; Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft etc are deeply integrated with US intelligence agencies.

THREAD

In 2013, Edward Snowden, an employee of National Security Agency, revealed that the US govt was running a vast Internet surveillance program and tapping every major Silicon Valley platform and company— Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon including mobile games like Angry Birds.

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The most astonishing program revealed by Snowden’s disclosures is called PRISM, which involves a sophisticated on-demand data tap housed within the datacenters of the biggest and most respected names in Silicon Valley: Google, Apple, Facebook, Yahoo!, and Microsoft.

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These devices allow the National Security Agency (NSA) to extract whatever the agency requires, including emails, attachments, chats, address books, files, photographs, audio files, search activity, and mobile phone location history.

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Edward Snowden also revealed the Mass Metadata Surveillance System of America's National Security Agency (NSA) in his documents. Let's suppose if NSA had found someone dialing number of an al Qaeda member, and assume that this person had phoned 100 other people over the...

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The BATTLE OF PAVAN KHIND (13 July 1660)

300 MARATHAS against 10000+ ADIL SHAHI TROOPS

A Sparta style last man stand at a mountain pass which ensured Shivaji Maharaj's safety.

Valour, loyalty and sacrifice!

Baji Prabhu Deshpande was one of the most able lieutenants of Shivaji. He sacrificed his life defending Shivaji in a heroic last stand known as the "Battle of Pavan Khind" in which his force was hugely outnumbered.(1)

In this battle he became a martyr, but managed to halt the enemy forces for several hours, which secured Shivaji’s safety and victory on another front. Without this heroic last stand Shivaji’s glorious career may have been cut short.(2)

Baji Prabhu was senior to Shivaji. In the beginning he opposed Shivaji being from a rival Maratha clan, but realised that Shivaji stood for national resurgence. Henceforth he became a friend and loyal supporter of Shivaji.(3)

In 1660, Shivaji was trapped in the fort of Panhala, under siege and vastly outnumbered by an Adilshahi army led by general Siddhi Jauhar.(4)

The Kushana Empire was founded by Mahārājādhirāja Kujula Kadphises, a Shaivite Hindu convert from his ancestral Steppe religion of the Yüeh-chih. He was not a Buddhist, as popularly believed.

A thread on the Hindu Emperors of the Kushana Dynasty.

The Kushanas were part of a tribal confederation called the Yüeh-Chih that originally lived in the western part of the Gansu Province of China. They were pushed west by the invasions of the Xiongnu (Huna) confederation. Kuja Kadphises united all the five sub-tribes under Kushana.

Emperor Kuja Kadphises had converted to Shaivism, a Mathura inscription from the Tōkrī Tīla mound (Maṭ village) clears up previous confusion (Based on him being called "satyadharmasthita" or 'steadfast in the true dharma' people speculated he was a Buddhist)

This is incorrect.

The Mathura inscription applied the same epithet to Emperor Huvishka (satyadharmasthita) but explicitly says the Kingdom was conferred upon its founder by Lord Shiva (Sarva is the epithet of Shiva). This makes it clear Kujula Kadphises had adopted Shaivism & the Kharoshti script.

This also makes sense, when we realize his son, Emperor Vima Kadphises was also a devoted Hindu Shaivite (and in his coins we clearly see a trishulin ithyphallic shiva with a tiger skin).

So his son had just been continuing his father's tradition & upbringing.

We will likely never be able to establish with certainty the identity of the two Black men painted by Rembrandt. There are no documents found, linking the painting to individuals. But we can make a reasoned guess. #BlackHistoryMonth #day20 #rembrandt #identification

First there is the problem of the date. The inventory with a reference to 'two Moors in one painting' was drawn up in 1656 in what is now the @Rembrandthuis; however, the painting that hangs in the @Mauritshuis bears not only Rembrandt’s signature but also the year 1661.

Was the painting made in 1656 while Rembrandt was still living and working in Jodenbreestraat, and not signed and sold until 1661, when he had moved to the Jordaan district? The 1656 estate inventory suggests this.

On the other hand, it is of course possible that Rembrandt painted several pictures featuring two black men. Nevertheless, supposing that it is one and the same
painting, then we can assume that the two men
were in the studio in Jodenbreestraat to be portrayed in or before 1656.

Of course there still are dozens of candidates, since there was a small Black community in the area. However, it is striking, and exceptional, that two men are portrayed instead of one, as was customary in this genre.

This is the field where my grandmother’s family was murdered in April 1943. I met one of the witnesses, a neighbor, several years ago. She said she saw them being marched away, was told by a Nazi to get back inside or risk joining them... 1/#InternationalHolocaustRemembranceDay

My grandmother and her kid sister ran for their lives into the woods. One detail that sticks out from my great aunt’s testimony many yrs later: the sunflower stalks in Grodzisko were so tall you could lay down and hide among them. Presuming the Nazis didn’t bring the dogs. 2/

My grandmother paid a farmer to hide them in the attic of his barn. This was a perilous act. After the war, my grandmother would send the farmer care packages until he died, as a token of her gratitude.

Most of my grandmother’s family were killed in those awful days in 1943.

In testimony my great aunt recorded—amazing to listen to, truly—she remembers being perpetually hungry and freezing. She recalls seeing a cherry tree outside the window of the attic and fainting. She also remembers my her sister’s nightmares, the screams for Eli...

Before they ran for their lives, my grandmother had given away her 3yo son Eli for safekeeping while she hid. After the war, she returned for him, but he was gone. Vanished. No one could say what happened to him.

I have been searching for Eli, my uncle, for two decades.